It’s officially summer of 2019, and it’s time for a peach update. This April we planted a bare-root Veteran peach (along with a few other new fruit trees) and unfortunately it never showed any sign of life. Everything else is doing great, putting on leaves and blooming. You know what…
I can ignore a few holes in my lettuce leaves or the occasional blemish from a hungry bug, but I can’t STAND aphids. It seems like they pick a fruit tree to colonize each year, with their ants helping them along. Sometimes a thorough spraying with the hose will help,…
Technically it was a practical purchase. It was the hardiest fig available, at zone 5. If it froze, shoots would quickly regrow from the hardy roots. Violetta de Bordeaux fig, recently arrived and repotted. In 2016 I ordered a Violetta de Bordeaux fig from Burpee’s. It…
A pluot has a complex family tree. It starts off simply enough, just cross an apricot and a plum. Both are stonefruit, both in the Prunus genus, both easily identifiable in the grocery aisle. It is simple to cross-pollinate these fruits. The result is a plumcot, bred over 100 years…
During our first winter as homeowners, we plotted what fruit trees we would plant in the spring. “Apples, of course. Apples like chill hours. And pears would be practical. And an edible crabapple to help pollinate them.” We bought a Honeycrisp apple and a Honeygold apple, which are very cold…
Last weekend we started building a kiwi trellis. Most people’s reaction to this is “Inside your greenhouse?” or “Inside your actual house with that fig you’re going to kill eventually?” or just “WHAATT?” But the kiwi endeavor, unlike the fig tree or the maypop vine, might actually be successful. When…
A few days ago Toby called me from Mississippi, where he is doing prescribed burning for 6 weeks. One of his coworkers lives in New Meadows, and his wife had found mouse damage girdling their fruit trees. “Can you check our trees?” he asked. Our trees are still under 3 feet…
Welcome to the Timber Garden! Toby and I purchased our first home on 3 acres outside of McCall, ID in October of 2014. We couldn’t wait to put in a permanent garden and fruit trees! We had both grown up gardening with our families and tried to grow something wherever…
It’s the middle of February in Idaho. In some places, that is early enough to start thinking about the snow melting and the sun shining and greenery pressing up through the ground. Here, the snow might not melt until May and the greenery knows better. My fellow gardeners and I…