Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A break in the rain

Don't let this sun fool you -- 2" overnight and currently it's raining again. I think there's a whole storm system overhead. Not that I'm complaining, mind you; I had thought we would have to begin irrigating and I'm delighted to have "free" water. The potatoes were so tickled by their first hilling followed by the rain that they all practically leapt for joy. I could almost see the growth since yesterday. Even without Granny's secrets, I hope to get some real 'taters this year.


Another excitement is that the keeping onions (Talon and a yellow Italian variety whose name escapes me right now) are actually bulbing up. I hope the really thick necks don't mean that they're going to bolt instead of making nice keeper onions, but I've only grown keepers once before, and not here, so this is good, I think.


Just one more picking before the Green Beauty snow peas from Michelle get to be left alone to mature into saved peas. They're all being hit hard with powdery mildew.


And, this year it appears we'll get some Anna apples. Not too many, but more than "none," which was our harvest last year.

Although I think of them as sunny fruit, the Katy apricots seem not to mind the rain too much.


Some Elephant Heart plums. I keep thinking that I should top that tree -- it's tall and not as useful as it could be. It's young enough to recover, so maybe I'll get my act together and cut it in half. Eeesh.


Boysenberries, in need of better support. I'll do that before the week is out.


Delicious limes. This tree needs careful pruning because it really wants to be a huge, full-sized orchardy lime. It can't be, unfortunately, but the fruit is terrific.


And not to discourage anyone with what's under that lime tree, but I expect my first tomatoes from the front yard volunteer very soon. I still don't know what it is, although I'm leaning toward a cherry, probably a Sungold. We ate them up here and probably dropped them while trying to pawn off buckets of them on neighbors.


I hope this isn't our last rainstorm, but I'm enjoying it enough for it to be.

12 comments:

michelle said...

It sounds like you're getting more rain than I am, it didn't start here until 4 or 5 o'clock this morning (I didn't look at the time). It is nice and refreshing and a great excuse to cook up a big batch of soup.

The Green Beautys do seem to be prone to PM but I think they are tasty enough to bear with the disease. You could spray with an extract of Neem Oil (Greenlight is a good brand) to slow down the disease so that the plants don't die before your seeds mature.

What a wonderful selection of fruits you have. That's one of my current projects, expanding my collection of homegrown fruit.

Curbstone Valley Farm said...

I think with our damp spring, powdery mildew is running a bit more rampant than average. However, we've needed the rain, and for the most part everything looks so lovely and green. I hope this isn't quite the last of the rain, but I know it can't last much longer. I can't believe your volunteer tomato is blooming already!

Momma_S said...

Everything looks great! I wish we had more fruits in our yard that I enjoy--like your berries, apples and apricots ;-).

The rain is wonderful, but I'm glad there's been a break in it since I started hardening off my second round of seedlings yesterday (oops! Forgot to look at the weather before starting). I did have to put my bucket potatoes in the shed though. The fungus gnats are loving them, and each time the buckets would almost dry out it'd rain. I'm not letting these gnats get the better of me!

Lou Murray's Green World said...

Your rain is headed down our way. I've put out my rain buckets hoping to harvest what I think will be the last storm of the season here in SoCal. So nice to see veggies, fruits and bees in your yard. Yay to sustainability in urban areas.

Jackie said...

Wow, apples forming up already!? I'm only in the blossom stage here.

A bit jealous of your apricot... :)

Erin said...

Congrats on the apples! This will be the first year we should be getting some from the colonnade apple trees, so far it's bloomed well, now we wait....!

Jan said...

We've got the spring rains here too at the moment, on and off but very welcome. We'd just started irrigating when they arrived!

Ribbit said...

That onion is looking good! I trimmed off the seed stalks on mine, but I don't know if they'll bulb up at all.

Mr. H. said...

How old are your apple trees? I'm hoping ours will put out more than a couple apples this year...most of our semi-dwarf trees are only 5-6 years old but we do have some that are a couple years older and had a few fruits on them last summer.

I'm jealous of your Boysenberries.:)

Kristin said...

I had a dream about you and your potatoes last night. You were digging up a whole mess of them. What do you think that means?

Daphne Gould said...

I hope you are enjoying the rain. We have had a bit of sun for a couple of days but the rain will come back again tomorrow. All your plants look so happy.

kitsapFG said...

The fruits (especially those limes!) look delicious. What a variety and abundance you have! I wish I had more options on fruit trees but I just am all out of growing area to plant them. Hopeefully my bush pie cherries will produce abundantly this year and I will have that as a consolation.