The Gardening Thread

[GVF]

Would be tough for me to get out that far from the Maryville area. Would love to have this over here. You are lucky!

But you do have a mushroom plant down at the river going north on John Sevier. Gramps used to get loads of soil delivered each spring for his tomato beds.

 

[GVF]

Thanks for the peach information . I will do my best to keep these guys as happy as I can. I have some Dr. Earth’s fruit tree fertilizer. Will put it down over the next few weeks and then next spring. Need to fertilize my berries as well.

My blueberries and raspberries are in a raised bed filled with a 50/50 soil/mushroom compost mix. I still get mushrooms growing in there from time to time. Not so much lately with this 2nd hot and dry spell. I will fertilize the berries with a good 10-10-10 for the fall/winter feeding and then again in spring when leaves start to appear. A fertilizing in May also helps. Raspberries try to take over the bed so I pull up ones where I don’t want them growing lol. Built a trellis for them this year. Helped a lot, but built too high so I will need to lower the arms a foot or two.

I read about how blueberry bushes tend to have an iron deficiency. During my readings I found a research article that stated having grass around blueberry bushes helps with iron deficiency. This is due to the grass emitting a ligand that attaches to the iron in the ground and allows for the uptake of the iron into the roots. Blueberries don’t make this ligand, but grass does and in more than enough amounts for the grass. The paper stated they had better growth with the blueberry bushes surround by grass (pretty much as close as you can get it to the base of the bush) than those not.

How are your carmine jewel cherries doing? My Romeo and Juliet are doing fine. Have growth all over. At least a few inches from each growth spot. I think these hot spells have slowed growth down because the period of cooler weather and rain that we had they really grew out. So I expect more growth here soon when temps drop.

I will prob let the grass grow back in as the blueberries get bigger. That's the way they grow at my brothers down the street, and he never does anything to them. No fertilizer, no extra watering. Then again, my dad planted them in '96-'97ish. And they are all 7'-9' tall. 8-12 bushes and loads and loads of berries. I just planted them too close together for the mower, and I haven't needed a working weedeater lately. But, the green grass is no more than 2 feet from the base of the plants either direction.

My Carmine Jewel has done well and is healthy. The second heat drought recently really stressed it and it finally dropped leaves but it is already budding back out. It hasn't put on much growth yet, but seems happy. I snipped the top off when I planted it to encourage bushing out. I'm not sure how much growth it should have had anyway. I'm impatient and was hoping for superman growth, so I've had to reel in my expectation on all my new orchard plantings.

One thing I have learned is if you don't plant within range of existing water hoses, you must add new sections of hose. I carry buckets of water to a few of the trees and bushes.

I wish I wasn't so far along in life that I could add an apricot and/or a plum. Ripe crabapples and plums off the tree is a definite memory. And maybe a Japanese Persimmon for the deer.