All of the older fruit producing plants are coming back from dormancy and have flowers and fruit forming. Last year was pretty hard on them due to some major droughts, but hoping this year they do better and so far spring has had numerous showers. Hopefully going into summer will get consistent rains, if not I will be watering them myself. Much of these plants are in their first year, but others are much older such as the apple tree. The perennials are different from the annuals as they come back every year, I have apple, cherry, blackberry, blueberry both shortbush and longbush, goji, mulberry, elderberry and strawberry plants/trees forming.
Shortbush blueberry
Above are some wild shortbush blueberry plants that I moved closer to the homestead. While clearing out the forest for roads we dug up those that were in the way and brought them over to where my other blueberry plants are.
The apple and cherry trees are doing pretty good. The japanese beetles really went after them last year, going to be better about putting out traps for them this time around.
Its hard to see them all in one shot but I have about three apple trees and three cherry trees here.
Wondering when we will finally get cherries. I see them form, but then they drop off. I guess they are not quite ready yet.
This one has a cage around it as deer were rubbing against it hurting the bark. Seems they like to rub their antlers against the wood, and that will hurt the tree and open it up to possible infection.
I plant confrey around the base of the trees, hopefully it will grow throughout this whole area and keep the grass at bay.
No signs of apples on these trees yet, though I do have one large apple tree that does produce fruit. Will show that later in the post.
Some of these apple trees are small compared to the cherry trees.
Maybe I should be topping these trees, otherwise those cherries are going to be 15 feet up in the air..lol
We just planted strawberries again this year, hoping they do better in good soil this time.
Got two of them in this bed, hopefully they will spread out when they are ready.
I had some bosenberry and raspberry, but due to how root bound the roots were and me breaking them apart it appears it put them into shock and killed them. I got more on order so hopefully I can replace them soon.
The elderberry plants seem to be forming large leaves at the base, hopefully they will go more vertical soon.
Out of the four I planted two are really happy and two are not doing much at the moment.
One of the two goji's are flowering too.
The mullberry plants are waking up too.. Leafing out.
You can see them a little better in this picture, I got two of them.
Not much is happening with them yet, but this is their first year so I do not expect them to grow all that much yet.
We have more than one bed of strawberries. Some are junebearing and others are everbearing.
If one bed does really well and starts getting crowded we will move them to another bed.
I see some growth coming up, along with flower buds.. probably a good sign.
Planting them is very touchy, too deep and they are unhappy.. too shallow and they are unhappy. So I planted a lot of them and hope just enough survive to reproduce and fill the beds.
The thornless blackberry vines I moved are still adjusting, luckily I have a whole other fence full of them very happy at this time.
This one is ready to pop, and in a month we should have lots of berries.
I see lots of flowers forming, now its time for the pollinators to do their job.
So many plants on this fence.. I am always training them back into it.
Last year we did not water the blueberries enough during the drought and lost most of the fruit. This year we will not let that happen.
I see lots of fruit forming, so just a matter of time.
Hard to see but I have four longbush blueberry plants there.
The shortbush wild variety are also near by.
We got two of them, one is quite happy and the other is not as happy. There were a bunch of wild blackberry vines trying to grow up around it. I cut those back so hopefully that will help it out.
The quince bush is coming back too. It has a fungal disease so we cut it back to the ground. Will see if that issue comes back.
Lastly the giant apple tree on the property, looking forward to its tasty fruit. It was such a nice surprise discovering it.
Hard to see the fruits now, but it was full of flowers just a few weeks ago.. So I am sure they are forming now if all is good with the tree. I gave it a good delimbing of dead branches, so every year it seems to do a little better.
