Sunday, March 18, 2012

a second season of apple trees

the current climate change driven weather...which may have become tiresome old news to the more jaded deniers out there...is of intense interest to me from a number of perspectives...but the one that is germane to this blog is the impact it has on plants and gardening in general...and there is more disturbing ( and, at the same time, heartening ) news from the back yard to go along with the discovery of surviving sub-tropical teosinte on campus yesterday...i unwrapped one of my apple trees a few minutes ago thinking that the trees at the local orchard aren't in leaf yet and so the ones out back should be dormant as well...that's not what i found however...all three of my apple trees made it though their first ( albeit exceptionally mild ) winter wrapped in straw and burlap and all three are up and running with a healthy shock of leaves at the top...not something i was expecting to see on the eighteenth of march in northwest indiana...but there they are... i have ample amounts of frost cloth in case the weather decides to take a turn for the seasonably "normal" so i am confident of their survival but the whole business till strikes me as passing odd...i had intended to plant snow peas before the end of the month but i have to wonder if the weather will be cool enough for them...or the scarlet runner beans for that matter...planting schedules may be turned into a shambles if this keeps up...the winter wheat that i don't think ever went dormant is growing like weeds as well...the batch on campus is filling in and the stuff in the back yard is around then inches tall ( i neglected to photograph it this evening because i was deeply distracted by the apple trees...i will try to remember to include it in the next post ) it is usually ready to harvest in june...we'll see if it's early this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment