We hope to have more plants later, but the drought in Morrow County is kicking our tails quite a bit with seed germination and loss, time taken away from the nursery uppotting and potting with watering the 100+ trees we put in all over the property this spring (who's idea was that?!) and trying to keep our vegetable garden alive. The drought also really seems to have ramped up raccoon activity, which started with our chicken deaths, then proceeded to fruit and potted tree raids and now daily corn raids (even with a hot wire!) so everyone is feeling a bit stressed around here.
Thankfully, we persevere, try to keep our spirits up and see the beauty in each day, and continue to make progress. Steve made us a fabulous shade structure out of snow fence, which he built over our plant tables. This shading is helping our plants that survived A LOT. The wildflowers integrated into the orchard and nursery, also, persevere and continue to delight us and nectar/seed seeking friends with new blooms.
Our cover crop zone adjacent to the orchard is fairing well with a dense planting of crimson clover and oats. There are also sunflowers, cosmos and zinnias planted here, but they remain tiny as they wait for a drink of water.
With these 90 degree temperatures we continue to experience we are amazed these plants live. We've received 4.2" of rain since the beginning of June with most of it falling in the first 3/4 of June. This is quite low for this part of the country at this time so the lawn is browning, our soil is crazy dry and cracked, our trees are wilting and showing fall colors, our wildflowers are losing all their lower leaves and the soybean field behind us is starting to brown as well. Yet, we all persist and hope everyday for clouds to gather and a real rain to fall steady and strong as evidenced by new strawberry plantings...
Steve puts on his hat and boots and marches out into this heat ready to make progress in many ways, everyday. Our fruit fared very poorly this spring so a gift of new plants from Steve's sister and brother-in-law spurred their planting and a reworking of a mowing headache. Steve reused the hated path mat and free woodchips from a local tree company to improve this area for us and our nursery.
He also scavenged an old swing, removed the swing hardware, added legs with scrap wood, stained and sealed the wood and made us a bench for our nursery too. How cool!
We have lots of little germininating plants, but we also have a significant amount of full grown plants that are ready to go in the ground now. If you want to buy some, check out the 2016 current plant list and set up a time to pop on up to Morrow County, OH. Thanks everyone! Now think rain, please...
Update 7/14....You all did it! We got significant rain last night and we are ecstatic!
I will try and send some the almost daily rain we have up your way if you promise to send some of your cooler drier air down here! I have been cutting grass almost every 5 days lately!! Sorry about the raccoons, once they start they never know when to stop I trapped and relocated 2 that were making my life hard a couple yrs ago and so far none have come to replace them.
ReplyDeleteHope you get lots of shoppers!!
You sent us 1 5/8" last night Sondra! Thanks so much. :) I sure hope we took a way a bit for you too. Wouldn't it just be awesome if it would all even out?! That's not the way it works, we know but it's fun to think about it. Hope the mowing slows asap for you...that's not such a fun activity.
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