Whatever we do they’ll taste good
Monday March 16th 2015, 10:33 pm
Filed under: Family,Garden,Lupus

The first day of blooming for the Stella cherry.

Caught another cold and slept very little last night but it didn’t stop me from doing more digging and planting this evening. The prep work for the Gold Nugget mandarin is done, other than that nicked water line. The one single zucchini/pattypan hybrid seed I sprouted inside is now out there giving it its all, hoping for not-too-cold nights. What the heck. I put more seeds down near the baby plant–we can sauté the flowers and skip scaring the neighbors with the excess.

The friend who’d recommended Black Jack figs has hers espaliered.

I waited for Richard to get his input. After digging a hole in the corner at the end of the row the Stella is on (which was fine with him) and then thinking no, I don’t want it there, I went back to our original plan, which was to put it in a pot to help limit its size with the least effort or at least to buy us some time till we decide to do otherwise while we see just how fast this thing grows. Turns out we’d had different ideas on where that pot should go so I’m glad I waited; he’s been so supportive and I’m trying to return the favor.

He most wanted it up against the back fence, thinking how about to the far right from the cherry picture.

I could so easily espalier it right there and ditch the ugly Costco fake-wine-half-barrel thing and that would work really well.

If I wanted to. Not sure I do. Fig trees are pretty and I want it pretty. (Okay, and I’ve never done anything remotely like espalier work before.) But we could always transplant later–the Stella used to be in that same pot.

So I took it over by the tea roses where he wanted. It took some work to pull its bulging sleeve off–it turned out the roots had grown into every molecule of space and where they’d hit bottom they’d curled around and back into the mass like a felted knitted thing. Planted like that, they would strangle themselves. They were already working hard at it. There was nothing for it but to cut them apart and pull as hard as I could, again and again, doing as little as possible and as much as I had to and separating them into roughly four solid clumps with a few stragglers and hoping that would be enough.

But at that point I was fast running out of daylight and a decision had to be made.

A stick in the mud in the pot. Plunk. It’ll do for now.


1 Comment so far
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I love all your planting stories! It is 20F here this AM (warm for March in Winnipeg) but through you, I feel like I see a garden starting!

Comment by Joanne 03.17.15 @ 10:02 am



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