Overcast, But Lots of Gardening Done…

It was pretty much overcast the whole day but I got a lot done in the garden.

I moved a lot of pots with dead plants (annuals) from the front garden to the container graveyard in the back. I’ll rejuvenate the soil in these pots with compost, azomite, worm castings and the whole bit, when I find something else to plant in them. I moved three pots of Hyacinths which are now blooming to the front as well as the pot of Daffodil ‘Dick Widen’, Tulip ‘Pastel Mix’ and TulipĀ ‘Queen of the Night’. I don’t think the Tulips will rebloom this year, but there are 2-3 Daffodils that survived and are budded.

I took the water sprayer again and sprayed off the gray Aphids that remain on the Collards, Kale and Brussels Sprouts. There are much less Aphids than before, but a few remain.

We had a dwarf Calamansi tree in a huge pot that died last year and I finally got around to pulling it out (it was actually my Brother’s tree, so I thought he would take care of it). I asked my Mom if I can plant her Pomegranate that’s in a 5-gallon pot in the back yard to this larger pot. I think it’ll do much better here in a larger pot under full sun. I’ll also add a lots of compost, azomite and worm castings in the pot before potting up the Pomegranate. My Mom was complaining that the Pomegranate hasn’t bore fruit, but it’s siblings that she gave my Aunts already had fruits.

I have two 3-gallon pots of Blue Curled Scotch Kale (3 plants in each pot) that are getting bigger, so I think I’ll divide one pot and plant each plant into their own 3-galloon pot. I then had an idea and though of planting some dwarf Snap Peas ‘Sugar Ann’ that I purchased a few days ago around the Kale. I think Kale, being a leafy green, likes Nitrogen… and Snap Peas produce Nitrogen in it’s roots, so maybe they’ll be happy together… Well, we’ll see…

I then planted a 7-gallon Dirt Pot with the Walla Walla Sweet Onions seedlings that I bought a few days ago. I think I got about 11 seedlings into the pot. I had 6 seedlings leftover, so I potted those up into a large 6 cell pack and will plant it in the Square Foot Garden later.

It was getting dark and starting to sprinkle, but I planted two 1-gallon pots with seeds I found. One with the Daylily seeds I found in Mare Island and the other with the Orange Calendula I found at Prusch Park in San Jose. I hope these grow.

Now it’s raining, so I don’t have to water the plants :) That’s a good thing.

Asian Plum Breaking Dormancy + Asian Plum Grafts Update…

Last week, my Mom showed me that the Asian Plum (near the storage) is starting to bloom.

Asian Plum Starting to Bloom

This Asian Plum tree is always our first deciduous fruit tree to break dormancy… This means that I need to start grafting to it… and I haven’t even sorted the scions that I got this year, so I have to do that soon.

Asian Plum Tree

I took inventory of all the grafts that I made on this particular Plum tree and I’m happy that many are still alive. These include:

Asian Plum ‘Elephant Heart’ (Graft 2009-04) Flickr
Plumcot ‘Apex’ (Graft 2010-05) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’ (Graft 2010-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-01) Flickr
Apricot ‘Large Early Montgamet’ (Graft 2011-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Sierra’ (Graft 2011-03) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Queen’ (Graft 2010-02) Flickr

Asian Plum 'Sierra'

It’s kinda neat how this one tree now has Plums, Plumcots, Pluots and Apricots.

Sadly two grafts did not make it:

Aprium ‘Mark’s Seedling’ (Graft 2010-03)
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-02) which is ok because this was a duplicate graft

I also took some time to prune some on the limb back, especially the ones that hang too low or crossed other branches.