TOPIC: opening day...

Well, we got the 2-4 inches as predicted, a real "over the river and through the woods" winter wonderland for those of you old enough to recall the reference. Took a nice mile and a half walk with my wife and two dogs this morning and took the puppies out a couple times. All four dogs (even my 13 year old) love the snow.

TN, I envy your orchard endeavors. I bought two peach trees last year (still in pots) and brought some raspberry and blueberry bushes from OR (the latter didn't produce much last year). I think all need a better home and I hope to get around to fencing in an area that I think is more suitable in time to plant/transplant. It's tough sometimes balancing what I WANT to do with what I "need" to do like today, putting down laminate flooring in the bedroom for most of the day. lol

Here are a few pics from our morning walk, against my better judgement I've included a photo of me. lol

Take care all.

more snow for tomorrow,ive got 15 peach trees to plant this spring.some of my peach trees are getting old and not producing like they were a few years back,so I will plant replacments and add a few new ones.....

iam under a winter weather advisory ,3 to 6 inches of snow,then fri. morning a low of minus 5. hope to hell they are wrong...

Sure has been nasty around here lately. We've had torrential rain with major flooding. It just about washed gatlinburg and surrounding areas away couple days ago. Haven't been down to my river spots lately. No telling what i'll find washed up down there. Haven't seen it flood that bad in a long time.

I got 3 inches of snow last night,30 mph wind today.temps. falling all day till it gets to -5 in the morning...crap....

Rain Rain Rain... finally let up some today but turned much colder...

Late Winter is a bummer...

I need to go fishing and plant something

TNHunter

Rain here as well, my yard is a swamp. Starting to remind me of the PNW except it'll eventually stop raining here before June.

Saturday morning here in southern middle TN... we have had cold weather the past couple days (since the rain let up)... lows in the mid 20's... but SUNSHINE all day yesterday, and so far today looking like a nice SUNNY day. Yeah !!!

Paying bills this morning from my home office and I have a window that looks out to the back yard and another to the side yard (basement end) which is the south side (with a south facing slope)... which is where I planted my Chicago Hardy Fig tree last year. It started out as a 3 ft stick with roots, and grew to a 8 ft fig tree last year with several branches... late in the fall we got 20 or so nice figs off it (first year). Impressive flavor.

I pruned it back down to 4 ft level a couple of weeks ago and now every morning a male bluebird has made the top of the fig tree his perch each morning for a while.
No signs of life from the Fig so far.. it is still quite dormant looking.. I am hoping that it does grow again this year and we get even more figs... they are absolutely yummy stuff to eat and unlike most of my other fruit trees (that are producing now)... they produce late in the year - last year in it's first year they started ripening figs in early Sept,.. and kept on going until Frost got them.

I know that Chief and probably several others that read here are from on up North... and you have a lot of Winter left to come... but here SPRING comes a little earlier.

I see several things in my orchard and food forest with some serious bud swell happening now.

In the state of TN... the recommended Blue Berry Varieties to grow are what you call rabbit eye blueberries. Our native wild blueberries are rabbiteye type and I have lots of those growing here on my property.

In my orchard / food forest... I have 3 different types growing... all 3 rabbit eye variety..

Premier - which ripen early season
Brightwell - which ripen mid season over a long period
Tif Blue - which has a mid-late season harvest.

Tif Blue is a good pollinator for other varieties... some blueberries bloom early, some mid, some late bloom season...

Tif Blue actually blooms over a extended period... blooming thru the early, mid and late season... so it will pollinate all the others.

Below is the top of one of my Tif Blue bushes now... oh... the hope of fresh ripe sweet juicy blueberries !

TNHunter

TN,i cant wait for it to warm up so I can get out and mess around in the orchard...

Hey all, I just changed my username from jm466 to woodsrunner, something I've been considering for some time. Maybe a bit paranoid but I decided a name less close to home would be better.

Feel free to call me WR, Woody, Johnny or whatever works for you.