This weekend the weather was interesting. While it was frustrating to start and stop outdoor projects as the rain moved through time and again, it was also really cool to watch the clouds. (The neighbors fields in the distance)

With the sky above, I was able to plant many seeds and sets. Anne also planted many more flowers and plugs. I specifically planted more potatoes, onions, multi-colored carrots, kholrabi, brocolli raeb, purple bush beans, pole beans, more decorative sweet peas, and a couple of cabages.

With the sky in this photo, Anne and I continued painting indoors. It was a back-and-forth weekend. Nice skies though.

The kitchen floor is about half removed. It’s slow going at times. Many nails. I took the circular saw to it in a grid cut pattern. The saw had little difficulty with the nails, sparks flew, it was exciting. With any luck, it will be completely out next weekend. Then comes the refinishing or painting or covering. So far the floor is in decent shape. It’s a little soft in spots, but good for it’s age — if it is as old as I think it is.

The weekend was for planting. We planted 13 fruit trees, mostly bare root trees, and 35 rasberries. Each whole was dug, soil was amended only on those wholes that seemed to need it most (a few had extra amounts of clay), mulch was collected from the recent mowing, every tree was well watered, and then I trimmed them down to two or three branches. This one needed no trimming. We still need to stake them and protect them from critters. And the rasberries need more mulching and cardboard (see flickr photo at right). Now we wait a couple years for the fruit to grow.

[swf]http://www.barkandbloom.com/slides/projects.swf, 400, 300,8,#000000[/swf]

The Farm is ours.

I came across a good web site today. It’s the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. Their page on blueberries is both exciting and frightening. I had no idea so many pests and diseases would be such a concern. Surely our blueberries will be immune to such things.

We ordered a bunch of trees and other fruits from Jung’s. Here is what’s coming:

• 25 Earliglow Strawberries
• 10 Heritage Everbearing Rasberries
• 25 Killarney Summer Bearing Rasberries
• 1 Saturn Peach
• 1 Everbearing Colette Pear (Dwarf)
• 2 Hardired Nectarine
• 3 Reliance Peach (Dwarf)
• 1 White Gold Cherry (Dwarf)
• 2 Lapins Cherry
• 1 Pipestone Plum
• 1 Toka Plum

The trees are bareroot 3-5 ft so it will be a few years before we expect to see them bearing fruit. And it might be a good idea to nip off any fruit they try to produce that first year, sending more energy to root development. We have yet to order our blueberries. Anne has found a supplier who specializes in blueberries. And we are waiting a year to order our grapes.

We drove by the farm today and I snapped some quick images. Crudely pasted them together here in a panoramic display. Click on the image to see it closer up.

The pepper and eggplant seeds have begun to sprout. Exciting times ahead.

It’s about 7 weeks before the last frost date here in Iowa. The perfect time to start peppers and eggplant and more. I special ordered some interesting pepper varieties: Antohi Romanian, Andy F1 (hot), Serrano Del Sol F1 (also hot). The eggplants are Bambino and Rosa Bianca, both are small, very small varieties. Planting date was 3/11/2007. The tricky part will come with hardening the plants off to avoid leggy growth.

format: mov