Groundhog Day

It was a really busy weekend. We went to the fruit tree pruning seminar out at Hodges Nursery at 10 on Saturday. The owner there showed us some beautiful trees that he kept small by pruning twice a year. He advised pruning in spring and fall. By keeping the trees small and dense, you can get fruit trees spaced only 5 feet apart and still get excellent fruit production. This makes sense for homeowners, and then you can plant multiple varieties so you have a little of something ripe all the time rather than great deluges at once.

Then on Sunday we had the second organic farming class. As usual it went a little slowly, and in fact, we cut out at the break since it was sunny. But we still got some good info from Bruce, who sells lettuces at the Farmers' Market. He said its important not to work the ground when it's too wet or you compact it. He suggests walking on planks to support and spread your weight. He uses city compost, and plants right in that. He rakes his bed, the applies an inch or so of compost and puts the seeds in that. He uses a board with a piece of molding to make a perfectly straight row so it's easier to hoe the rows.

For lettuce he recommended Buttercrunch, New Red Fire, and Red Sails, all romaines (best is Green Towers), and some pretty oakleaves because salad should be pretty. For catalogs he likes Fedco Seeds (no pics), Johnnies, and Harris for gourds and pumpkins. For tomatoes he suggests Better Boy or Carbon for hybrids, Cherokee purple for heirloom, and he's fond of the green or green striped tomatoes, such as Mr. Stripey, Pineapple, Evergreen, and Aunt Ruby's German Green. For tomato seeds he recommended Tomato Growers Supply and Totally Tomatoes.

And as far as Groundhog Day, it's a tossup. It was sunny this morning and raining now. So we'll either have more winter weather or we won't. Buddy's bugging me to come over even though it's kinda raining. I guess I better go check in....