Spring has sprung

Montana certified seed potatoes

It’s April:

April is here and none too soon. With weather more like May than March, the calendar is starting to catch up with the weather. And we are running behind with our April blog.

Christie and I pruned the apple trees and the “old grapes”. This is about the normal time we prune; we were ok with the trees and grapes, not so much with everything else. We won’t get all the bushes pruned this year; they are farther along than I would like for pruning. It’s not the end of the world, just a hiccup. We will get it done next year. There is always next year.

Talking of pruning, April 3 we participated in an apple growing workshop along with USDA, MTFWP, WARC and County Extension agents. It was at the USDA Plant Materials Center in Bridger MT. Who knew there was such a place? The morning was presentations on fertilizing, and weed and pest control. It was hands on after lunch, with FWP demonstrating installing electric fencing to keep bears out and of course pruning. The apple trees on site were old and had been kept trimmed so that they could be mowed under.  We covered some basics of pruning and how to bring back old trees into better fruit producing shape.  It was a little cold and rainy to really enjoy learning or teaching about pruning.  

Our haskaps are starting to bloom. We have a dozen or so old plants we have picking the last few years. Three years ago, we planted six newer varieties. Two early, two middle, and two late varieties. We the hope to extend the time we will have fruit for sale. Last year they bloomed for the first time but all at the same time, this year looks promising they appear to staggering their bloom times. Hopefully we will have fruit for more than two weeks.

We just renewed our nursery license last week, just in time. On the 31st we picked up seed potatoes, and of course they are Montana grown and certified seed potatoes. Montana produces the finest seed potatoes. We have seven varieties, but only 25 pounds of each. Also new this year we will have live onion plants for sale. I had always planted onion sets in the past and the outcome was always hit or miss. Some years they did ok other years not so much. Two years ago, a friend told me about live onion plants and how wonderful they were. Last year we order about 100. He was not wrong. We had onions earlier, they were bigger and we only lost one or two plants. Much better than I ever did with sets. We have ordered enough to be able to sell this spring.  We will post when we have them for sale.

We will be picking up trees in Missoula in a few weeks. We ordered trees from Montana Fruit Tree Company in Missoula. Haskaps, elder berries, and other assorted plants will be arriving soon.

Every year Christie and I say this is our last big project. Well hopefully this year it sticks. We are automating the irrigation system. Our current system is manual, we are forever opening and closing valves. This can take an hour or more every day Trying to explain it to others is impossible and when we are gone from the place nothing gets watered. We decided that this is the year we automate. We are tying into our existing sprinkler system. Unfortunately, that entails installing 1800 foot of new pipe, 24 valves, 6 boxes, over a thousand foot of wire.  The part I’m not so sure about getting the existing controller box to work with the new controller box. We buy our irrigation supplies (and all the supplies for this project) from A&H Turf in Billings.  They are great people to work with and are always there to answer questions and walk you through things. 

I guess that’s all the sitting around and writing for me.  The irrigation systems not going to put itself in!