I found a useful website from Washington State University describing when to pick nectarines and apples and how to store them. Here’s the link: Fruit Harvest & Storage.

I haven’t had much time to post lately, but my nectarines started coming ripe within the past week. I still have a bunch on the tree, and some are getting a little overdone, because I haven’t had time to pick them. But I’m going to pick them all tonight, unless there are still some green […]

So, like I posted earlier today, I went and got some clear plastic cups for planting some cuttings. I drilled a hole in the bottom of each one for drainage and filled each halfway with peat moss and perlite. Probably about 30% perlite. I took cuttings from a very nice looking yellow specimen of Gaillardia […]

I’m having some troubles trying to grow some flowers and trees from cuttings. I have succeeded before in getting cuttings of flowers and shrubs to grow by putting them in one-gallon pots with a plastic bag over them to keep the moisture in. I dipped the stems in rooting hormone and planted them in peat […]

My garden hit its peak bloom about a week ago. Now several flowers are in decline, especially in the back flowerbed. Here’s a list of what I can remember off the top of my head: Shasta daisies are starting to shrivel up. I’m going to cut off the heads and see how much rebloom I […]

I fertilized the lawn today. It was about a month overdue. I also sprayed Malathion on my apples and nectarines and then sprayed a small remaining amount on some flowers that had too many grasshoppers recently. Yesterday, I sprayed the rose hedge with “bloom booster” fertilizer as a foliar feeding. Those roses are actually finally […]

I bought some chelated iron to spray on my maple that has chlorosis. It’s a 4.5% solution of EDDHA iron (that’s the kind of iron molecule it is derived from, which matters for our alkaline soils if I use it as a soil treatment). I sprayed it on the tree today, and we’ll see if […]