Color Comes to Bedford!
With spring now in full force, I’d like to post a farm update on a weekly basis. One week ago, my very long daffodil border was just beginning to bloom. Now, it is a broad expanse of springtime cheer. The blue garden beneath the allee of linden is quite glorious! There’s a lot of activity with seed planting in the greenhouse and also in the vegetable plot, which, hopefully, will be amazing this year. Please welcome Ryan McCallister, a very talented landscape designer and gardener, who is now helping Shaun and Wilmer with the gardens. And have a look at all of the other activity happening around the farm. By the way, happy Passover!
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- Wilmer is helping to unload one of two gala apple trees, which were grown in Pennsylvania.
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- Paul Robeson, Beam’s Yellow Pear,Austin’s Red Pear, Sweet Pea Currant, Green Zebra, Red Zebra, Reisetomate, Moonglow, Black From Tula, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, and Violet Jasper
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- Montecarlo, Cour di Bue, Pantano – Ryan likes to cover the seed mix with a layer of fine gravel, which helps to keep the mix from splattering when watered.
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- On a rainy day, Ryan also worked on all the labels for the vegetable garden, using a label maker.
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- Ryan McCallister, the new gardener, has been busy in the greenhouse planting tomato seeds.
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- Ryan, who grew up gardening, is a graduate of California State University Pomona and has worked as a landscape designer and also as a plant buyer for The Home Depot and Lowes.
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- Ryan has been mapping out a chart of the vegetable garden.
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- The white garden one week later
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- A lily bed with an early blooming of scilla.
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- The rhubarb patch is really taking off! I can’t wait for the first rhubarb tarts!
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- And soon we’ll be eating asparagus!
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- Cabbages, cauliflower, and broccoli plants are hardened off and ready to be planted in the garden.
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- Driving along the carriage roads, there is quite a lot to see.
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- Looking up towards the impressive blue sky and the contrast of the red maple buds
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- You may recall all the circles of daffodils that were planted along the roads.
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- They are really thriving.
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- The unfurling leaves of skunk cabbage
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- As is the skunk cabbage alongside the stream beds.
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- The crows at the farm are always watching with great interest.
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- The feathery weeping willows catch the wind so nicely.
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- A female American robin is certainly a harbinger of spring.
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- Looking towards the wetlands and the weeping willows planted there.
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- Slavo and his assistant are doing repairs on woodwork and screening.
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- Verdi was scratching to get outside to enjoy the warmth of the sun.
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- I wanted to plant them where a stand of black locust trees once stood. They were destroyed when that twister blew through the farm. This machine is a stump grinder.
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- All of the stumps of those locust needed to be ground up to make room for the new apple trees.
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- The whirring blade of the grinder cuts through the dense stump pretty effortlessly.
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- What’s left is soft organic material, which is shoveled back into the hole that the grinder made.
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- I think he also wanted to enjoy the view of the farm.
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- Shaun, Ryan, and Wilmer have been finishing the reconfiguration of the vegetable beds. Seven truckloads of compost have been added this spring.
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- I came across this handsome nuthatch, which must have crashed into a window and become stunned. He flew away shortly after I picked him up.
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- Bruce Corbett Excavating has been repairing that erosion.
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- The road gravel is dumped and spread.
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- And then it is compressed with this heavy roller.
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- Another view
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- Last autumn, Carmine Luppino, of Luppino Landscaping & Masonry and I walked around to see what needed fixing. This is his crew.
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- The stones on this walkway all needed to be raised, as they had settled over the years.
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- The Gravenstein apple espalier, which was planted a year ago, has adapted quite nicely.
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- With warm and sunny days and one week later, the daffodil border is really beginning to pop.
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- The garden beneath allee of linden is filling in with more blue each day.
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- The colors of spring are just so happy!
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- Walking past a boxwood, my eyes were drawn to this dried up ‘skeleton’ leaf.
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- Shaun remembered that crocus had been planted in the grass and worked to untangle the little bulbs.
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- A crocus bulb, which will be planted elsewhere
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- The next day, Chhiring used the backhoe to dig the holes for the apple trees.
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- So many roots from the locust trees!
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- Ryan is staggering the placement of the cabbage plants to give them ample space to form large heads.
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- This type of cabbage is Montovano, a nice green, dense head.
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- The Sutton’s Harbinger peas planted last week are sprouting.
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- Just joking! He was crouching down!
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- Shaun standing in the finished hole
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- Shaun likes to use Bio-tone Starter when planting trees. http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/biotone_overview.html
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- Using the Hi-lo to position the apple tree
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- Chains are hooked onto the root ball for placement adjustment.
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- Filling in the hole
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- You may recall when I showed photos of the erosion along the carriage roads last month.
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- Bleached and parchment-like leaves of a beech tree are still clinging from last season.
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- A macro of the feathery moss
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- Moss-covered rocks fascinate me.
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- A closeup of those buds
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- Naturalized chionodoxa randomly growing in this hay field
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- A macro of this pretty clear blue flower
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- Ryan is getting ready to plant some of my very own seed collection that is now available at Home Depot.
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- Just a couple of our 38 different varieties of herbs, vegetables, and flowers.
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