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!
- Wilmer is helping to unload one of two gala apple trees, which were grown in Pennsylvania.
- 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
- 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.
- On a rainy day, Ryan also worked on all the labels for the vegetable garden, using a label maker.
- Ryan McCallister, the new gardener, has been busy in the greenhouse planting tomato seeds.
- 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.
- Ryan has been mapping out a chart of the vegetable garden.
- The white garden one week later
- A lily bed with an early blooming of scilla.
- The rhubarb patch is really taking off! I can’t wait for the first rhubarb tarts!
- And soon we’ll be eating asparagus!
- Cabbages, cauliflower, and broccoli plants are hardened off and ready to be planted in the garden.
- Driving along the carriage roads, there is quite a lot to see.
- Looking up towards the impressive blue sky and the contrast of the red maple buds
- You may recall all the circles of daffodils that were planted along the roads.
- They are really thriving.
- The unfurling leaves of skunk cabbage
- As is the skunk cabbage alongside the stream beds.
- The crows at the farm are always watching with great interest.
- The feathery weeping willows catch the wind so nicely.
- A female American robin is certainly a harbinger of spring.
- Looking towards the wetlands and the weeping willows planted there.
- Slavo and his assistant are doing repairs on woodwork and screening.
- Verdi was scratching to get outside to enjoy the warmth of the sun.
- 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.
- All of the stumps of those locust needed to be ground up to make room for the new apple trees.
- The whirring blade of the grinder cuts through the dense stump pretty effortlessly.
- What’s left is soft organic material, which is shoveled back into the hole that the grinder made.
- I think he also wanted to enjoy the view of the farm.
- Shaun, Ryan, and Wilmer have been finishing the reconfiguration of the vegetable beds. Seven truckloads of compost have been added this spring.
- 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.
- Bruce Corbett Excavating has been repairing that erosion.
- The road gravel is dumped and spread.
- And then it is compressed with this heavy roller.
- Another view
- Last autumn, Carmine Luppino, of Luppino Landscaping & Masonry and I walked around to see what needed fixing. This is his crew.
- The stones on this walkway all needed to be raised, as they had settled over the years.
- The Gravenstein apple espalier, which was planted a year ago, has adapted quite nicely.
- With warm and sunny days and one week later, the daffodil border is really beginning to pop.
- The garden beneath allee of linden is filling in with more blue each day.
- The colors of spring are just so happy!
- Walking past a boxwood, my eyes were drawn to this dried up ‘skeleton’ leaf.
- Shaun remembered that crocus had been planted in the grass and worked to untangle the little bulbs.
- A crocus bulb, which will be planted elsewhere
- The next day, Chhiring used the backhoe to dig the holes for the apple trees.
- So many roots from the locust trees!
- Ryan is staggering the placement of the cabbage plants to give them ample space to form large heads.
- This type of cabbage is Montovano, a nice green, dense head.
- The Sutton’s Harbinger peas planted last week are sprouting.
- Just joking! He was crouching down!
- Shaun standing in the finished hole
- Shaun likes to use Bio-tone Starter when planting trees. http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/biotone_overview.html
- Using the Hi-lo to position the apple tree
- Chains are hooked onto the root ball for placement adjustment.
- Filling in the hole
- You may recall when I showed photos of the erosion along the carriage roads last month.
- Bleached and parchment-like leaves of a beech tree are still clinging from last season.
- A macro of the feathery moss
- Moss-covered rocks fascinate me.
- A closeup of those buds
- Naturalized chionodoxa randomly growing in this hay field
- A macro of this pretty clear blue flower
- Ryan is getting ready to plant some of my very own seed collection that is now available at Home Depot.
- Just a couple of our 38 different varieties of herbs, vegetables, and flowers.