Planting peppers - here and there

Peppers

Well the weather has finally convinced me that it was going to stay warm enough to put out the pepper plants!  I put most of them in the city house raised beds.  I left one flat of 9 plants to replace any that don't make it (squirrels) and took the rest up to the farm.  I planted the 'farm' plants in the big garden.  I though that I took pictures of the raised beds, but I can't find them. No big deal though - they are just pepper plants!

Sweet potatoes

My sweet potatoes order from gurneys was in my mailbox when I got back from the farm last weekend.  They were in pretty rough shape.  I immediately put them in water in hopes of saving them.  These are "Beauregard" variety.  I can't remember if I ordered 10 or 12 - but I got 11!

Here they are soaking in water:

I planted these all in the paw-paw patch garden, as planned.  Fingers crossed!  They came with a note saying that they are tough and should survive even if dried or rotten.  We shall see.  I took up an old sweet potato that we have had laying around here for a year or two.  It had some sprouts so we figured we would try to plant.  I took the sprouts (or "slips", as I read they are called) and put them in water for the week.  I will plant them in the big garden next weekend.

Carpenter Bee Trap Status

We got one!  It was funny, when we got there this past Friday afternoon, the trap was empty - but by that evening there was a bee in it!

Blueberries

While it seems pretty dry up there to me, the blueberries are coming in fine I think!

Cherry Tree Damage (and Cherries)

Well, first off lets celebrate that we actually got to eat some of our sour cherries this year!  About 10 were ripe enough to eat.  The rest will probably be eaten by the birds.  Some had already shown bird damage.

These trees are in the front yard and there was no deer protection there, as you can see in the following pictures - we needed some!

Stripped clean of the tender new leaves!

Bugs don't bite off the end of the stems like that!  This is definitely deer damage!

So I finally put up the electric fence around the front cherry trees and connected it up to mom and dad's old 110V fencer.  I also found my deer pops and bait, so if they get their noses in there they will get a rude zap and hopefully learn not to mess with my cherries!

Dead Solar Fencer on Apple Orchard

I have been noticing some damage to the apple trees in the orchard and the new elderberry plants in the same fenced area but this isn't possible - that orchard is fenced and freshly baited... Well, I got to thinking that since that's a solar powered fencer (and the oldest of my fencers) that maybe the battery gave out.  I checked the next day and sure enough there wasn't enough zap to even get my attention!  So I took the fencer off of the blueberry patch and moved it to the orchard temporarily.  I plan on connecting the blueberry fence to the 110v fencer that also powers the cherry fence.  I have a new battery (SP3) on order in case I need to put a fencer somewhere else or make a quick change like i did this past weekend.

We saw a REAL BEAR!

Finally!  LOL  We were almost to our farm when a black bear goes running right across the road in front of us!  It wasn't a huge bear - I'm guessing about 1-2 yr old.  It was the first bear I have seen in the wild.  We have found bear tracks and scat on our property before, but I have never actually seen one until now!  Too cool!  It was way too fast and sudden to get a picture.

Corn

The sweet corn in the front patch needed weeding and when I was doing that I realized that quite a bit hadn't come up (or the crows had destroyed it).  In any case, I decided to plant more seeds in the missing areas.  We have had good rain this week, so I am hopeful that it might be up by next weekend.