And now it's summer
Apr. 23rd, 2023 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI have two rituals that clearly mark the turning from winterish season to summerish season: setting the thermostat to "off" and doing the walkdown of the irrigation system. I did both of those today.
I have two (actually three) independent irrigation systems. The front yard (excepting the citrus grove) is on one system with 6 circuits. For that one, the walkdown is mostly a matter of making sure none of the risers have gotten broken (e.g., by tripping over them) or are trapped by vegetation, or for the <360 sprayers, have gotten twisted out of their coverage zones. The only fiddly bits are the lines coming off one of the risers that branch out to cover the two planter boxes and the gooseberry bushes. Those need to have the nozzles checked and maybe get re-staked into position.
The backyard hard-piped system has 3 circuits. One covers the formal herb garden and--in theory--the vegetable beds. But it doesn't really have enough pressure to do the veg beds, so I have a separate oscillating sprinkler on a hose with a battery-powered timer that covers the veg. One circuit covers the citrus grove and the strawberry beds, which I kept telling my contractor was a bad idea because the citrus grove wants periodic long soaking but the strawberries want daily watering. He wasn't always very good at listening, and that was one of the cases where I thought we'd talked it out and then at the end of the job I found out he'd done it his way after all. Sigh. The third circuit covers the fruit trees, which does allow for the periodic long soaking that works best.
Not much maintenance needed this year: a handful of micro-spray nozzles needed replacing, but no chewed up tubing this time.
Doing the walkdown also means checking out various plants that I don't always look at closely in off season. The Oro Blanco grapefruit--after presenting me with its first (and lonely) fruit last year, is blooming all over the place this year. Either it simply decided it was ready to fruit (as signalled by last year's crop) or it's really really happy about all the rain. Or both. All the apple trees are flowering madly. As usual, the multiple-graft pear shows no signs of flowering at all. You win some, you lose some. That tree grows ok, but hasn't ever produced anything. Some years I do get a few flowers, but it's gone beyond a question of "let it settle in."
I picked the first strawberries of the season--three tiny Alpines, which are always the earliest. My to-do list still includes transplanting strawberries out of the beds surrounding the herb garden and into the dedicated strawberry beds. This probably means I'll put the transplants off fruiting much this year, but all in all they'll be happier.
It looks like the artichokes will present me with one dinner's worth per week for the duration. I'm picking them at about tennis ball sized because they're a bit of an aphid magnet which gets nasty if I wait for the buds to open up much.
I have two (actually three) independent irrigation systems. The front yard (excepting the citrus grove) is on one system with 6 circuits. For that one, the walkdown is mostly a matter of making sure none of the risers have gotten broken (e.g., by tripping over them) or are trapped by vegetation, or for the <360 sprayers, have gotten twisted out of their coverage zones. The only fiddly bits are the lines coming off one of the risers that branch out to cover the two planter boxes and the gooseberry bushes. Those need to have the nozzles checked and maybe get re-staked into position.
The backyard hard-piped system has 3 circuits. One covers the formal herb garden and--in theory--the vegetable beds. But it doesn't really have enough pressure to do the veg beds, so I have a separate oscillating sprinkler on a hose with a battery-powered timer that covers the veg. One circuit covers the citrus grove and the strawberry beds, which I kept telling my contractor was a bad idea because the citrus grove wants periodic long soaking but the strawberries want daily watering. He wasn't always very good at listening, and that was one of the cases where I thought we'd talked it out and then at the end of the job I found out he'd done it his way after all. Sigh. The third circuit covers the fruit trees, which does allow for the periodic long soaking that works best.
Not much maintenance needed this year: a handful of micro-spray nozzles needed replacing, but no chewed up tubing this time.
Doing the walkdown also means checking out various plants that I don't always look at closely in off season. The Oro Blanco grapefruit--after presenting me with its first (and lonely) fruit last year, is blooming all over the place this year. Either it simply decided it was ready to fruit (as signalled by last year's crop) or it's really really happy about all the rain. Or both. All the apple trees are flowering madly. As usual, the multiple-graft pear shows no signs of flowering at all. You win some, you lose some. That tree grows ok, but hasn't ever produced anything. Some years I do get a few flowers, but it's gone beyond a question of "let it settle in."
I picked the first strawberries of the season--three tiny Alpines, which are always the earliest. My to-do list still includes transplanting strawberries out of the beds surrounding the herb garden and into the dedicated strawberry beds. This probably means I'll put the transplants off fruiting much this year, but all in all they'll be happier.
It looks like the artichokes will present me with one dinner's worth per week for the duration. I'm picking them at about tennis ball sized because they're a bit of an aphid magnet which gets nasty if I wait for the buds to open up much.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-24 07:38 am (UTC)