Summertime blues, 2019

This summer has been challenging at best and depressing at worst. A cold, wet spring that left us in mud until late June led into a July and now August with barely an inch of rain for 6+ weeks.

No cash crop was planted this year. No sweetcorn, popcorn, beans... Our berries were in standing water until mid June. No strawberries, honeyberries, blueberries...

With mid July bringing us Japanese beetles as they invaded with the result of:

Our aronia berries were already taking a hit because of the wet spring but this beetle attack has reduced our yield to about a third of last year's production. (I made a very dry wine from the aronias last year.) We may not have enough for our use, let alone any to sell at market.

Apple and nectarine trees did not escape the beetle wrath.We are looking at losing several trees, not just this year's crop.


We do have some good news, our pawpaw trees are growing well although still immature. Our surviving chestnut trees are also coming along nicely. We have several oak varieties that squirrels have conveniently planted for us and I look forward to relocating them next spring. So it isn't all bad news.

Pawpaws:

As we've seen this year, nature has its own way of working. We can be blessed or cursed and the only thing we can do is to keep working towards our goals. Learn our lessons, adapt to change and keep working. Success will come our way.

Replacements - Pawpaws

We planted 9 pawpaws last fall and we were hoping the harsh winter did not do them in. We were hopeful but cautious since we potted another 12 or so at the homestead and buried them in the garden. I gave up hope this past weekend and nearly dug them all up but we found one of the nine survived. The root structures were pretty much dead.

Not a good survival rate, 1 in 9.

We planted 6 pawpaws over the past couple of weekends as replacements and have two left to transplant. We traded a couple of them to neighbors and lost some to the winter.

Three more chestnuts have been transplanted this week as well.

Our tree count is going up slowly but more could be planted if the weather cooperated. Only 1/10th of an inch of rain during May and we are regularly hauling water to this year's plantings already.

This could be our third season dry season and our concern is growing faster than the wild parsnip on the acreage.

Fall Planting Days

Two days of planting our inaugural Aronia berries.

After getting rained out* on Saturday, we went back at it Sunday to finish up. Using an antique post hole digger, I was able to dig 43 12-15 inch holes in about 90 minutes (33 holes on Saturday). It was recommended to us to plant at 2 feet apart but I was planting at about 30 inches. This was because the mark on my digger was at 25" and I used the handle to sight the row in and then rolled the digger up and started my first cut.

Getting soaked on Saturday and enjoying a cloud-free day on Sunday, the Mrs and youngest son joined me and we were able to get our two flats of aronia plants in the ground and a woven wire fence put up on both sides to hinder the deer. It's reported that deer won't eat the plants but they pull them out of the ground.

Some ground felt to keep the weeds down and some wet straw for cover.

*"Rained out" - that's the first time I've used that phrase in over two years.

One of 76:

Our finished row:

I then added 3 more pawpaw trees for a total of 9 after planting 6 the week before. 

Pawpaw trees need shade for the first year or two of their lives or they will burn up. I could have purchased tree tubes but I opted to use burlap since I have to build cages to keep deer under check. I also surrounded the seedling with hardware cloth to keep rabbits and mice away. To top the cage off, I used some old barbed wire to aggravate deer if they stick their noses in. We will probably need to raise the shade up next summer.

 Pawpaw in a burlap and wire cage:

We added a light 10-10-10 commercial fertilizer in each of the holes, both berries and pawpaws.

We picked up the plants from a local grower during a demo field day last week. I've been researching the aronia berry for awhile now but I got my first taste during the field day. A sweetener is recommended. No sugar needed for the pawpaws, though. With a taste that is a mix of banana and mango, it was also our first experience with the fruit and the Mrs. insisted we get a few trees.

Learn more about Aronia berries with the common name of Black Chokeberry.

More information about the Pawpaw.