Week in Pictures 6/8/2014

This week's post in memory of my grandmother, Phyliss "Grammy" Mengle, who passed away this past week. She loved pink and purple so we'll start off the post with some roses.

Pink climbing roses for Grammy

A peculiar spot for a nest among the blackberries

A new trellis for our brambles.

Big fig alley. Hopefully all of these will have fresh figs by the end of summer!

An Asian persimmon in bloom. Beautiful leaves, nice plant form, and beautiful fall color. Oh, and delicious fruit that doesn't need spraying. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite trees in the orchard.

Goumi berries ripening. Carefree plant, early ripening, nitrogen fixer. Berries are decent but have a single large pit inside.

Blueberries sizing up for harvest later this month. Yum!

Lingonberry plant growing between our blueberries. This would seem to be about the southern extent of its range.

Male che tree planted right next to its female companion for, you know, obvious reasons.

The beginnings of a European pear espalier.

Flying dragon citrus (poncirus trifoliata) thriving after a very very bitterly cold winter.

A post would be remiss without a shot of our vegetable garden. Everything is coming on nicely and we'll soon have some summer-type vegetables available!

Late-planted tomatoes with drip tubing installed. Most are cherries so they should all bear pretty quickly!

Farm Visits - Treesearch Farms

At Threefold Farm, we've drawn a lot of our inspiration and ideas from visiting local farms as well as those we encounter on trips.  We'll make it a habit to blog about farms as we visit to share what we've learned.

A few weeks ago while visiting family down in Houston, Texas, I stopped by Treesearch Farms. Treesearch is a wholesale nursery with some fantastic display gardens and trial orchards. They sell all manner of plants but are known for having a fantastic and diverse selection of fruiting trees and bushes. I make it a habit to stop by any time I'm in town.

Heidi in one of her gardens

The owner of Treesearch, Heidi Sheesley, is a family friend and is well known in the Houston garden community for her work in trialing plants in the area. Sub-tropical Houston offers a unique climate: high humidity, long hot summers, low chill hours, and usually a couple frosts or freezes each winter.  

Happiness waits on the other side of these gates!

Heidi's gardens include some plants more typically associated with areas north of Houston: low-chill apples and peaches, raspberries, southern highbush blueberries, and some trial low-chill sweet cherries. She also stretches her zone by growing some fruits more associated with tropical areas (areas with minimal frosts and freezes): avocados, satsumas (one of the most hardy citrus), grapefruits, oranges, meyer lemons, limequats, and many more I'm failing to remember.  Plants that thrive in the heat and humidity as well as tolerate some freezes do well in the Houston area: figs, pomegranates, blackberries, jujubes, low-chill peaches, Asian persimmon, paw paw, plums.

An entrance to one of the display gardens

No Texas garden is complete without bluebonnets

What did I take away from the Treesearch visit to apply here at Threefold?

• Mulch, mulch, mulch - All beds and plantings are nicely and heavily mulched. Because there are so many planting beds, it would be seemingly cost-prohibitive to truck in loads and loads of mulch.  To remedy this, Treesearch uses leaves and pine straw to mulch their beds.  It makes an attractive natural mulch and solves the problem of what to do with all of those extra leaves in the fall. Once the leaves break down, they add nutrients back into the soil to help build it up.
• Mixed plantings - In many of their display gardens, Treesearch has mixed flowering plants in with fruiting plants.  This makes for attractive, food-producing gardens while working to attract beneficial insects and pollinators.  While this may not work in a production orchard setting, it works well in plantings of just a few fruit trees at a time.
• Drip Irrigation - Many of the potted plants for sale as well as many of the plantings are irrigated with drip irrigation.  We follow this practice at Threefold and want to make sure it's part of any future planting.  It saves so much time versus dragging a watering hose around and the regular, consistent watering helps the plants to grow tremendously. Plus, irrigating at the ground-level, right at the roots, saves water (versus spraying water around) and helps to cut down on disease pressure due to wet foliage.

It's surprising as well to see some of the plants that overlap between us (planting zone 6b/7a) and those of Treesearch (zone 9b many years, 8b some years).  We both grow Asian persimmons, Asian pears, paw paw, blackberries, jujubes, blueberries, peaches, plums, as well as figs and pomegranates (with some protection here). It's neat to see these plants surviving and thriving in some very different climates.

If you're ever in Houston, stop by Treesearch Farms and have a look around. Just make sure you have several hours to spare.  If you're like me, you could easily spend most of the day here.

So many beautiful flowers

Good lookin' citrus trees in raised beds

Citrus in bloom. I'm not sure anything smells better.

Thornless blackberries in bloom

Trifoliate orange (poncirus trifoliata), also called wild orange. Great rootstock for citrus, horrible for eating (don't even try). Also known for awful thorns. We grow a variety of this called "flying dragon" in our orchard for its ornamental value.

Pomegranate blossoms, just beautiful. Even if mine never fruit I hope I get to enjoy the blossoms.

Asian persimmon blossom. Beautiful trees, great fall color and tasty fruit. Plus, it's relatively pest-free.

So what’s it like to milk a goat??

There were so many analogies that popped into my head as I considered this question. My experience thus far is that milking a goat is like trying to collect an egg from a chicken while it’s flying. At least that’s what day one and two were like. I am now a one week old goat milker, therefore a seasoned professional. Let me share my week with you.

Last Friday night, we separated Bramble from her babies. I was sure to close all the windows for fear of the neighbors calling animal control on us. In the morning, I took Bramble out, put her on her milk stand, secured her head in the stanchion (aka head holder), and put food in her bucket. I then took baby wipes and thoroughly wiped her teats and my hands. I then placed my four cup, heavy Pyrex bowl under her and began to pull down on her teats.

Now Bramble hasn't been milked in probably four months because two months before she had her babies, her milk dried up so her body could prepare for birth. The babies were born two months ago and they have been exclusively nursing since then. Now let me tell you, I think I have the manners of a saint when I milk her compared to her babies, who go to town mercilessly on her and make me wince in pain as I reflect on my own breastfeeding days. Apparently Bramble is not used to my delicate manner.

Our first couple of days were a dance. She would dance, I would attempt to milk. She would put her foot in the bowl, I would curse and throw it out - the end. After two days of this dance and discouragement, I called her former owners. It turns out I was doing almost everything right, phew! What I needed to do better was hold her down. I didn't read anything about that when preparing to own my own dairy animal. I missed the, “and then you shove your goat against the wall with all of your weight, use one hand to block hooves and the other to milk” part.

Learning this new technique reinvigorated me this morning, it gave me new hope. The whole time I thought I wasn't being fast enough, so she’s getting mad and dancing. No, she was just abusing me! Well, with my renewed patience, I took my sweet time and got two cups of milk! She did her dance, I sang to her, we did the back and forth, and I WON :). You would be surprised at the beautiful songs I have composed to try to calm her, “You are my Milk Goat, My Only Milk Goat” and “This Little Goat of Mine.” I am truly a spectacle to behold.

Soon, her babies will not nurse anymore, they will be weaned. Then I will get to have her milk in the morning and at night, approximately four cups a day. This is just enough to keep up with our 2-3 gallon milk consumption in the house. I do hope to make cheese and other wonderful things with the milk too, but for now, I will settle for milk without hooves in it. The end.