No more worms

I have never sprayed a fruit tree with a pesticide before, but a few weeks ago I was in the Grange Coop where I was told how to do it. I bought an organic spray called Monterey Garden Insect Spray with spinosad in it. The best time to give a tree its first spray of the season is when the blossoms are 90% gone. I may have missed the ideal time by a few days. I would say the blossoms are 97% gone, but today was the first chance I had to do i,t so I did it. At first I tried to used the pump sprayer. Ha! I got more spray on me and the thing was difficult to use. I ended up pouring the spray into a spray bottle and doing the job with it. I had to use a ladder to reach the upper part of the tree. I used about 3/4 of a gallon of spray for four trees. If the spray works, we should have a good crop of apples this fall. The two Golden Delicious apple trees in the yard are loaded. They are the ones I did the most though job pruning. The two Red Delicious trees in the garden have fewer but they do have some apples forming. The Gravenstein apple tree has no apples forming. I gave it a quick mist but left it mostly untreated. I am suppose to spray the trees 5 more times before harvest. I hope I remember to do so. It will be the first time to grow apples without sharing them with the worms.

Let Us Harvest

I am eating my second harvest of lettuce. I can not post a picture of these beautiful greens because I can not find my camera. I thinned the thickly sprouted rows of Super Gourmet Salad Mix by Territorial Seed Company. The lettuce plants are big enough to make a colorful bouquet of green and purplish red leaves. There are enough lettuce starts to provide me with baby greens every day for the next couple of weeks.

Only the strong survive

I remember how excited I was when the seeds sprouted in the peat pots, but when I saw how thin and scraggly they grew, I feared they would not fare well when transplanted. Indeed, that was the case. The chard transplants I planted last Saturday in the garden are holding on by their toenails. The Nasturtium starts in the garden area are all but dead.

The combination of cold nights and blaring sun were too much for these delicate starts. The ones I transplanted in the gooseberry pot look better and may survive and the few I transplanted in the flowerbed by the house will most likely survive, though all are still quite fragile and subject to perishing if severe weather manifests itself.
The weather is no problem this week-end. It has been a dreary week-end with heavy rain. I found a few dry minutes to run a shovel over the garden and remove a few weeds, but for the most part I stayed in a warm, dry house and let the earth rejoice in the wetness. This weather may be the best chance for the remaining transplants to survive.
I think the peas are dancing.