The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Slowing down runaway pear leaves

New pear leavesMy movie-star neighbor kept his grafted pears over the winter in pots in an unheated basement.  However, the bit of heat from the house was enough to prompt them to break open their buds before I brought my two home. 

Afraid that nippy spring weather would hurt the tender buds, I put them in the mostly-unheated end of the trailer, but a week later the buds were yet more unfurled.  I figured there was no stopping the plants' awakening, so I might as well put them in the ground where cool temperatures would at least slow them down. 

Since our main pears have also started to break their buds open (although not in as extreme a fashion), I figured our new pears would probably survive outdoors.  And, sure enough, I don't see any frost-burn even after a frigid night (and a day of flurries).

I plan to keep our little pearlets in our new nursery row for a year, then plant them into the pasture prepared by hog snouts this summer.  Pears are slow to bear, but the taste of my neighbor's fruit is enough to carry me through dreaming about the harvest of 2019.

Our chicken waterer keeps hens healthy so they lay more eggs.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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