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

The berry cascade

Peas and strawberries

Our berry cascade is getting ready to change its melody. Strawberries are still rolling in but...

Red raspberry

...we ate the first red raspberry Sunday.

Ripening black raspberries

Meanwhile, black raspberry bushes are absolutely loaded and the first few fruits are beginning to blush red.

Blueberry pH problem

The surviving blueberries are similarly laden with young fruits despite their winter transplant. One of the three is showing an iron deficiency due to high pH, though, so I consulted The Ultimate Guide to Soil and ordered some iron sulfate to speed up the pH transition. (Yes, I do look for answers in my own books. That's the point of writing them, right?) 

Hardy kiwi fruits

Meanwhile, in the kiwi bower, petals are beginning to drop...and plump ovaries are being left behind. I'm still trying not to count my kiwis before they ripen, but conditions are looking good for a first harvest this year sometime in October.



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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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I look to be about 2 weeks ahead of you on the kiwi fruit. I didn't have many male flowers, maybe five. I didn't think it would be enough so I hand pollinated as many as I could. Not many of the little fruits stayed on sadly, buy I do have a few
Comment by Brian Wed May 31 08:25:35 2017

This looks more like lack of manganese, don't you think? Let us consult 'The Intelligent Gardener' for once :)

Comment by Michael Wed May 31 15:05:02 2017





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