Pruning the peach tree

4 weeks ago about 250 wards (a ward is a congregation of about 350 people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in our area were asked to fast and pray for moisture. Just a little info, congregations are divided up geographically.  Since then our dry winter has changed dramatically. 

The weather has been amazing the past 4 weeks in the valley. We've had a few nice snow storms and a lot of rain. Most of the snow has been in the mountains which makes for some epic ski days which we have enjoyed as a family. Some may call it a coincidence but as we looked at the doplar weather report the storms were directly over these 250 wards. The Lord was quick to hear our cries. I wonder if it has something to do with the increase in temple attendance and the 20,000 person increase in people serving full time missions. Snow pack levels went from 26% to over 100% in the mountains in just 3 weeks. I am so grateful, and I'm sure my garden will be grateful too.

Today we finally had a little sun and it was warmer too. So I got out my new fleece Jacket. I bought it yesterday at Kohls. You can see from the price tag it was marked down to $9. Then I used a coupon in addition. My very inexpensive fleece Jacket was the perfect thing to keep me warm on the shady side of the house. If you need a few warm items for Spring (and since it's suddenly the end of February, fall really isn't that far away), check out the clearance rack at Kohls.

I grabbed my pruners and my favorite pair of garden gloves and headed out front to the peach tree. You should never cut more than 1/3 of the tree or it will become stressed and die. But at the same time, you don't want crowded branches and peaches that can't get any sun. I always have a hard time cutting them back but I do it and feel better once I can distract myself by digging in the dirt.

I did save a few branches for snow men next winter.  And I trimmed a few branches so I can use them as natural supports for my pepper plants and such.

I'm looking forward to seeing the apple and peach trees bloom, and as always we are looking forward to the fruit.

Garden Harvest and getting there...

These are some of the Cherokee Purple I've harvested.  They are delicious and are my second favorite for flavor and the plant produces a lot of tomatoes that are especially large.  This one weighed 1.2 lbs and the one to the right that you can sort of see was 1 lb.

I took photos tonight because it's Sunday and I don't work in my garden on Sunday.  I did walk around and look at it. 

Bell Peppers starting to get big.

 Cayenne Peppers

Cherokee Purple on the vine - splitting because I changed the water schedule again.

 Early Elberta peach tree

Small Early Girls

 Jalapeno

Melon

Big Daddy onions drying

Red Beef Steak

 My garden tonight

 Spirit Bush Pumpkin

Flowers and fruit trees

My rose columbine is probably my favorite flower.  It is compact for a columbine.  And there are plenty of flowers in this beautiful mauve color. Mauve. Do people even use that word anymore?  I just remember towels and wallpaper with mauve on it in the 80's.

My chives handled the transplant okay and the blooms are so pretty.  I might have to grow more of it and add it to other parts of my garden.  There is plenty of room!

Yellow columbine

A few tulips and purple alliums are hanging on.  

And I have one last daffodil. Must be the coldest part of the yard.

Globe Master allium - smaller than last year. hmmm 

The purple columbine is taking off.  I love it. 

And my little helped in the garden.  He is watering the Braeburn Apple tree.

And then the Gala Apple Tree.

Yesterday I shared a photo from the South East corner of my lot where my 16x40 foot garden is.  This photo is from the South West corner of the lot. 

And the peach tree is looking good.  I'm going to have to cut a bunch of branches off the top and the left side next spring.  I just didn't want to kill it. And as you can see, I must have done just the right amount of pruning. I am going to add some bushes, perennials, and the river rock around this tree. 

You know one of the things that has impressed me with this valley coming from the view that I grew up in a military home, is that most people here have fruit trees, grape vines, and vegetable gardens.  Those who don't grow a few veggies mixed in with their flower beds.  But for the most part people here grow and store a lot of their own food.  It's been a great lesson on PROVIDENT LIVING.

Trees in my yard

Aren't these flowers gorgeous? And they smell amazing.  I love having 3 trees in my side yard that bloom.  Hopefully we'll be able to add a few more around the driveway for next year. 

This is an Improved Canadian Choke Cherry and it doesn't fruit.

And here's our baby Beek, Kiwi.  I had him outside and thought the tree made a gorgeous background. Ignore my hand - but I don't have a portable perch other than myself. 

Peach wood is toxic to parrots so I didn't let him sit on it.  Aren't the blossoms beautiful?  This is what we had last year. This peach tree was bare root 4 years ago.

Here's the peach tree as it was starting to bud.

 And another view of a branch from the Choke Cherry.

Here it was a week ago just before the blooms started to appear.

And here is the new Braeburn Apple tree.  I picked this bare root tree because I like the idea of apple that you can store in the fruit room for up to 3 months.  It will give me the chance to recover from canning tomatoes before I go ahead and make apple pie filling, apple butter, and apple sauce. It'll be a few years but it this time I actually fenced around the baby apple trees so that the deer don't kill them again.

You can see both fences here.  I had corn in this spot last year.   

And here you can see the leaves are starting to show up - which reminds me, I need to add another dose of rooting hormone.

And this one is the Gala Apple.