Sunday, March 17, 2013

The snow is melting and I am already tilling the soil!

This is the North side of the house and it has the most snow.  Not the side of the house that is getting tilled right now.

It's kinda pretty when it's not covering the sidewalk. 
The area around the peach tree no longer has snow but it is very wet still.  Good thing I wore my Sloggers today! I really should have taken a photo of my muddy boots.

Today I finally had the guts to chop down the center branch.  When pruning peach trees you want a main North branch, South branch, East branch, and west branch.  Opening up the center of the tree makes for better fruit because the sun can get to it. So the center branch had to go.  I also cut away any branches headed straight to the ground and trimmed the end of a few of the branches so the energy would go into making bigger branches that can support the weight.  I still may need to cut a few more branches but I don't want to stress the tree too much after that big cut.

Here's the pile of peach tree branches.  


You can see that the tree is really leaning north.  We have a lot of wind around here.  I even tilted the tree to the south when I planted it.  I may need to add a little support this year. I can't wait to see it bloom!

And the flowerbed in front of the steps needs some major cleaning up too.  I want to add a couple more Box Woods up here.  And clean up the grass, edge and such.  I may put down river rock instead of mulch. The color of the river rock really looks good next to the house.  
I also learned something interesting about mulch.  If you use wood chips, don't use them within 18" of the house. Wood chips are a combustible material. I hadn't thought of that. We live in the high mountain desert and there are a lot of fires every year.  It's a good precaution to take. 





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