Over a dozen people attended yesterday's workshop to hear Marji Illingworth (North Pole Peonies) share her recommendations for the best peony varieties to plant in the flower garden and how to care for them. We followed this with a discussion on how to raise seedlings for the summer garden. As usual, we ran out of time, so next year we will probably rent the facility for the day and throw in a few more presentations per requests from this year's attendees.
It looks like we will start selling plants May 23 and continue selling on Saturdays only for four weekends.
This week we got a taste of breakup with afternoon temperatures in the lower 40s. We may be walking in and out beginning next weekend. This is a little early, but not much. If breakup goes fairly quickly, we will have no trouble getting the plants out for the plant sale in May.
We ordered quite a few (hundreds) of grape cuttings this year and are busy callusing them and potting them up. We also decided to delve into growing figs, but those may take some serious effort to get to produce anything. Having had fresh figs before, I am sure the effort will be well worth it! Mail order plants will start arriving late next month. Better get some pots ready!
Not much in the way of pictures lately, but here is one from earlier this month when I was digging out of a few feet of new snow. There is a drift along the right side of the road. The depression toward the left of center is from snowmachiners and dog mushing teams staying away from the drift. As we have cleared more and more trees, we have noticed lots of drifting. Looks like snow fences will need to be erected to keep the drifts out of the road.
The sun is out and it is time to get to work.
