More wind and rain

Winds gusting over 30 mph blew through the farm today, collapsing most of our grape house and damaging some of our blackberries.  The collapsed hoop house over the grapes (we were hoping that there wouldn't be a repeat of May 31st) broke canes off of several vines, but others were spared.  Now we have to get the plastic (which has many holes in it now) back over them before the leaves sunburn.  Cloudy skies are forecast - and more rain - for the next few days, so we have a little time to repair the hoop house.  Unfortunately, the collapse also broke off one of our two tomato plants, so we will definitely be short on tomatoes this year.  The winds blew over several potted bushes and trees, swept a tray of artichoke seedlings off the tractor hood, and appear to have damaged primocanes and flowering laterals on several blackberries.  Wild Treasure looks to have weathered the storm well, however, with no apparent damage.  Gotta love that variety!  Once the wind dies down (it's still going pretty good even at this hour) and the sun comes out, we will see how much damage was done to the blackberry patch.  As for the raspberries, thank goodness I trellised the Cumberland black raspberries.  They and the rest of the raspberries look fine.
  Things like the weather, which one cannot control, require perseverance and deep respect for nature.  Times like these remind me that in Alaska just about anything is possible at any time of the year and both people and plants need to be robust to survive - and not just the cold!

Fragrant flowers to come next week and then produce!

The first flowers have appeared on lavender and Mock Orange should flower soon!  These two will add some fragrance to the plethora of flowers that are now blooming around the farm.  Other plants in bloom include strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, cherries (almost done), potentillas, lilacs (Ms. Canada - Ms. Kim is a few weeks away), bleeding heart, pansies and ground covers.  Anthony Waterer spirea looks to be a ways away.  Peonies will start any day now, though there will only be a few.
  We did some maintenance on the bulldozer today in preparation for moving trees into a pile.  With trees out of the way, land clearing should go a little faster.  Of course, that assumes that we don't get 3.84 inches of rain in 40 hours again!  The good news is the warm weather now is drying everything out.  If the weather holds we will be clearing some more land soon.  Maybe (and that is a big maybe) by this time next year we will be open for tours.
  Produce sales will likely start in two weeks, with spinach, lettuce, tomatoes and whatever fruit is ripe.  There will be raspberries most of August and September.  Blackberries should be ready beginning late August.  We will post the hours of our produce sales when the time comes.

How sweet it . . . will be!!

The blackberries are flowering! The top pic is of a Tayberry (actually a blackberry/raspberry cross) and opened on June 24th.  The lower pic is of Siskiyou (a true blackberry) and was taken tonight.  Siskiyou started to open this flower on the 24th but the next three days were rainy and cool (50s) and the bud sat there and waited until the beautiful day we had today.  Numerous buds are beginning to open on Siskiyou, so it looks like we will have blackberries to at least sample.  I may have to fight for them, as numerous people I know want to taste their first "Grown in Alaska" blackberry.  Most are seriously skeptical at this point.  Wild Treasure is also working on opening buds, but none are open yet.  And, while Siskiyou (above) has the earliest flowers, most of its laterals only have one to three buds on them.  More will emerge, but will be quite late to flower.  Wild Treasure, on the other hand, has 5 to 7 buds on each lateral already.  Unfortunately, not much of the canes on Wild Treasure survived the winter - say 15%.  Looks like it is not any hardier than Marion, but read on for a plan.
  I unintentionally ran an experiment this winter when I left a layer of floating row cover over a cane of Marion.  I laid the material over the Marionberry  plant last fall that had flowered and produced berries. I was hoping to add a little heat and ripen the berries before the first hard frost (blackberries don't like frost).  It didn't work and I forgot about the floating row cover.  This spring, the snow melted and the material was still there.  I picked it up and the portion of a primocane that was under the material was nice and green.  As things warmed up, this 4-ft section of cane was the only one that survived with nearly 100% bud survival.  So, I have 4 ft of Marion that is growing vigorously and has flower buds on it.  I'm not sure when they will open, but it will definitely need to be earlier than they did last year (the end of July) if I want some (really tasty) Marionberries.  If you have never tasted Marionberries, you must! These are one of the most delicious berries I think I have ever tasted (up there with Regent serviceberries and black raspberries).  You can get Marionberry jelly at most stores, I think.  This is different from typical "blackberry" jelly.  Anyway, what I found was that by providing some pre-snowfall protection, Marion (hardy to only zone 7) was able to survive much better during the winter.  Granted, it was not a terribly cold winter (at only -24F), but I think it is primarily the cold before the snow accumulates (and possibly after snowmelt) that causes most of the damage.  Such an approach will probably work for other, not-so-hardy varieties (like Wild Treasure and Siskiyou), too.  I also had numerous Black Diamond blackberry plants still in 4-inch pots with entire canes that survived the winter.  This variety is actually a bit hardier that most other trailing blackberries, but it appears to also be a bit later to flower and ripen.  To be fair, Black Diamond and Wild Treasure appear to need water very early in the spring/summer to stimulate growth.  They did nothing until I watered them a few times, whereas Siskiyou just took off May 1st.  Speaking of Siskiyou, I have three plants and each of them already has 5 to 7 primocanes growing for next year (this year's production is coming from three canes on each plant, of which a whole 2 to 3 ft of each cane survived).
  As for black raspberries, the Cumberlands are loaded with flowers! A couple dozen laterals on each plant, 8 or so flower buds on each lateral, and 6 plants.  They haven't flowered yet, but in the past they have begun ripening about August 7th and continued into September.  May have to make a small batch of black raspberry jam to tide me over the winter!
  Oh, and there are the usual red and yellow raspberries with loads of flowers.  Fall Gold looks especially productive this year.
  I was surprised to see many of my Regent serviceberry plants that I thought I had lost the winter before last start leafing out this year.  They don't look great, but I think they are recovering from my leaving them in pots unprotected over a pretty cold winter.  Last year many of these plants never did anything - no flowers, no leaves, nothing.  So, it is amazing to me to see many of them leafing out.
  With so many berries available this year we are considering purchasing a small freezer.  Being off the grid, this will be a very small freezer as the (larger) super efficient ones cost a lot.  However, even a small one will hold many berries that can be turned into jelly or who knows what.  Maybe we will be able to sell jelly next year starting during the plant sale.  Well, unless we sell them all fresh.
  In terms of leafy greens, we've been a bit preoccupied with other things around here, but we do have some spinach and lettuce coming along nicely - and a few tomatoes.  Not enough to sell yet, though.  And, while we intended to use the grape house (hoop house) for tomatoes and cucumbers, it appears that the way it is set up does not provide sufficient heat for cucumbers. So, we may not have any - who said that?  We'll get 'em goin.
  A quick update on the lot clearing task.  My neighbor brought his bulldozer up and has actually cleared about an acre.  Then we had 3.5 inches of rain and it turned to mud.  Today was the first day without rain that was warm enough to start drying things out.  We hope to get another 2 acres cleared before fall - maybe more.  We have so much planting to do - 1600 peonies, over 100 blackberries, 60 or so raspberries and numerous (read a few hundred) miscellaneous other plants that will either be planted or put in the ground pot-and-all to be planted next summer.
  Enough rambling.  I'll leave you with a recent "sunset".  You should know that the picture is looking due south (the sun set behind me).  In late June, the sun sets almost due north and is only below the horizon for 3 hours or so and just barely below the horizon at that.  It often continues to illuminate the clouds over my house for those three hours.  Hence, the phrase "midnight sun."  Note the time on the picture - this was taken halfway between sunset and sunrise - and no flash was needed.  Some plants love the continuous light (lettuce, cabbage) and some hate it (spinach). We make due with blackout curtains and aluminum foil on the windows. (The white structure is the grape house.)

Plant Sale - Final Day

The final day of our plant sale is this Saturday, June 7th, from 10am to 7pm or until everything is sold.  The variety list several posts below was updated tonight to show what we have.  In most cases we have just a few of each variety, except for sunflowers, which we have 15-3" pots of the Mammoths and about the same number of dwarfs.  If you are looking for something tall or not so tall to fill a space, these would work great!

Call ahead if you don't live close by to see if we still have what you are looking for: 322-7549

What's blooming?

Walking around the farm today, I took some pics of a few things that are flowering or will in the next few days. The top is a Blue Belle honeyberry, which first started to flower last weekend (May 25th). The second is a Wilder red currant.  They usually ripen in mid-September.  And the bottom pic is of my oldest Adirondack Gold "Apricot", though many say it is a plum instead.  This has been a very hardy plant for me.

I also found a few flower buds just beginning to show on a few plants that overwintered, including Leon Millot grape, Tayberry, and Siskiyou blackberry.  The top is the very small bud on a Siskiyou and the second is on a Tayberry.  In each pic, the bud is in the center just above my finger nail among the leaves.

Looks like we'll have a few tasty berries besides raspberries to savor this summer!!!  Oh, and as usual we are seeing flower buds on our serviceberries that will open in a week or two.  We are starting to put together a "What's blooming?" page on our website that will track what is currently flowering - flowers and fruits.

  It's been a while since I posted a pic of the pups, so here is one of them chewing on rawhides.  Have to say, they get along pretty well!  They swap about every five minutes, or when Duke gets tired of his.

Good night, everyone.

Ups and downs & Sale date correction = June 7th!

  Today, our Metolius blackberries arrived in the mail.  They ripen very early with Obsidian, which has failed completely for the second year in a row.  From what we've read, Metolius is more winter hardy than Obsidian or Marionberry.  We are looking forward to testing it this next winter.
  Unfortunately, 30-40 mph winds also arrived today, collapsing our hoop house over the grapes and breaking off young shoots, including one that had two flower clusters on it.  We are working on a design that will be sturdy enough for Interior Alaska weather, but be fairly inexpensive (I know, a lot to ask).  We will rebuild it tomorrow and get the plastic back up before the grape leaves get sun scorched.
  Also, today added a third very successful day to this year's plant sale.  A huge thanks to everyone who has come out to support us - from North Pole to Nenana and everywhere in between!  We have a limited number of plants remaining (mostly sunflowers (giant and dwarf), lobelia and a few each of early girl tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower.  We'll post a more detailed list prior to our last day, June 7th. Just realized that we posted the wrong date on the website and probably other places!  Our last day will be next Saturday, the 7th.

Plant Sale

Listed below is an availability list of what we have left to sell.  There are lots of lettuce and spinach plants available this weekend if you are looking for some green leafy veggies to plant.  We also still have several broccoli and cauliflower seedlings available.  Other than nasturtiums and sunflowers, we have limited numbers of most other seedlings.

Hours will be 10am to 7pm, Saturday May 31st.  We will update the variety list again prior to next weekend.