Tag: digging

Nectarine Tree!!

So I’ve been searching around for a nectarine tree for the past few weeks and haven’t been having much luck despite the fact that numerous articles online mention how well nectarines grow here. One of my best friends (Winx) was at a garden center near where she lives in Portland and texted me that they had a couple of nectarine trees! Since Kels and I were off today, we decided to drive on down and see about getting one ^_^

We found one there and it was even a fairly decent breed. While Fantasia Nectarines can be affected by Peach Leaf Curl (which is fairly common up here) – it sounds like there’s some fairly easy things we can do to help protect the tree.

The type of Nectarine Tree we got

Getting the tree into the car did pose a slight issue, though – as it was quite large but we managed to do it without any major incidents.

When we got home, I had to dig quite a large hole. It needed to be at least 2 feet in diameter and far enough down that the top of the root bulb would sit flush with the soil. Fortunately, I finally decided to order me a wheelbarrow type of thing and man did it help! Made it so we didn’t have this giant pile of dirt we had to pick up off the yard.

The pile of dirt + wheelbarrow + nectarine tree + Kels’ legs

After the hole was dug, we mixed some native soil with our good potting mix and some fertilizer and put that around the root bulb. We also added an inch or two of fertilizer on top of that and made sure it curved up around the edges to make a nice pit for some water

Aside from the nectarine tree, we also got an Azalea bush and planted it before realizing that they are toxic to dogs so we’re gonna have to move it to the front yard instead. Whoops ^^;;

The evil Azalea bush

While I’m posting, might as well give an update on the raised beds and other plants. Everything appears to be coming along well! Still need to clean up that lettuce <__<;;;

Strawberry bed with the pretty flowers blooming 😀
Shhhh just pretend you don’t see the lettuce
The lavender seems to be doing fine
One of the blueberry bushes – look how many of the flowers we’ve had to pluck off so far!

Anyway that it’s for the the week. Things are still going well here ^_^ – hope all of you had a great week and thanks for reading!

Diggin’ Holes and Plantin’ Blueberries

Everything hurts. Did you know digging holes is a lot of work? I guess let me back up a bit and talk through the day. So this morning we were like ok let’s plant the blueberry bushes since we finally got the OK from the utility places that we can dig in our backyard without issue. Kels wanted a third plant and we needed to get some soil amendment to help increase the acidity of the soil so we left for the gardening store.

On top of getting a third blueberry bush and the soil stuff, we also got some more potting soil, a pot, and four flower type things that Kels will prolly write about. Loaded everything up and came home.

We originally were thinking about putting the blueberry bushes along the back of our yard so I dug a hole and then we were like hmm actually this is a bit shady so maybe we should move them. So now we have this random hole in the back of our backyard cause I was too lazy to do anything about it but maybe we’ll plant something there later <__<;

Went to the area near our raised beds and proceeded to dig and dig and dig.

Hole #1 for the Blueberry bush

With all the soil out, we mixed in this planting mix at a roughly 50 / 50 ratio with the native soil.

Planting mix
A different angle – you can see the soil to the left and the grass above (we put the grass soil elsewhere)

After we mixed up the soil and the mix, we put the plant it (after making sure to loosen up the roots). We then covered it all in mulch being careful to not get the mulch too close to the base of the plant.

Blueberry bush all planted

Repeated this step three more times (oh my goodness my back) and we ended up with this (Apologies for the not so great photo).

All three plants in a row

While I was doing this, Kels put in some of her flowers near the strawberries.

Bed 1 after 1 week and with the new flowers put in

The last thing for the day was potting our new lavender plant and placing it near the raised beds. Hopefully this plant will flower and help attract bees to the nearby plants.

Lavender plant

And that’s all for the day! Looking forward to not having as much work to do in the upcoming weeks. Watering is nice and chill. Although I think we may need to rip off the flowers on the blueberry plants to encourage growth for the following years (and encourage it to not produce berries this year). More investigation is needed.