Welcome rain
Reminder: it’s not too late to sign up for our fruit CSA.
Another cold front moved across western Colorado yesterday afternoon on the familiar spring winds. From the tractor seat I watched as storm cells skirted around us bringing rain across the valley to the Black Canyon area and up-valley to Paonia. I managed to finish cultivating the east half of Apple Wedge Vineyard in the waning daylight and retreated indoors to warm up. Boy, is that a change! Recently we’ve been grateful for the cooler early evening hours after days reaching into the low 90s. Rain began here about bed time. This morning is still grey and cool and damp.
I’m pleased to report that the fruit all looks good. The peaches and apples have “set” what appears to be a good crop and we’ll be hand-thinning in the not-too-distant-future. Max and Matt are pruning the Pinot Noir grapes which Bennett declares to “look good.” We’re enjoying profuse salads from the kitchen garden and rhubarb crisps, crunches, and cobblers. Aaron and Matt have big plans for the gardens this year and can often be seen planting and hoeing by the light of their headlamps.
The insects are back, of course. Lady bugs can be seen feeding on aphid larvae on the flowering salsify. Lacewings are around in profusion. Wasps are busy predating and siting their nests. Tomorrow morning I will be laying-down the first weekly organic spray against apple coddling moth larvae. We do our best to minimize our use of sprays but so far we still need to rely on the granulosis virus to control the worm in your apple. Fortunately, it is very selective unlike some other broad-spectrum insecticides that might harm our beneficial insects and bees. We hope that some day we’ll be able to rely on birds, insects, and bats to control coddling moth. We believe that you, our customers, our “eaters”, prefer your apples without the worms so, for this season at least, I’ll continue to spray.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Your hard work paid off! We are still appreciating the generous donation of peaches that you made to the Kids’ Pasta Project a few weeks ago! We have been serving peach crisp, peaches and ice cream and simply juicy peaches for desserts ever since! We have also been canning, freezing and making peach butter. We will send along all of the peach recipes that we have been using and developing when we compile them. Really, the peaches are so good right now that it isn’t necessary to use anything more than nature’s recipe! Thank you!!!!