I'm looking at my fruit trees and it looks like a poor yield to come. I have 3 different apple trees and only one has meaningful amount of budding. The plum tree only has a dozen or so buds with a little more on our cherry tree. Can the long cold winter and practically no spring to speak of be the cause of this?

The plum tree has had poor yield since we moved to our property 2 years ago. It may just get cut down and we can replant something that would have a better production.

I've never given the rainfall a second thought to be honest. I always figured that since I have my own well that taps into an underground spring that I had all the water I ever needed. Then, last night it dawned on me...only two decent rainfalls here since planting day. I'm not worried whatsoever about the well going dry, but the ability to pump water out of it is a different story. Having some stored water has advantages, and not just for personal use and gardening...think wild fires. I am going to look into a few of those big water totes that I can fill with well water and be able to harvest rain water with as well. That will give me 4 water sources...
1 - deep well with electric pump
2 - shallow well with buckets and rope
3 - lake across the road
4 - water stored in totes
One is none, two is one, three is for me, four is more!

Very interesting on the water Denob.. I felt the same way with my deep well but its a salt well good only for livestock and the issue is it can't be used for pasture or garden use and as we learned in the very high drought year.. our house shallow well will hold for house use and with great care small critter covered but not large livestock or all the gardens.

It was a good learning year for sure on our part.. It was startling to grasp that we should also stock extra hay and or grain for fodder growing if needed..

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/june-9-2018-rising-co2-levels-make-food-less-nutritious-neonics-and-bees-tricking-facial-recognition-1.4696119/rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-are-turning-rice-and-fish-into-junk-food-1.4696123

Was checking the news today and was reading this one.. interesting information being studied on the base level.. Something I will need to keep a eye on as the studies progress

Today, I’ve confirmed my theory regarding drought prevention.

The forecast for today was 10-20% chances of rain. So last night, I washed the car and the truck. We had a good shower this afternoon. 😉

Ok Farmgirl here is the pictures. the first is German butter ball, those plants are a little slower to flower than my Yukon gold but are just about to and this is pretty much even across all my butterball plants.

this is my yukon gold they have started to flower and you can see the seed pod. Both these types are from raised beds. I am not letting them go to seed though (only a few) I will go out this evenning and clip the flowers off most the plants.

Beautiful flowers 🙂 I think potato flowers are so pretty.. Do you always cut them off? I have never done that.. what is the reasoning? I know that the flowering does not effect the potato harvest (at least according to my big reproduction potato book)

https://www.crcpress.com/Genetics-Genomics-and-Breeding-of-Potato/Bradeen-Kole/p/book/9781138115309

This year is a mix of things on the potato front on the farm this year. I have some TPS that I am growing, I have a whole patch of small ones that I replanted and left over wintered in the ground, I thought for sure with the hard cold winter we got that nothing would come but they are up and thriving and then I planted out 40 pounds worth of seed potato in a huge old compost pile, and then I bedded them down with old straw, so we will see what I get.. When we dig them out, it will be the perfect timing to turn the pile as well. Two birds.. one stone as they say.

I have pretty good details on the in ground yields on these ones an I have other years yields on two kinds in straw-compost bedding to compare to so we will see.

Beautiful flowers 🙂 I think potato flowers are so pretty.. Do you always cut them off? I have never done that.. what is the reasoning? I know that the flowering does not effect the potato harvest

What you say may be true, I do not know. what I do know is thats what grandma did, and if I do it different I will hear thats not what grandma did. something about not letting the plant put energy into flowers and seeds. I don't claim to have done controlled studies...just doing what grandma did.

Gotcha Peppercorn. I understand, I have said that to my hubby a lot over the years, I do not know why.. its just what I was raised and trained to do.. him being him.. I am always challenged to find out why lol.. tried and true regardless of if there is a study or not works 🙂

http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/maritime-crops-ruined-by-drastic-temperature-drop-1.4705504

If you don't want to watch the video, in a nut shell its talking about the up to 60 percent loss in the Maritimes in regards to the very bad frost they got.. blueberry prices will be going up and those awesome frozen wild Canadian blueberries will be much harder to come by in the next one to four years as they recover from it..

They were showing the farmers just turning their fields under and starting over, but not everyone can take that kind of hit and move forward. I know that they were having trouble getting bee keepers to be willing to take their bee's to B.C. for the blueberries and were expecting a lot less crop wise due to the lack of bee's and now combined with the east coast blueberry crop being ruined.. I expect that we will find it much harder to find Canadian Blueberries.

However so far, our own blueberry crop is looking great! the bushes are loaded. but I will need to cover them to keep the birds away.

Damn Birds!! 😉

I've never given the rainfall a second thought to be honest. I always figured that since I have my own well that taps into an underground spring that I had all the water I ever needed. Then, last night it dawned on me...only two decent rainfalls here since planting day. I'm not worried whatsoever about the well going dry, but the ability to pump water out of it is a different story. Having some stored water has advantages, and not just for personal use and gardening...think wild fires. I am going to look into a few of those big water totes that I can fill with well water and be able to harvest rain water with as well. That will give me 4 water sources...
1 - deep well with electric pump
2 - shallow well with buckets and rope
3 - lake across the road
4 - water stored in totes
One is none, two is one, three is for me, four is more!

Denob; LOVE your "One is none, two is one, three is for me, four is more!" nails my MO perfectly

We are having a heat wave in Alberta, I went looking to find historical records and stumbled on to a very interesting site it has not been updated since 2010 but has the data records from 1950 to 2010 with a resolution of 10 sqkm for the entire province. it takes a little dicking around to get familiar with the site but the trend lines are interesting.
http://www.albertaclimaterecords.com/ #

Very interesting on that data Peppercorn, thanks for the link..

We had a bobcat come in and dig fence posts 4 feet down so that our new fence posts were below the frost line for our neck of the woods and I was a bit shocked to see that the ground was so dry even four feet down, even the clay was dry.. and its not july yet. The pasture has been holding well, the gardens are growing great and the rain we have been getting has been filling the rain barrels.

It gave me false sense of the farm doing better, where in point in a fact the ground is itself very dry.. We might have a few showers coming over this week and I hope we get them.. I have some outstanding crops coming and I can only do so much watering if needed.

Ps on a side note, while this strangely didn't hit the farm, on a weather note. Those in Ottawa are talking about the fact that last night went down to 9 and that many of the gardeners an hot weather crops got effected last night on June 25th, I figured at least it was not snow, like they got in Newfoundland 🙂

I expect the coming heat will be a big push in regards to all our cool weather crops, there will be a lot of bolting going on this week and next.. hopefully folks will be able to harvest those crops and replant that space in the garden afterwards.

On the flip side, my hay tree's are rocking it, and I will be able to take a full second cut off them over the next few weeks, I am truly surprised at the recovery and production rate I am getting on them.