Kind of productive weekend, and chicken counting.

[ritaxis]

Tomorrow I get my students back, and their babies.  Rumor has it I will have two new babies -- possibly more later?  I looked at the class list with the teacher of recford but she has an ELD (English language development, pullout support for second-language learners, what we have instead of bilingual education nowadays thanks to the Texan influence

Comments

[tavella]

How often do you prune around here (well, you are in a more maritime part of this area than me, but still close?) My landlord's gardeners have been pruning the peach tree multiple times this summer. I didn't say anything until a couple of weeks ago, when they started pruning off some of my lovely not quite ripe peaches. I got them to stop, but now I'm wondering what I should instruct them to do later.

Where I'm from, you only prune a fruit tree once a year, usually sometime after the fruit has been picked, and you definitely don't prune during the summer once the blossoms are set, that's the time for the tree to put nutrient into the fruit and its root system. Is it different here, or different for peaches?

[ritaxis]

Summer pruning is your friend in California, but several times in the summer indicates to me that the gardeners don't actually know what kind of thing they are pruning. Especially since they wanted to prune off the fruit! Once when you're thinning the fruit to get rid of wild sporty sprouts, and then once when the tree is done and all the fruit is off is good. And thinning shouldn't be done by cutting off the twigs but by twisting off the fruit.

Apricots especially do not want to be spring pruned at all, because they bear fruit on the newest wood (I just relearned this and I think that's why I haven't had a heavy year lately).

The other fruits almost all bear on two or three year wood, so they like a bit of winter pruning.

In our area, anything in the rose family, if it thrives at all, must be summer pruned at least a bit or you will be living in Sleeping Beauty's castle in no time.

[tavella]

That sounds a lot more reasonable. They seemed like they were just trimming it to be neat, not treating it as a fruit tree. They seem to be basically mow and trim the bushes type gardeners, more lawn care than anything.

[mjlayman]

Wow, what a lot of work, and lovely things to eat! I'm so glad the loan will work out.