Catch up time??? Gardening news

We've been keeping busy around here, and James has been doing an excellent job of keeping everyone informed of our major projects, so I've been. . .off working on other things??? If you don't read James's blog (you ought to check it out!), I'll try to catch you up on what we've accomplished in the yard lately has included starting the sheet mulching project in the backyard, the strawberry bed (don't remember exactly when that got done-have I mentioned it already?), and the blueberry+ bed. That last was a major project and James did the bulk of the work! The bed is 8 x 18 feet (2.5 x 5-6 meters), and was dug about 2-2.5 feet deep (say .75 m) to break up the clay, then filled in layers of clay, peat, manure, powdered rock for minerals, and sulphur to acidify the soil. Each layer was turned by pitchfork and watered well. (That was my main job, along with cheerleading and appreciating his efforts!) The final bed is almost 18" (.5m) above the previous soil level, and involved roughly ten layers per hole. James divided the bed into ten holes, and did one or two per work session over about two weeks. Lots of work! But it's finished and waiting to dry out a bit after the bout of rain we had last week. We drove out to Afton, VA to visit Edible Landscaping and buy the plants for that bed, some (20) more strawberry plants, the nanking bush cherries for the front yard, and a dwarf pomogranate. (I had to acknowledge that a pomegranate is an experiment in this climate three times before they'd let me buy it!)
We also planted out 1 and 1/4 pounds of small yellow onion sets. If you don't know, that's several hundred of the little things. We may have some impressive stands of onions on Herb Hill next summer.
Silly little things, but my major gardening success for the month has been locating sources for seeds and seedlings of the Siberian Pea plant. That is a large-ish bush that fixes nitrogen in the soil, blooms yellow in the spring, and bears edible pods with seeds similar to lentils that are 35% protein. More perennial edibles!!!
After thinking it over, James has come to the conclusion that we do have room for a couple of dwarf fruit trees, so they'll be ordered this week: Saturn peaches (the donut shaped ones), and combination grafted trees for apples, pears, and akanashi. ('bye Eastern Redbud volunteer!)
Some of the inclination/motivation for those has come from the satisfaction we've felt as we've chopped peaches to stock the freezer for smoothies all winter long. Then Mom & Dad K. brought us a bushel of red delicious apples from their backyard, which we started processing Friday night just over a week ago. Then, the following Saturday, we took the twins out to the Maryland-Pennsylvania border past Frederick to pick apples from the neglected orchard a work colleague just purchased this year. That was another three bushels of free apples. We've had the dehydrator making apples slices almost constantly, while the crockpot brewed apple butter and applesauce. The kids have gotten quite good at the peeler/corer/slicer project, very tired of apples, and have gained an appreciation for the work that goes into food preparation.