2019 Is Looking Good

The beginning of April saw our new home finished and all of the pear trees in bloom. I have been encouraging native pollinators like the blue orchard mason bee to stick around and thrive, and I guess they did. The trees were full of fruit. Sandy was out there every minute she could thinning the fruit. When you have 2 to 5 fruit growing from the same spot on a limb they will discourage each other from reaching their full potential. Since then we've been bagging the fruit. I say we, but it's mostly been Sandy. She doesn't trust me to do it right. Bagging involves buying zip lock bags, cutting the two lower corners off and cutting a notch in the center of the zip. You then open the bag, slip the fruit in and zip it shut, with the stem going through the notch.

To date, we (again mostly Sandy) have done this over 5000 times. And there's still a lot more to do. But in the end it's worth it. Monsanto won't get their sticky fingers on our fruit and we don't kill all the beneficial bugs along with the few bad ones. I'll get an updated post on here in a few weeks. Till then, Happy Growing.