Early Spring Pruning on the Homestead

A couple of days ago, the weather was nice enough to tempt me to go outside and do a few things around the yard. There's still snow on the ground in parts of the yard, so there's not a lot that I can do outside just yet. I decided to start the process of pruning the grape vines and the apple trees that we have in the yard.

I wanted to start with the apple tree and the grape vine that are both next to the gate arbor in the side yard. Last year, the grape vine grew up into the apple tree, so it was a bit of a mess. You can see all the grape vines hanging in the tree branches. If those were left to grow, they would take over the tree.

I trimmed the grape vine back completely where it passes by the tree on the fence, and trimmed it out on the end to encourage the growth out beyond the tree. I also did a light pruning on the tree, it didn't need very much work this year. It had a small crop of apples last year so I'm hoping it will have a larger crop this year.

Here's a better look at the grape vine. This vine is a Marquette blue grape. In the past couple of years, this vine has had problems with a grape fungus that wilts the grapes before they get ripe. I need to be more diligent about spraying the vine with neem oil this year to try to prevent the fungus from infecting the vine. In case you're wondering, that thing that is staring at you in the picture is an old archery deer target that I put there a couple of years ago. It kind of looks like a dog from this angle.

In other news, I can see part of the garden now. the snow is continuing to melt with our 40 degree F weather.

The container garden area is free of snow now. It's still to early to start working on getting the area ready for planting, but I'm starting to see a few green strawberry leaves poking out from under the leaf cover in the strawberry bed in front of the big pots.

One more picture, apparently the rhubarb plant has decided that it's warm enough to start growing again. It seems that rhubarb is one of the earliest plants to start growing in the spring. I should clean up the mess from last year's dead leaves the next time we get some decent weather.

That's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!