Fruit Tree Maintenance

On Monday, my son's school was closed for a Teacher work day, this after a full week off for Spring Break....don't even get me started:) Together we worked in our garden on Monday. A full on attack on the aphids with soapy water and water blasting seemed to derail their efforts to suffocate my tomato plants. I've treated the plants a couple more times, but now at the base of one plant is a fungus. Frustrated, I finally turned to an Organicide that is mostly Fish Oil and claims to kill and prevent insects, though not harmful for bees and butterflies, as well as address my fungus issues. My Zinnia and 4 o'clocks are sprouting, as is my Seminole pumpkin squash. I had transplanted the collard and kale from Terry's place and they are all doing well. I divided my spearmint and placed it strategically around my other tomato plants. My least affected tomato plant is near spearmint, which can deter pests. I pulled up my bib lettuce that had bolted and become bitter. In its place I direct sowed spring mix lettuce.

Today at the Farm we tended to all of the fruit trees. Terry diluted worm poop and we methodically pulled back all the soil and mulch from each fruit tree, topped with fresh compost, new mulch leaves, and drenched the plants with fertilized water. Let me just say, worm poop smells dreadful-worse than any port-a-pot-worse than any killer dog fart-I'm talking stop you in your tracks odor- but the fruit trees love it more than compost tea. Terry has 23 fruit trees on the property. The majority are citrus, everything from meyer lemon, lime, calamondin, valencia orange, pink grapefruit, and page orange, but he also has 2 varieties of apple which are suppose to do "okay" in Florida, a mulberry, persimmon, 2 peach, kumquat, and an olive tree. After we fertilized the fruit trees, we gave the banana groves some TLC and cleaned up dead leaves, dropping them on the floor below to serve as a mulch bed that will eventually compost back down and feed the banana trees.