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I wanted to do a follow-up to my July 13 post (“Keeping the birds out of the cherries“). That way, you’ll know how things are going. You’ll recall I recently purchased some 2″-wide holographic bird scare ribbon. They’re my attempt to keep birds away from the ripening cherries. Well, it has worked great! It hasn’t completely kept the robins out of […]
Read moreDon’t you just love fresh cherries this time of year? I’m crazy about them but, unfortunately, so are the robins, magpies, starlings and sparrows. We have 5 cherry trees and it’s a battle to get any amount of fruit off of them. A couple of years ago, we tried an experiment of covering the trees with huge sheets of floating […]
Read moreSpotted Wing Drosophila: Photos courtesy of Beverly Gerdeman, PhD, WSU Research Associate and WSU Whatcom County Extension. Even if you can’t pronounce the name of this dreaded insect, you need to know about this. And especially if you grow fruit trees or berry plants. The Spotted Wing Drosophila (or SWD), Drosophila suzukii, has been found in Spokane. It is very […]
Read moreI know that sounds like a “B” movie, right? It appears local gardeners are having problems with stink bugs eating their vegetable and fruit crops. That is worrisome to me. I think a lot of us grew up thinking stink bugs were those large black beetles. You know the ones that smelled nasty if you stepped on them. It turns […]
Read moreAs you know, birds absolutely love to eat cherries. We have a few cherry trees in our little orchard. Every year, it’s a battle to keep them from robbing our harvest. Last year, we covered our trees with huge sheets of floating row cover. Partly to keep the cherry fruit flies from laying their eggs on the cherries. But we […]
Read moreYes, this is a garden blog but we grow good stuff to eat, right? As I posted a few minutes ago, we’ve harvested all of our apples. We’re going to use some of them to make chunky applesauce. My dear friend, Marie Cole (of Cole’s Orchard up on Green Bluff) shared this recipe with me last year. It works […]
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