Saturday, May 14, 2016

hoping for the best...

... even though I have not been a very good 'steward' with my newly planted blueberries and tomato plants. Especially the fruiting bushes. They've been in the ground a couple of months, and were doing really well - when we were getting enough rain for them to thrive despite neglect. But since it has been so dry in recent weeks, and I have been either  working, on the go, or too tired to tend growing things - they have taken on an air of desperation.

I went out to water in the past several days, and found them to be drought stressed. Felt like a Really Bad Mother. So when I got home today they got mulched. I added some good home-made dirt to replace  some that had washed away in rains, then put down layers of newspaper to keep down weeks. And added mulch from some bags of cypress mulch leftover from last fall. The bags of mulch h ad become home to large colony of ants, so some preventative measures were needed before I could move the mulch into the wheelbarrow to relocate and spread around the bushes.

They are well watered, along with tomato plants, that also got some newspaper around stems, plus some leaf mulch to keep weeds down and moisture in. I feel really guilty thinking of how much I enjoy blueberries but had neglected the bushes after peeps worked so hard planting in rock-hard clay soil. Sad that I was not more diligent with mulching weeks ago, as well as watering when we've not had good drenching rains. But hope that the 'better-late-than-never' work I did this afternoon will be sufficient to bring them back from the bring,

And after nearly ten hours of work in the produce dept., on my feets all day.

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