We just finished pruning the peaches and nectarines last week. Now, the first ones are starting to bloom. Later this week, we will apply the first spray of sour raw milk to colonize the blooms with lots of friendly bacteria. This crowds out the peach leaf curl, making it hard for that disease to take hold. It does not seem to eliminate it just gives it a hard time. I have a 50 gallon drum of the same culture Lorraine uses for making the softers fermenting in front of the house. I will add liquid seaweed, so we will be spraying quite the cocktail. All natural of course.
We will wait to prune our grapes until late March. We deliberately do this. We look for the first shoots to emerge and then prune. This takes away all the new growth and delays the emergence of the flower by two weeks. Sounds crazy, but the first flowers can be damaged by a late frost. In this way we protect ourselves from losing the crop in the spring.
Our chicken tractors have passed down each row of grapes, so the grass growing between the rows is already thick and tall. It is going to be a jungle out there. The grapes need more fertility. What better way to apply it than with chickens. We will watch to see if we might have over done it.
