Pokeberries

Pokeberries

Despite the cold morning yesterday, the afternoon was not too bad. I cleared the fence line beside the garden so that I can prune the grapes. The neighbor has a jungle at the back of his yard and it sends fox grapevines, honeysuckle and poke salad my way. He doesn’t even eat the poke salad. We don’t let ours grow anymore, we just poach his. The freeze had turned the plants to mush so it was easy to just pull them off. My gloves, my sweater and even my hands inside the gloves turned purple. The juice on my hands washed off. Who knows what will happen with the clothes?

The grapevines really grew a lot for their first year. They will need to be pruned way back. A little research will be in order before the clippers go to work. The asparagus did extremely well for a first year too. It was difficult not to harvest a few. Deep compost and mulch should make them even stronger next year. The strawberries filled in pretty good. Hopefully they will do more next year. They will get deep compost and heavy mulch as well. A little rock phosphate will go in the compost.

The eggplants and the castor oil bean plants finally bit the dust. I was able to harvest seeds from one of the castor oil bean plants. The other is so big, I will have to chop it down with an axe.




David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.