February Garden Tour

Ah, yes, the garden in still asleep under the snow. It’s time for the February Garden Tour!

To be honest, not a lot has changed since our January Garden Tour. That said, I thought we could take a look at some of our garden areas that are closer to our barns.

The Blueberry Patch

We have this patch of blueberries that was already here before we bought the place. It’s four high-bush plants that tend to get tall and unruly.

HighBush Blueberry plants in snow with trees and quonset

Over the years, we’ve pruned them back to varying degrees. This year, they’ll need a good pruning again.

Our plan will be to prune 2 of them close to the ground to encourage much-needed new growth. The other two will just get a little maintenance pruning. We don’t want to prune them all down severely and get zero berries. We’ll do two this year and the other two next year.

Adding a Fence

Our next step will be to build a special fence-type of enclosure that will hopefully protect the plants from getting attacked by the wildlife. Please don’t feel sorry for the wildlife! We have an abundance of wild elderberries, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, and more to which the wild animals can help themselves.

Blueberry bushes and trees behind quonset in snow showing fence placement

Blackberries

There is another area where, just this past fall, we decided to plant blackberries. We have blackberries growing all over the place, but we wanted to give them a new space.

And here is where I have them growing up the ramp toward the barn. (You may need to look closely because the trees in the background tend to swallow them up in the picture.)

We started to move some of them over here behind the barn. They are just little stubby things in front of the short stone fence.

There are wild elderberries growing around the silo.

Here is a red currant, half swallowed up by the snow.

This round area is, we believe, an old foundation from a silo. What we did last year is add a lot of organic matter and planted some day lilies and some perennial flower seeds, like poppies and columbine. I’m eager to see what will come up this year!

Over here was once a small barn. Our neighbor told us it was the “sawdust barn,” for the animal bedding. It had to be torn down because a tree grew up into it and pushed it sideways.

I had hoped to plant a garden here, but lots of wild vegetation came forth, so I am debating if this would be a worthwhile endeavor or not.

Beside our pole barn is another rather wild area. These are small plums that don’t fruit all that often.

Over here are more elderberries and blackberries.

Inside the pole barn is some old hay, farm equipment, and some tree branches that were cut by the previous owner to use as fenceposts. This just might be the year we put those fenceposts to good use!

Perhaps around the blueberries?

In the surrounding field, the deer like to frolic and have their meals and snacks. I believe they have some of their favorite sleeping quarters over beyond the pond, too.

The Pond

The pond is in the distance, surrounded by cat tails(not visible) and weeping willows(look carefully). The snow is so deep, I couldn’t get any closer.