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As many of you may already know, last year I tried my hand at growing for the first time.  This year I thought I would try my luck with a fruit tree.  I purchased an Asian pear tree, Pyrus Pyrifolia sp, from California and had it shipped to me about two weeks ago.  When she arrived I was worried about her complexion.  As you can see by the picture, her leaves and new growth were discolored and looked, in general, unhealthy.    It makes sense that she would seem a bit down, having  been in a box for 3 or 4 days.  I was concerned that my choice to place her outside in this state might not be a good idea.  I was also concerned that to leave her in the container indoors, may harm her as well.  It was time to research…  After some investigating, I found advice that I was safe to go in either direction. I decided to take the middle road and to acclimate her to the outdoors gradually so as not to shock her into the new climate. Looking at the progress she has made over the last two weeks, I feel comfortable with my choice.  At first, I’d take her outside for just about 30-60 minutes. At that time, it is mostly cloudy so I felt confident that the sun would not scorch her delicate leaves.  I slowly increased that time until she was spending a good part of the day outdoors. Eventually, she would spend most of the day outside and eventually, as the weather has warmed, in direct sun.  Over the last couple of days we have had some cold weather and she seemed to tolerate it well.  A few days ago I noticed she had a fracture in one of her branches.  Honestly, there is no way of knowing if this happened from shipping, the wind, or me carrying her in and out of the house.  I was devastated! More research….  I read an article that suggested that I stop all new growth from forming on the broken branch because the tree will grow a replacement.    I could leave the branch on the tree if there is foliage to help her produce energy and remove it later.   I took a picture to show that she did, in fact, start to grow a new limb. I clipped off all new buds from the fractured branch and I plan to prune it later in the winter.  After almost two weeks of this I removed her from the container and planted her in her new permanent home.  With all of the time I have invested, cost to purchase and ship I’m a little apprehensive about putting her outside all night.  The picture above is of her freshly planted before I put stakes in the ground.  Now that I have the tree secured the only thing left to do is wait…. Gallery of plant pictures grown by Derrick Bradshaw

Last year I tried my hand at growing a few things and I feel I had some decent success for a newbie….   I planted a variety of herbs, some pepper plants, and 4 blueberry bushes in the spring of 2010.  My herbs turned out well despite the fact that I was cultivating them all wrong.  Instead of harvesting in such a way that would promote plant thickness, I ended up pruning off the very sections of the plant that were needed to produce new growth.  This mistake was inconsequential in the beginning so I did not realize my error immediately. However, it became quite clear later on when the plant had nothing left to grow on. Here is what I learned… The plant grows leaves off of the main stem. This is your harvest. However, by chopping off the top of the plant, each point where a leaf was protruding along the stem will be stimulated to grow a new branch. (I was just taking the new leaves along the main stem) When you chop off the top of the plant, the plant goes into survival mode and begins to produce new branches to the side, making it fuller with more leaves to harvest. You want to be sure to always keep at least 3 leaf nodes along the stem and you do not want to cut below this point. This gives you a total of 6 node sites or potential new branches. I had been pruning these secondary branches far to close to the root stem thus causing the herb to grow tall with little to no surface area to grow more leaves.  Even with my learning curve I still was able to generate enough yield to supply us with herbs for cooking and I even  had a little left over to last us through the winter. My pepper plants, jalapenos, and sweet peppers were started from seed; mainly because I wanted to see  how that worked.  What I learned was that starting from seeds takes much longer than I would have thought and there seems to never be enough time.  Once the plants got going and I thought that all of my work was going to pay off,  the end of the season was already here.  You add that to my biggest mistake, allowing too many plants to grow in the same pot all together and what you end up with is a tiny, overcrowded crop.  So needless to say, this year I made a few adjustments. The first thing that I did differently was to start the seeds a little sooner and  inside. It seems to be working.  I should have enough baby plants ready to plant outside once we are past the threat of a frost.  I am so tempted to put them out now, but I have been warned to not put them out until after Mother’s day, just to be safe. I have set them outside for a bit each day but even the wind has seemed to beat them down some. Another adjustment that I have made is to limit the number of plants per pot. I plan to weed out any weak plants and, in the end, have only one strong plant per pot. This should allow me to give more care to fewer plants, thus producing quality over quantity.  I still managed to get enough peppers last year to use in cooking and chop up for salsa but I am hopeful with the tweaks that I have made to have so many more this year! I also purchased and planted 3 Chippewa and 1 Blueray blueberry plants last year. I placed them at the rear of the back yard as the tags say they could become as large as 6ft tall!  I wanted to make sure that they had adequate room to grow to their full size. For the most part, they seemed to handle the transplant okay with one doing exceptionally well and one not so well.  One corner of my yard tends to be dry, while the other corner slopes down and tends to pool water around the plant.  Because of this both of these plants ended up looking pretty bad by the time fall arrived.  I decided to replace the plant that got too little water with a Duke blueberry plant and to keep the other one, in the pool of water, to see if it could make it through the winter.  The pictures below show the plants as of today, April 5, 2011.  The first picture shows the bush that looks the best, located where the ground holds water, (who would have guessed?).  The next picture, the bush to it’s left, is the Blueray which does not show any signs of life yet.  I’m hoping this bush made it through the winter.  I drove all the way to Champaign to get this one.  I read that Blueberry bushes cross pollinate so my hope is that the conglomeration of varieties that I have placed in the yard will result in the most luscious blueberries in all the land!    So far, 3 of them have started to wake up. I am patiently holding my breathe for the 4th!  I will post the results with pictures as soon as I know the outcome. Gallery of plant pictures grown by Derrick Bradshaw