Garden again, Summer 2013

When I arrived at the house in June 2013, the nicely strimmed elder plantation had re-grown ( as I knew it would ) a few months before this lot wasn't there.

At least this time the giant 20mm wide wood stems had re grown as 10mm green stems, so not so difficult to strim....Obviously I have weakened it a bit, it hadn't grown back as close together, much less of it!

Elder is back....

I gave in and used weed killer weed killer made from vinegar I left it 3 weeks till it died, then  chopped it down.... an hour with the brush cutter and it was gone.

I think it will keep coming back , but it seems weaker every time, I might get someone to plough the garden and pull its roots out.

I pruned the plum trees as it was summer and best to do it then, I never prune plums,Cherry's,peaches etc in the winter to prevent disease

I prune the growth from the floor to give a trunk and open up the centres for the birds to get in and eat the insects.

They don't seem to touch the fruit other than the figs, I tend to rake the soil underneath as well so they get anything living in the ground, after doing this the grub infested fruit trees are almost all fruit perfect with no insecticide.

Then I started on painting the trunks white with lime....

It seems to work, the ants don't seem to climb as much over the lime, snails don't go over , caterpillars stop and turn round.....lime painted trunks do seem to stop many of the insects!

All the trees now have some lime on them, I started running out and couldn't be bothered driving to get any more so started doing bands on the trees, some trees in Kazanlak near the Kaufland have dots on them instead of continuous bands.....I presume for fun...

When pruning, I decided to try and make it a bit safer for myself and the dogs when I bring them over, the seed grown cherry plum trees need some work, I have lots of these trees, all covered in thorns....not just any thorns but BIG thorns...

I cleared the stem to about 3 foot upwards of all branches to give a trunk and then took to removing all the thorns on the outside of the trees to about 4 foot along with any that stick outwards higher up, I left some internal ones to protect the fruit from climbing animals..

The fig tree seems to be healthy with lots of fruit, we were getting a half plastic bag a day of figs when we got up early enough to defeat the birds.

Plenty of new growth, grown close to the Balkan mountains with no protection other than the wall , the tree is about 6 foot higher than the wall at least and shows no frost damage.

Last year I hacked a rose bush down, this is now growing on the new growth, not sure what it is.....

I chopped it off just in case it spread!

The trumpet vine is growing well, looks much better now as I have painted the gate black, the orange against the black is great.

I'm taking a cherry picker over to give access to the roof of the house and factories if needed, but its also going to be great for getting the cherries....this sour cherry has lots of fruit as do the walnut trees next to it, but its a bit tall to get to any of it.