Two plums, two apples, two cherries. Probably no fruit for 3-4 years, presuming the deer that I suddenly see everywhere don't strip off the leaves and kill them.
It's been a bad couple of weeks on the farm. I set out the cabbage and lettuce on May 11 -- the lettuce died; the cabbage is sort of lingering on but it doesn't look good.
We set out the tomatoes (the ones I didn't accidentally snap off getting out of the pots) on May 17. It got down to 37 degrees on May 20, and 34 on the 21. Even the finest milk jug cloches can't protect tomatoes against that. The tomatoes are probably all dead, all 40 of them.
This is definitely as bad as we've done gardening in years. There's still a lot coming up: peas, spinach, beets, radishes. The strawberries are fine, the rhubarb is alive, and perhaps as many as 3 parsleys made it. The peppers and eggplants and still thriving on the ledge, waiting for better days. But all the failure has been pretty depressing. I can't help but think how screwed we'd be if we actually were relying on this to feed our family.
Still. The trees are alive; the chickens are thriving. We should be harvesting strawberries and radishes soon. We learn from our abject failure. Next year we'll do better.
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