Floridaprince Peach Tree

Isn't this tree just lovely!

I planted this Floridaprince Peach Tree dormant 10 months ago and it has thrived. It has grown at least two feet, branched out in every direction and is shaping in to a respectable tree. My husband bought it as a Christmas present for me from Rockledge Gardens (they are THE BEST).

All of the lighter brown wood is the new growth since planting.

And I have even seen two flowers! Maybe I'll get a couple peaches this summer.

I mulch it with cypress mulch and grass clippings and every two months with a hefty dose of vermicompost tea and vermicompost. When I change the water in my goldfish tank every month or so, the tree gets several gallons of the dirty water loaded with fish waste solids.

I finally got around to redoing the bricks around the tree this week. I have been meaning to do it for months so that I could use the original bricks to round out my hedge around the patio. I only had enough of the curved bricks to do one tree circle and they needed to go around the patio.

I took the opportunity to replace them with a double layer of bricks (the first row is below the grass line) to help keep our very aggressive grass in check. I also expanded the circle by about a foot total in diameter to make sure peach didn't receive any accidental hits from the weed whacker or lawnmower. I back-filled the extra space with rotting grass clippings to give the tree a nice nitrogen boost and encourage growth in the earthworm population I found while digging.

I was so thankful for my lovely limitation of keeping the peach tree solo when I was doing the back breaking work of digging out just a couple square feet of sod to put in the new bricks. If I had expanded the area to include a guild, I would have had yards of sod to remove, and, in my pregnant state, that would have been a miserable task. Yay for lovely limitations!

Here are the plants waiting to go into the new garden bed. I have two banana trees, two dwarf everbearing black mulberry bushes, dozens of sweet potato slips, and a handful of herbs in the tiny pots sitting on the chair. Sadly, my horsemint didn't seem to survive the transplant to a pot as you can see. I am, however, going to make a very strong "tea" with all the crunchy leaves and stems that will hopefully repel nematodes. Horsemint has the highest levels of thymol of any plant in the mint family and is used medicinally as a vermifuge. So here's hoping that works.

And check it out! I have sprouting seeds!

There are cucumbers, several varieties of sunflower and little rattlesnake pole beans all poking their seed leaves above ground. We've had rain for the last several days and today is the first real sunshine these seedlings have seen.

I used a couple rows of cotton string thumb tacked into the sides of the box to help mark the square feet of the bed. I also went along temporarily marked the width of the square feet with my acrylic quilting ruler. I just eyeballed the spacing and used a long edge of the ruler to press into the dirt to make the lines. It was quick and easy to do and quite effective. If I had transplants I wouldn't have worried about marking anything, but with the seeds I tend to forget where I have already planted. Once all my seedling are up, I'll remove the string to clean up the appearance of the boxes.