Between raindrops

It has been showering off and on today, frustrating me because I wanted to spray the fruit trees with sulfur to prevent fungal diseases from taking hold.  Our climate has such a high water content in the air all the time, probably from our proximity to the ocean, that fungal diseases are something I need to try and prevent both with healthy soil and plants, and with organic sprays.  Today was spray sulfur day, but I had to keep waiting for the showers to at least taper off.

The fruit tree espalier of 15 trees, 9 apples and 6 pears, was my main concern.  I did manage to get it and 3 other fruit trees sprayed.  This espalier was established about 10 years ago and most of the apples are bearing well.  I made a mistake with which varieties I chose, especially with the Anna apple which always flowers too early and never bears.  The pears tend to flower too early as well so we don't get much in the way of a pear crop, but we get plenty of other apples to make apple butter and sometimes apple cider.

First asparagus

Other garden chores today included weeding one of the two asparagus patches (speaking of mistakes, we planted that one next to our raspberry patch and have been fighting raspberry runners ever since).  The first asparagus should be ready within the next few days. I also weeded one of our artichoke patches.  This is its first full year of production and so far the artichokes have been tasty.