-
Looked at the few trees I have this AM...deer nibbles some time during the last week, they seem to like Honeycrisp more than Winesap. I thought I just sprayed Plantskydd not to long ago...looked it up...12/15/18,how time flies.Yesterday morning would have been a good time to spray but ran errands then helped out a freind, boiled off 115 gallons of very good tasting AR. Hopefully get some sprayed on this week. Deer and turkeys are everywhere grazing together with the toms all puffed out strutting their stuff!
-
I have to fertilze and prune some of my trees. I have a conundrum regarding pruning, I need to prune but even inside of 4ft fence cages I need the trees to grow out of the reach of deer and pruning,the central leader, when young prevents, the deer nip anything they can even with the fencing around them.I have 85 more apple trees and 250 conifers and oak seedlings coming soon. I will have around 250 fruit trees planted behind house, I have room for more but will probably get around 50-75 next year and slow way down, the boss is kind of putting her foot down, at least for now:lol:.
-
barnbc, my wife just attended a grafting class last week given by Sam Van Aiken, a professor at Syracuse University (look up "the tree of 40 fruits") At Colgate University. He is a master at grafting. My wife has successfully grafted lots of apples but she says she learned a lot from Sam. Colgate will be repeating this again next year, about this time of year, it might be worth going, even taking a vacation day. The class was attended by people from all over the state and beyond. Many brought scions to trade too.
-
Was able to get my 5 apple trees pruned (as I call it) during syrup season this year. Missed last year and there were a lot of heavy vertical suckers that needed to be removed. I really dont know much about trimming them, but they got a hair cut. Now if we avoid a killing frost maybe we will have some McIntosh, Red and Golden Delicious for apple sauce this fall.
Regards,
Chris
-
I'm excited to start seeing these trees grow some more and finally produce fruit. I dont think I'm going to be doing much more grafting, maybe just some refracting. A few years ago I would have probably been able to take a vacation for a grafting class but I'm just too busy with our kids and house these days. I'm planning on adding another peach tree this year and I'm going to try growing some from peach pits.
-
Thought it might be a good time to revive this old thread. When is the best time to remove watersprouts and not encourage new growth? My pear trees have hundreds and hundreds of water sprouts after pruning last year,would like to remove without having the trees react by sending out more.
-
You can take the sprouts off any time. When you see one coming on take it off. when they're new they will just break off. They will always be coming, some trees are worse than others. Typically pruning is winter and upuntil late spring, but suckering can be done anytime.
2/3 of my peaches froze off this spring but my apples set ok.
-
We will know how we made out in about a week or so. So far we don't see any black centers on our peach, pear or apple blossoms, but the early flowers in our strawberries were frozen. Our low was 29F, with a breeze (or wind) which often protects them. A frost with no air movement is worse.
-
Finally getting some good weather. All the fruit trees are doing great. My 2 cheery and 2 pears I put in last Fall look good. Going to squeeze in a couple of peach this year. Waiting on our rototilling guy for the garden. Stupidly sold off so much stuff from the farm. There are no tillers to be found. Took a pandemic to get alot of dummies to put in gardens. Too bad most have more money than brains. Clerks at stores said idiots didn't know what equipment was for or how to plant. I just picked a tomato from my indoor plants. Hope everyone is doing ok and staying healthy. No one laughing at preppers now!
-
We don't have any tomatoes yet, but we have lots of plants in our greenhouse. For several years I put up a temporary 7x9 greenhouse, this year I biult a permanent one, attached to the west side of the house, on the south corner. Things are doing well in there. The next week looks good, if we get thru the next 10 days without a frost it will be our earliest last frost date in years. We start putting the gardens in the end of May.