My family and I love living out in the country. We've now got several acres of woods, fruit and nut trees, berry vines and bushes, and vegetable gardens so it's quite the playground for running experiments! With this channel I plan to share some of our many experiments and tell you what we've got going on around the homestead. Not only will I show you what we are working on, but I also aim to follow up with each experiment so we can track the results and figure out what really works (and what fails!) and what we could improve on or do differently. I'm certainly not an expert, but I enjoy putting these experiments together and hearing from others on what they are trying to do as well!
Looking good! Hammering in a dowel and then trimming it flush is one way to avoid putty. You can yank them out with a screw later on if need be as well, if you don't glue them.
My MacFree from Stark Bros. got several fireblight strikes in it. Fortunately I guess the tree was big enough to not suffer too bad. It was next to Crimson Crisp, and I believe it was the Crimson Crisp that had the most problem. Also passing it along to Liberty another supposed blight resistant tree.
I have a Lovell that grew up from from an Apricot that the graft died on. Mine has about 8 trunks and is about 12'x12' after 7 or 8 years. I'm thinking yours are planted pretty close together and you may want to remove every other one eventually. The fruits on mine are large, at least baseball-sized, firm, and so-so in the flavor department for fresh eating. They are also extremely late compared to most other peaches, ripening in early-mid September here in SW Michigan, zone 5-compared to most of the "standard" peach varieties that ripen in July or early August. Like most peach trees they will overbear and break their branches off if not thinned to one fruit every 4-6". Watch out for the trunk borers, those have killed off most of my peach trees over the years. Thanks for the video, happy harvests!
Nicely done video! The jet pump on our well was destroyed by a 14 degree cold snap that knocked out our power for several days in Portland, Oregon. we will improve the insulation and place a light bulb in the well housing, but I'm not sure what I will use for a heat source when the power goes out again. I'm considering using an oil lamp, but I'm nervous about anything with a flame.
Thanks! I recommend you trade some LED bulbs to all your friends in exchange for their old incandescent bulbs. Many people have them in sheds or detached garages, or closets, etc and would be happy to take an energy efficient alternative. For us, the box is small enough that a true, incandescent 100W bulb can fight off -15 degree weather! Most years I only run a 60W unless it is going below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. I haven't used it myself, but there is also heat tape you can buy for pipes that can be set to kick in at certain temperatures, so you might look into that.
Are you familiar with Michael Phillips? He came up with a holistic spray: liquid fish, kelp, effective microbes, neem and karanja oil. For curculio he recommends kaolin clay spray.
Everything I’ve read says plant in spring. I’m in Ms & zone 9 do you think I can safely plant on my chain link fence in September? It does get down sometimes a few days in winter below 32* but mostly mild. It’s in 100’s now in Augudt
Planting in the fall should be fine, but I would wait until 100 degree days are long gone. Also, where are the plants now? If they are growing outside, you likely won't have an issue, but if they have been growing indoors, you'll want to acclimate them to the outdoors for a while before transplanting so that they don't get transplant shock. Thanks for stopping by and good luck!
I've towed it around the property a lot, without issue, but I've not actually driven off the property at this point. Between my trees and and trees that others have bought me, I haven't had a reason to do that yet! I'll let you know if I do.
Thanks! We're actually located in central Indiana - I think in this video I talked about the Westfield Seek No Further apple that I grafted to being from NY. I think I've only had one apple variety that was disappointing so far, many that are good, and a few have been excellent. I have some videos with my thoughts on the different varieties and hope to add more to it soon!
It has been doing great, actually, thanks for asking! Here is part 2 of this project: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SU9FUiEpIyQ.html and here is part 3: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-63VMe45CjQc.html
From what I can tell you just harvested the berries that had the seeds right into the ground without taking them out of their casing or doing any drying. Is that correct? I'd hate to waste time going through all that if it's not necessary. And you did this in the fall/winter?
Correct, I just put the berries straight in the ground in the fall when the plants are going dormant. We get so many berries from what's growing that I'm not too concerned with maximizing germination rates or anything like that. I'm sure there could be other methods yield more plants, but this took almost no time at all, and it was a success!
You can, but the variety of the new tree will match the variety of the root it grew from. So if your current tree was never grafted, that would be a much better choice! If it was grafted, you likely end up with a much less desirable fruit from the new tree. Another option would be to let it root in and get established before grafting - that would be a good choice if it doesn't come up with very many roots.
As a professional arborist it was painful to watch you use a saw please get some safety gear and lessons in how to use a saw properly before you end up in an unfortunate accident
IMHO I don't think "over pruning" caused those issues. Most of the visible thinning cuts (@2:46) were too aggressive and poorly cut into the branch collars which resulted in die backs and deadly wounds. Bark splits were not from sun burn as they were at the underside of those branches; they were probably caused by load stress + die back and further abused by insects... Which were probably what the bunnies were after at the tree trunk. Also, that graft point (your "tree trunk") should never touch the ground. If I were in this situation and the tree hasn't died off already, I would: -Try to bring the graft point at least 1 - 2" above ground by digging dirt out from around that "trunk" area -"Properly" heading cut the problem branches to a node below the wound -Peel back the split barks to clean and evict any freeloaders; if a wound is grave enough, a heading cut may be required. -There's a technique called "bridge graft" which can help remedy these wounds including the trunk issue but I wouldn't attempt it if I have inadequate grafting xp and tree were too weak. -On a bright side, if the trunk cannot heal, the tree top will eventually die and the rootstock might get a chance to shine... ^_^ P.s. the pruning methodology demonstrated in this video was less than sound. A further study may be helpful. Cheers~
It looks that way if you are used to corn syrups! That's why it's best to use a refractometer to tell when it is finished. Otherwise you may go too far with it and end up with a lot of crystalizing in the syrup.
I used wedding lace baggies and covered each fruit, but the squirrels ripped through them. I hate them so much. Also the japanese beetle traps work extremely well. You should set one or two up in May to get ready for them. Keeping the old lure in the bag helps attract more and weigh the bag before it gets filled.
Unfortunately, it died a little bit more each year after this and didn't wake up last year at all. However, I found that we had rabbits eat probably 75% of the bark around the trunk, so that was the true cause of death. Overpruning was still likely what caused the bark issue higher up, but the trees' death was because of the rabbit damage. I think the paint helps on younger bark, but I don't think it likely does too much to help old bark. But I'll have to experiment more before I can say.
it is totally normal to call them pine berries, but they are officially called white jewel strawberries. but those strawberries look like they are not ready because of their small size
