I have been grafting Asian plums (partly top-working a Flavorosa pluot tree) and apricots (partly top-working a Gold Kist apricot tree) in the last few days. Also have planted 30 tomato bushes in the ground yesterday.
I was in TSC yesterday and they had Northern Pecan , Chinese chestnut and American hazelnut in small sleave packages like grapes are in . This is the first time I have seen these .
I was looking at cold hardy nut trees and was surprised to see pecan, hazelnut, and even a walnut for zone 6.
I picked up one of those norther pecan last year out of all the stuff I grow it was the only thing my dad showed intrest in,so it promptly died lol
Yeah pecan is a stretch for our zones. At my cottage is all kinds of black walnut trees. I would never grow them besides the juglone, they are terrible to clean and prep. Running them over with your car works good, in your new green driveway!
We had high winds yesterday and in the middle of my yard is this giant hazelnut!? I have no idea where it came from? It’s damaged, but I think I’ll plant it! Oops I mean chestnut. Probably the neighbor feeding the squirrels
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Took this picture today we had about an inch of snow. Maybe less. These have been blooming entire winter. Bought them in late October on sale for 75 cents from Lowes. Best 75 cents I’ve ever spent! Kept my mood up entire winter.
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After the six inches of snow that fell yesterday, it is now colder outside, about 27 degrees and blowing up to 40 knots. You really have to hang on to the stair railing! Hunkering down, waiting for the Nor’Easter to hit on Tuesday and buying wine!
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The temp says 20 but with the wind gust, it feels at least 10 degrees lower.
Prediction this morning said 5 F tonight. Now it says 4F tonight. Well, I hope they are wrong.
Went grocery shopping. Lots of people shopped in preparation for the Tues storm, like we had never had snow!!!
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It is cold here, but not winter cold. When the sun is shining more, it has that warm spring sun but cold feeling to be outside.
Not much to do around the backyard orchard with the top of the soil frozen and the pruning done, but to wait to see how the plums fare with the cold.
So I ordered a new 4-gallon Jacto HD400 backpack sprayer to replace the cheapo 2 gallon hand can that crapped out last fall. Gempler’s has free shipping going on if you spend $100+. The sprayer was $99.95, so I threw on a couple long-life 12 week coddling moth lures and traps. 
The benefit to that Jacto sprayer is that it has an agitator for us Surround WP (and Kocide 3000) folks.
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Drew,
May I ask why do you pick this model? I am looking for a new sprayers but have not decided on one yet. I do spray Surround, copper and other stuff.
As far as I could tell, there aren’t too many agitating backpack sprayers out there, so it was between this and a Hudson SP0 model. The Jacto HD400 was slightly cheaper and is being sold by places like Gemplers, Johnny’s Seeds (probably well versed in use of Surround), and Oesco. I took that as a sign of reliability/high quality over the Hudson. The fact that you could buy parts (extra nozzles, seals, etc) for it on Gempler’s website was another tick in favor of the Jacto.
Thanks. My hand pump sprayer got clogged by Surround 
but it could be my fault for not mixing Surround well at the time.
Bartlett pear is blooming. 
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Planted my first two peaches in my orchard today. Big Red and Elberta. From Clemson University website, "“In our Clemson University research trials over the last several years, the performance of Big Red has been excellent.
One of the reasons that Big Red is a good choice is because its big! It averages 3 to 3 ½ inches in diameter. Sometimes it even gets bigger! It’s a freestone, melting flesh type that has that normal acidic tang that we’re looking for in a Southern peach. It has this yellow background and red overcolor or blush that gives it a very attractive appearance. When you cut through the skin into the flesh, you can see that its got beautiful yellow flesh.”
Anyone on here have an experience with Big Red Peach? I have read a lot of positive comments on the Elberta so I figured it would be a good companion for the Big Red. And if the Big Red doesn’t work out I can graft too it or add a Red Haven or other variety.
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Today I was talking to a very old woman who came into my building to pay a bill. I knew that many, many years ago her husband (now dead) and her owned a local peach orchard- back in the 1950’s and 60’s. I told her I was probably going to lose my peaches tonight and even in her old age she said "well, we always felt when it got below 27 and they were blooming we’d probable loose them. I thought that was impressive for an elderly lady.
But here is the reason for my post: I talked to her more and she had a really neat story. She said most of their trees were red haven peaches and all produced about the same fruit. However, she said that one year one of her Red Haven trees started producing a totally different looking peach on one small limb. She was absolutely certain that no one had ever grafted a limb onto that tree, and they made their trees themselves by grafting to seed stock. But after the tree was started, they never grafted anything to them. She said as time went on, this one limb got larger and larger and produced more and more of these unique peaches every year. She said they were giant peaches no matter how many they left on the limb, and that they were a very yellow colored peach that had almost no red blushing, even though they were in the sun. But most of all, she said they were just much much sweeter than all the other peaches in the orchard and any other peach she ever ate. She said they would always tell their pickers not to pick those, because she wanted them herself and her friends and family always wanted some because they were so good.
Anyway, i don’t know as much as many of you, but to me this sounded just exactly the way a sport of peach can happen, isn’t it. Obviously the simple explanation is that some how, some way someone did graft some other great peach onto that tree. But if she is right, and she sure seemed to know, then isn’t this the kind of mutation that can create new types? I told her if she had just grafted some of those into seedlings, she might have invented a new peach that they could have named, patented, and perhaps sold. I just thought it was a neat story.
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I agreed that branch was a sport just like the Kiku apple sport of a Fuji apple. The investor bought the whole Orchard just to get that Kiku sport club apple. So Cityman you need to keep a lookout for a good sport mutation and be set for life.
Tony
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I wonder which is more mathematically likely, a sport that is much better than the original or a chance seedling that is better than the parents.
I know both are extreme long shots. She said they had about 350 trees (pretty big for back then, I would think) in their orchard and they ran the orchard about 25 years so no doubted they had to replant many trees… and its the only time she ever saw a tree make something different. So it was pretty rare. I’m sure most orchards never have something like that.
I hadn’t heard that story about kiku! I knew a person could make a lot of money from a sport…didnt know it could be THAT much! 
I haven’t heard of sports in peaches. Has anyone else? They seem fairly common in apples.
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Good question! That is why I asked it as question when I said Isn’t that how sports get started? I don’t know if peaches have sports or not??? If not, then of course it had to of been a graft no matter how sure she was that it wasn’t. It seems like it would be possible, but I just don’t know.
EDIT: Just did a little reading. From what I read there definitely are peach sports. Here is one you may have heard of: NECTARINES! At least that is what wiki says…we all know wiki can be a pretty weak source since any fool who can get a few people to agree can post something as a fact on wiki. Still, it sounded right.