How were you able to surgically apply the roundup? Wick stick, pump up sprayer? It looks like a pretty big area to spray w/ a pump up sprayer.
I’m curious about this because I see pics of nurseries growing fields of young trees tightly packed together and have never known how they accomplish weed control. I don’t know of any herbicides which can be applied over the tops of young trees (including Prowl) but there must be something out there.
I use the 2 gal pump sprayers with a T jet nozzle. Its the one labled Roundup at HD. I Spray very low psi a few inches off the ground upto an inch or less from trees. I wash off any accidental overspray i notice with a water can. i have never lost a tree because of roundup. I have killed trees trying to hand weed in a tight planting. Roundup would no not be my choice if i were trying to kill a tree. That method is still a PIA. This year I hope to have roundup and prowl applied before most of them go in, reapply prowl mid summer and do some spot weeding every few weeks.
I just purchased a 40" wand for my backpack sprayer used for weed killer and noticed it is much easier to get the tip close to the ground for precision spot spraying and no longer need to bend over for precision spraying (im 6’ 3"). My back no longer hurts from spending an hour of round up spraying.
I, too, have applied round-up in almost exactly the way you just described and have had outstanding results at “surgical” spraying. Believe it or not, I even use that method around my watermelon plants before the vines get too spread out, and they are much, much less forgiving of round-up than trees (even small ones) are. The key to it, I think, is in one of the things you mentioned…low pressure. I pump my sprayer just enough that the spray will come out- almost trickle out. I also set it more toward a stream than a spray. Doing those 2 things and keeping nozzle very low (like you said) and carrying water for occasional accidents (just like you) has allowed me to do a LOT of my weed control, even in my garden, by spraying round up. I think this would work quite well for rows of small grafted trees like yours.
Performed my first graft of the year. A little early but out of necessity. My combo cherry was horribly out of balance with Glacier needing to go. I meant to take all the dormant glacier wood I could and then graft it back to the tree after pruning. But I sent out several pieces before realizing I gave away all my dormant wood and the only Glacier left was popping buds. Lol. Oh well, I grafted some sweetheart cherry to replace the glacier. We’ll see how it goes or if it even takes. This season I thought I’d try toilet wax ring as a sealant and it was fantastic! So easy to work with and what seems like the perfect consistancy. I prewrapped my scions with parafilm amd coated the cleft with the wax. Wrapped tightly with flagging tape and added a single wrap of electrical tape just to prevent the flagging tape from unwrapping.
Just a word of caution, pay attention to what you are doing. I got careless and tried to close the blade on my Victorinox grafting knife single handedly because my other hand was full. I knew better, just got careless. The cut wasn’t too bad. More blood than I expected. The pic was taken 5 minutes after holding a towel on my hand. Did not require stitches so I got lucky.
Nice looking graft. Sorry to see that cut. It happens easily at times.
The graft looks great…the hand not so much! Just today I was singing the virtues of flagging tape- nice to see you like it too. I’m also a huge fan of the toilet ring wax. Seems perfect for the job, and its very cheap. One ring is a lifetime supply and only costs a couple dollars.
I top worked a red mulberry over to weeping mulberry. I know that goes against the idea if producing fruit, but I like the way they look.
Some of my plum grafts have over a foot of growth! I’m going to leave the electrical tape on for another month or so
Apple grafts are doing good as well
I did my first T-buds of the year today
Steve,
They look excellent. Are you staking them soon? The Japanese plums I grafted in 2014 have plums on them. I removed most of them because they were grafted on prunus besseyi in an attempt to dwarf them. The dwarfing did not go like I had planned and I used 5 other types of plums as controls. What I found out from my experiment was that I love American plums as rootstock.
Myrobalan plum onto my proprietary Luna Peach x Almond hybrid rootstock.
Next year, I will graft a Montmorrency cherry onto it. If the graft takes, will it be a good discovery?
I completed all my grafting yesterday. I grafted 4 times the amount I did last year. Put in 105 grafts total between apple, euro pear, asian pear, plum, pluot, apricot, and sweet cherry. Would have liked to put in multiple grafts of everything but just didn’t have enough places to graft. I put in multiples of many varieties I placed in high regard such as Flavor Supreme, Goldrush, Indian Free, Flavor Grenade, Orangered, etc. Many grafts of some obscure varieties were one-off grafts due to limited space. Next year as my orchard develops I’ll have try to add more variety. I’ll be interested to see what the take rate is considering the weird weather pattern we had and some marginal scions.
Speedster,
You did a ton of grafting too! I used 200 aluminum tags already on the pears. I did multiple grafts of several varities. Some of the rootstock won’t be ready for a year or two. Some trees I added 20 grafts of the same variety on those problem trees.
After deciding it was warm enough to graft peaches and nects I now wonder if it was a good idea. Had 2 straight days of 83 and 84 temps. Would hate to end up cooking the grafts. I’ve been wrapping each graft with the usual parafilm and temflex 2155. Last year that worked fantastic for apples and pears. Temps the next few days will be in low 70’s and high 60’s so that should be perfect for peaches. Just hope the sun shining on the temflex does super heat the grafts.
nice tape skills!
