@swincher I messaged that user a few months ago if I recall correctly, he hasn’t had any luck, all of his seedlings have been dying. I am unsure of what breeding stock he started with, but I’m sourcing Crimson Sky, Belbek, and Salavatski from someone in a similar zone to me, and while his plants aren’t yet fruiting, they’re surviving, meaning there’s some hope for me.
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I transplanted this wild callery into my field jan 26.
Noticed yeaterday it is pushing some green already.
Rootstock for grafting…
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My sisters persimmon trees… wild americans… nice sized delicious rich fruit.
Late october 2021 i saved seed from them (3) and planted them in a container in the edge of my woods.
April 25 2022… all 3 sprouted.
I took out the one in the middle and let the other two grow…
They grew well. One over 42 inches the first season. The other a little smaller.
I got them planted out in my field this morning.
Think i will graft kasandra on one and nakitas gift on the other… and let them grow side by side like my sisters trees are.
I am going to graft some scionwood from my sisters persimmon on some 2-3 inch diameter wild trees… most likely bark graft.
At this point everything i have grown from seed or rooted or grafted … has been planted.
I have a silk hope mulberry, IKKJ persimmon and 6 raspberries orderd but not delivered yet.
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Hi Jim,
Do you cover the fig cuttings or use a heat pad? I tried the shoebox method and got a tray full of moldy cuttings after 10 days.
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I wrapped the fig cuttings half way, from the middle to the top, with paraffin wax wrap. I then put the unwrapped half in slightly moist Pro mix. I did put them on a heat mat because my house is generally cool. I kept the lid on the plastic container until I started to see some growth, then removed the lid and put them under a shoplight.
If you are getting too much mold, I bet they are too wet. I only moistened the promix, no standing water.
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Hood pear, low chill non Asian pear. Let’s hope I have something eventually. I hope this variety is more resistant to fireblight, that’s why I planted it in the ground right away.
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I’m putting in some bare root tomorrow, the ground is just barely workable/unfrozen. the jujubes I had to heel into a pot in the basement have started leafing out so they’ll be indoors until after last frost.
I just planted a Cot N Candy Aprium…not sure how it’ll do here (west of Philly, PA). It’s getting a Summer Delight Aprium friend later. Probably should have gone with two Har- varieties.
I did a preliminary build of my deer fence. It’s landscape stapled down now, but it’ll get T posts (can I put those on the outside of the cage and still have them be effective?) later. I’m not sure if I want to head it back at the top or bottom red line to do an open center with one branch coming towards the camera and two away (or vice versa) and then the opposite on the other tree or do a ‘V.’
It lightly hailed for five minutes while I was almost finished planting it, so it got covered and I went inside. I also found a white brick buried in the yard, because sure why not?
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I have 4 black, 2 red, 2 purple raspberries ordered… supposed to ship mid March.
Got started on a new raspberry bed this evening.
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We’ll have to keep up on how pawpaws end up doing for us in the Front Range thread. I’m going out on a limb and trying out Mango with intentions to graft on to it later if successful. Not hoping for much - we’re pretty far outside their preferred habitat - but hey, why not!
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Did not even realize there was a front range thread. I tried them last year. I learned you have to protect them early on at least. Some things I have seem to be more bothered by animals where I live than others. Peaches, pawpaw, mulberry and cherries seem to be high on the list. The surrounding ones can bound back easily due to massive growth cycles and are often sent bigger. Pawpaw are very small and seem to not have a fast growing habit so I find protection is very much needed. By the time I learned this all pawpaw were sold out last year.
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Hi all, just discovered this awesome forum and have been reading through lots of interesting posts.
I have a little mini orchard that I planted a year and change ago, and I’m definitely still learning and making mistakes:
- 2x Pawpaw (think I need to move them because I planted them as understory trees after reading they naturally grow there, but they’ve only grown maybe 6” in 1y4mos)
- Red Mulberry (also may move this as I planted it as an understory too and it has barely grown at all)
- Spalding Pear
- Baldwin Pear
- Fuyu Persimmon
- Scarlet Beauty Plum (lots of baby plums forming, will thin soon once they’re a tad bigger)
- Methley Plum (died over the summer
) - Sunracer Nectarine (loaded with 65 baby fruits that I thinned to every 6”!!)
- Flordagold Peach (20 fruits thinned to half a dozen or so)
- Loquat
- Arbequina Olive
- Dorsett Golden Apple
- Anna Apple (died from weed whacker accident )
- LSU Purple Fig (died, not sure 100% why, it just wasn’t growing any leaves, the trunk is beat up at the base though so I’m suspecting maybe another weed whacker incident )
- Star S. Highbush Blueberry (handful of blooms, but may not set much fruit if I don’t have new blueberry bushes for cross-pollination in the next few days)
- Sharpblue S. Highbush Blueberry (another death by weedwhacker )
- Navaho Blackberry (also need to move this, as it’s too close to a hedge and doesn’t get enough sun)
- Arapaho Blackberry (another death by weed whacker )
- Elderberry (died when my landscaper ran over it with a lawn mower
) - 3x Soapnut (ditto with the lawn mower )
Needless to say, I made the mistake of not mulching with wood mulch initially, thinking I could just get by on regularly replacing dried leaves since I have so many in my yard. However the leaves would blow away after a few weeks and I would be too busy to re-mulch, leading to my landscaper getting too close with a weedwhacker or straight up driving over my smaller tree seedlings during their dormancy. Lesson learned and now all my fruit trees and bushes are mulched 3’ around the trunk to hopefully prevent further incidents.
My new additions for 2023 are:
- 3x Emerald S. Highbush Blueberry
- Owari Satsuma
- Pineapple Orange
- Celeste Fig
- Black Mulberry
I may get another blackberry plant this year if I can nurse the one sickly remaining one I have back to health. Am also trying to find goumi bushes locally, but may have to resort to buying online.
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Welcome to the forum!
The only thing missing from your orchard is avocados, I’d say. But I’m a little biased there. I’m hoping my “Jade” avocado (which is from Gainesville) will flower in my greenhouse this spring. I’m also going to add a few more grafts of other Gainesville-area trees this spring, there are quite a few avocado trees that have flourished around there.
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Everyone that just starts has a lot of stuff die. When I first started gardening I had a tendency to flood my plants. The first plants of my blueberries and mulberry could survive and take it. I then bought 5 cherry trees. I can’t say whether it was my bad or the bad of the nursery but 3/5 cherry trees died. I read online to water trees before a frost as it helps them with the cold. Now I don’t water at all during winter and water once a week maximum and sometimes if I want to push it I water every two weeks. My plants have pretty much lived since then and that has been 2 seasons.
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I’m one of the few people who actually doesn’t like avocados at all 
. I can tolerate guacamole if it’s made with perfectly ripe avocado, salt, and lime, but other than that I avoid it entirely hahah.
It’s a shame because we do have some people here in Gainesville developing some really neat cold hardy avocados.
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I would grow avocados if I could. I don’t care for them by themselves but turn them into quack and I will eat it up. I wish there was a way to grow them in CO.
Ah that’s too bad!
I set up drip irrigation rings around my trees from the get-go, with seven 0.5GPH emitters per tree. but one thing that may be a problem is every tree has the same irrigation rate, so my nectarines and peaches are getting the same amount as my fig and olive trees. During the rainy summer season I didn’t use it at all, during the hot but dry spring and fall it was 30min every other day, and right now in the cooler but dry season I’ve been doing an hour once a week, but I may lower that to 30min once a week and see if that’s enough now that everything’s mulched and my half sand soil is retaining water a lot better.
And figuring out fertilizing rates and pest management is a whole other ballgame I’m just getting into! I got pregnant a month after planting all my trees, so I was paranoid about contact with too much fertilizer while pregnant and then too busy with a newborn baby to have time for my trees.
A local grower here in Gainesville recommended me their preferred fertilization which was 8 parts composted chicken manure, 6 parts greensand for micronutrients, 6 parts wood ash for potash, 1 part Dr iron, and 1 part epsom salt. They mix that all up then apply about 2 cups per inch of tree diameter every two months from Feb-Oct (and every month for apples and an extra Jan feeding for citrus ahead of bloom time). They also do a foliar and soil spray of Alaska Fish Fertilizer every 2 weeks, but that seems like a lot to me if I’m growing in the ground and not containers! 
