2023 NEW to your garden / orchard this year?

Do you have a plan or sketch you can share? I want to do the same.

Something NEW arrived todayā€¦



Silk Hope Mulberry from Whitman Farms.

Looks like whip toung graft to rootstock.

Looked greatā€¦ well packaged and shipped.
They had to prune it to fit in the rather long box.

41 inch tall. Nice. Another hole to dig !!!

TNHunter

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Got silk hope planted today on my lunch hour.

Very nice rootsā€¦ overall impressed with the size and qualithy of this fruit tree purchase.

My first time dealing with Whitman Farms / Lucileā€¦ but i will sure look to them in the future.

Very nice tree and at reasonable price (30.00).

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They used to have mulberry for 25 dollars a few years ago. It was 40 dollars with shipping a few years ago. My Girardi Mulberry from her fruited the first spring after I got it in the fall. Quite quick fruit production compared to my other fruit plants some of which have not produced in the first 2-3 years of being planted.

@elivings1 ā€¦ I have a hard time waiting on fruit trees to produce myself. I have eu plums and lapins cherry started in 2018ā€¦ no fruit from them yet.

This year could be the yearā€¦ it is looking promising with fruit buds on the cherry.

I planted a AU Rosa plum about a month ago and it has near 100 little plum fruit on nowā€¦ most of which i will thin this year. Now that is a wait for fruit that i can deal with.

I may have been able to get a few fruit last year if I was not unlucky. Last year we had a warm spell in March which pushed all the flower buds out early on in March or April. We then had a bunch of cold snaps. I also think the warmth happened before the bees came out. This will be the 3rd year with cherries and peaches so hopefully this year is the year for me too.

Iā€™ve been working on a landrace for my tomatillos, adding in some seeds from Philadelphia this year to see if I can get em any bigger. last year was awful hard on the plants so I got less seed than usual.

I got 3 jujube trees to put in this year. they all arrived in dead frozen ground January, so I put them in big fabric pots with some decent soil in the hoophouse and theyā€™re all leafing out! in March. Iā€™ll be planting them out in full sun in May. theyā€™ll have branches by then ā€¦

I got some scions that are new to me and two harrow delight pear whips too. pretty sure the pears are full size and Iā€™ve got just enough room for them to go. then Iā€™m only going to have room for understory, unless a tree croaks or needs to come out.

Iā€™m growing black futsu for the first time and also new Maximaā€™s for my landrace squashes, pink banana squash. and Iā€™m trying a bunch of tomato varieties this year, Mattā€™s wild cherry tomato is the one Iā€™m most interested in.

I had about ten seed packets of various peppers that were over 2 or 3 years old, real old seeds. I figured Iā€™d toss them in a pot in the corner and now Iā€™ve got about fifty pepper seedlings and I donā€™t know what any of em are. Iā€™ll give some away and grow some on up.

the other new things are a new hayfork and a new set of seedling lights I got for my birthday. the hayfork had a picture of a devil on it and said ā€œget to poking old ladyā€ and was a great gift.

oh and! edit to add I got a huge huge avocado from my sister in a ā€œfruit basketā€ type thing, it also had sugarcane and a pink pineapple in it. the pineapple had no crown of course but the avocados seeds are sprouted and growing and Iā€™ve got the sugarcane in warm soil in the hoophouse, horizontal, Iā€™m hoping that grows. I ate most of it before I noticed two pieces had nodes on them, and realized I could might grow it

I transplanted two crowns of wild elderberryā€¦ one on Jan 26ā€¦ the other on Feb 7ā€¦

4 of 5 stalks have leafed out alreadyā€¦ and some are emerging from the crown.

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do those do ok in dry places? or do they need water and shade? they look real healthy

I have heard that elderberries like to have their feet wetā€¦ so where i planted them in my fieldā€¦ i made this type of bed for them.

When fishing local river and creeks often do see them growing on the bank right near the water.

Not sure how they would do in really dry location.

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that looks really good for planting spot. I was sold several as ā€œdrought tolerantā€ and of course they died! even though I babied then over summer. too dry.

we have no wet spots so I canā€™t grow em I guess. I live seeing these, Iā€™ll look forward to updates in summer when they get going

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@resonanteye ā€¦ i tried a couple named varieties here a few years backā€¦ york and ranchā€¦ and they could not hack it here in the hot humid south east. The first year they grew some bloomed and fruitedā€¦ nice large berries.

But they got the funk (nasty leaf foliage issues) after that and were so unhealthy the next two years they did not even bloom. Yanked them.

These wild TN elderberries I expect to do well hereā€¦ they do have much smaller berriesā€¦ but i expect they may be more potent too. I have used them several times in tea and syrup with very good results.

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I made elderberry shrub from local native berries, years ago. stuff is still so good when you got the ick, I miss out with a little honey and lemon and heat it up to drink.

might be placebo but if it works it works.

donā€™t know if youā€™d make or use shrub but it holds and stays good for maybe a decade from what I know. ACV, mashed berries, steep it forever then strain the solids out. itā€™s real acidic to drink on its own but itā€™s meant to be medicine

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I got miniature arctic babe, necta zee nectarine, necta babe sol dorado and all in one almond from Bay Laurel yesterday. All were living because they were already coming out of dormancy. I presume the flowers will be frozen off this year but there is always next year. Small plants but very thick compared to what I am used to. The rest of my miniature nectarine/peach series is coming from One Green World. Just likely have just bundled for a bigger discount but whatever. To edit here are some pictures of the genetic dwarf nectarines from Bay Laurel.


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try mulching them heavily. they have shallow roots. the mulch holds moisture much better and they grow like weeds. i never water my elders. only the day i plant. i mulch 4in deep by 2ft. replenish every spring.

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I honestly just buy my elderberry supplements. I rarely get sick but when I do find elderberry helps. I can get a jar of elderberry gummies from Costco for pretty cheap and it will last for years in my eyes though. If I am sick I typically donā€™t feel like making a concoction of something.

Today, I planted a Harcot apricot from Bay Laurel Nursery, on Citation rootstock.

Iā€™m using Harcot as a canker resistant base tree to graft other varieties on to.

I treated the roots with Nogall prior to planting. Fingers crossed.

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New to my greenhouse this year: sugarcane!

I have six sticks rooting, most of them are starting to sprout after a few weeks on the heating pad:

The variety is ā€œPurple Ribbonā€ from Green Planet Farm, which they describe this way:

Ribbon cane is an old heirloom from the southern states. It gets its name from the stripes of red/purple and green on the internodes. Or maybe it was so good it won a blue ribbon in a contest? I have seen and grow multiple varieties of ribbon cane. One of them I call ā€˜Purple Ribbonā€™ has a waxy powder coating on internodes. It makes really good cane syrup and is soft and easy to chew also. It is probably 1 degree Fahrenheit hardier than ā€˜Home Greenā€™ as witnessed in a November freeze in North Florida. It is a great variety for chewing and syrup making. This type is more of a vigorous grower compared to other striped canes.

If they manage to overwinter in the greenhouse next winter, they will get a permanent spot against the north wall, where the dragonfruit have failed (too cold in winter).

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My favorite mulberry. So good that I did a second graft this year.

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You give me an idea to graft it over to Pakistan Mulberry.

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