I have a 45 year old 55 hp Deutz tractor, I am pretty sure it will outlive me and I am under 40, that is a plus about tractors is that they can run for a long time. I think I have had over 13 cars in my lifetime already… I was almost buying a new smaller tractor with the hydraulic adjustable front loader bucket but the dealer talked me out of it, he repeated himself many times that the Deutz is all I need and the repair costs for a new tractor would add up. My tractor has a electric drop function for the front loader which does most of what i need it to. Mowing, Hay, Tilling gardens, finger weeder, wood chipping, woodchip and manure spreading, plowing, hauling firewood and gravel… 12 implements in total. I really just enjoy using the tractor besides that it is a great work force multiplier. I put grease in it every year, air in the tires, did some small repairs and oil change.
I would go for a reliable used tractor as long as the gears arent totally fucked. I have to stop to change gears, not the end of the world though. I dream about having stronger hydraulics/more hoses and a front +back PTO shaft, hydraulic bucket, so i could do a few more things in one pass, but then the costs for such a tractor gets up there.
We used to do that, but it ended up being too much work, even using equipment. We still get free loads of wood chips, but I just use the tractor blade to sort of blade them up against the rows. Mostly we now use the wood chips to fill in low spots where it’s gotten muddy from driving the tractor through.
This is probably an old pic you are thinking of (taken in 2018). This was back when we used to mulch a lot with wood chips. Makes for a picturesque orchard, but too much time.
When the fall herbicide runs out, we have to do another in the summer. So the orchard generally gets two applications of herbicides. Plus we still have to mow some.
I use a sickle bar to mow under the trees.
We used to use glyphosate under the trees, but we’ve had too many accidents, so we don’t use glyphosate anymore, unless it’s with a wiper.
We still have to mulch around young trees and new grafts. Or pull the weeds by hand. That takes a lot of time. Just like Bob, we just don’t have time to do everything, so we try to find ways to minimize labor inputs.
It’s a balancing act a little bit. We don’t have a lot of time to weed, so we try to use herbicides anywhere we can.
Tomatoes take a lot of time. They don’t like herbicide much at all. Something like Prowl is OK, but Prowl doesn’t offer a lot of control. This year I put a pre-emergent down in Jan. (Goal). We weren’t able to plant tomatoes until about May 1. They still are showing some damage from a pre-emergent applied 4 months ago. But so far, the damage seems acceptable. Like I said, it’s a balancing act. We also mulch the tomatoes with hay.
Mature trees will tolerate some weeds under them. We just don’t want the weeds getting so tall that they start to grow up through the tree canopy. Young trees won’t grow much choked by weeds, or planted in straight sod.
In terms of prunings, we just mow over those with a rotary mower. It makes a heck of a racket, but it chews the prunings up pretty good. I used to even mow the most of the prunings in my backyard orchard with a ZTR mower. It dulls the blades as Bob mentioned, but a mower will still tear the grass off, even with really dull blades. I don’t have high standards for a lawn. I just try to keep the grass all one length.
My wife bought a robo mower (just like a robot vacuum) for our backyard. The nice thing about it is that it mows under the trees. So I don’t have to apply any herbicide under the trees in the backyard. I just have to place metal stakes around any new trees, so that the robo mower doesn’t mow them down.
A disadvantage of the robo mower is that it won’t mow any prunings.
This is way off topic, but actually it’s somewhat unusual for the gears to go bad on tractors. It’s one of their stronger points. On a decent tractor, the gears are hardened to a very hard Rockwell. I’ve seen gears grind up metal without any substantial damage. And it’s almost impossible to wear hardened gears out on a tractor.
Even on my orchard tractor, it had a part come loose inside the gear case (part of an internal PTO brake). It completely ground the part to metal shavings. I’ve done close internal inspection inside the gear case, and the gears are still in excellent condition. That’s how it’s been anytime I’ve looked at gear cases. They always look brand new, with no discernible signs of wear on the teeth.
The problem occurs because the bearings in the cases aren’t as durable. Shielded bearings help prevent foreign material from entering the bearing surfaces, but bearings don’t like shock, and are generally much more fragile than gears. Most of the time a failure in the gear case results from a failure in a bearing. The bearing breaks into pieces and comes apart. Then the gear shaft is no longer in alignment, which can break the gears and cause a catastrophic failure. That’s why it’s always best, if you are inside a gear case, to replace any bearings you can easily replace. And use the best quality bearings you can find (Timken, NTN, NSK, FAG, etc.).
Most people probably aren’t interested in this. But since you brought it up, I thought I’d share my experience.
@DroppingFruit had a great post about a tractor attachment that makes wood chip spreading fast and easy. I want to make sure that everyone knows about it.
Thank you for alerting me. If it looks like we continue to get lots of wood chips that side discharge mulching implement is something I may seriously consider.
Yes, that is my preferred approach- it’s best to keep the ground and patio fairly close in height. The only time you might need to do more is if the grass flops into the patio and stays under the mower blades. But that is dependent on how sharp you want things (use an edger or just ignore it…). I might edge that kind of thing every few months, as long as the mower can get anything that sticks up.
While I have more than I want, I don’t think I have enough to make a dent in the retaining wall. Maybe I should just dig holes in places I am not planting anything, bury the rocks as fill and take the dirt to make raised mounds in wet areas…Though it sounds like a lot of digging.
My understanding was that Persimmons send a taproot down, so it should help with competition. Also, they drop their fruit if fertilized too much, so I wouldn’t think some competition would be bad.
Mulberries send out very long roots. I have one that has been very productive in an area that grass struggles to grow (soil gets very dry quickly). Here’s a pic of Alan from a long time ago holding up a mulberry transplant, showing how much root he was able to dig up.
That really depends on how much time and effort it is to feed your chipper. I’m pretty sure it was faster for me to bring them to the dump. Though I am probably being a bit rough on the car…
I’m not sure if the dye is bad for anything or now, but prefer to not use it. The LM does fade over time. Here’s some that has been there for a month or so, as you can see by the various debris which has accumulated on it. .
I do that as well. Hay also does well for potatoes.
I can picture this, especially if you get something like Bindweed…ugh.
Or, if you plant things too close together…I actually had gooseberries growing up into plum trees. Black Velvet is by far the most vigorous gooseberry, growing 8+ feet tall (when supported by a plum tree). In addition to being painful to manage (thorns aside), it is also not good from a spray perspective, as you could be spraying the plums when the gooseberries are almost ready to pick.
I actually completely re-worked that area, removing the gooseberries (giving them away) and having 1.5 of the 2 plums die. Now it’s mostly potatoes, as I noticed they were doing pretty well in that part of the yard (stayed a bit moist for much of the summer).
Great advice Bob. I concur with so many things you have said here. All things we learn over time. I wish I would have had these helpful rules years ago. All great advice from your experiences. The only thing I have not had experience with was the wood chipper. It just looked like a lot more trouble than it was worth. Your experience with one showed me not to try to buy one. TY. There are two cities around me that pick up leaves. I will double check with them about offering the composted leaves to their citizens. I have had the most horrible time with the mulching with wood mulch. Put it down one year then next year it seems to disappear. Where does it go? That is the biggest money maker the landscapers have- mulching and weeding. I’m DONE with wood mulching. Maybe the leaf mold composting is the answer.
Bob offers sound advice, but it certainly isn’t how I manage my 3 acres of orchard, nursery and gardens.
Only if you are sustaining a neat sod. It takes a powerful mower to reduce mowing to once or twice a year and I subdue weeds between trees on much of my property with Stihl’s most powerful weed whacker. It’s good to know that a close cut of sod below fruit trees is only needed through spring where I live, that is when it most benefits trees and fruit. There may even be an advantage here to having tall weeds and grass under the trees in the final weeks of ripening by decreasing available water and increasing sugar in fruit.
If my land wasn’t filled with boulders and very steep, I’d manage my sod with a sickle bar mower when I wasn’t whacking it to the nub. They are the most efficient at mowing tall grass because they only cut plants at a single place- their base.
I like to let weeds grow a bit under the trees preceding first of two insecticide sprays I do in May here. Right before the first spray I whack under the trees mercilessly right to dirt which assures there will be no flowering weeds under my trees when the pesticide drips from them, so no bees either. Mowers don’t get low enough.
Eliminating seeds has its useful purpose- it reduces the vole population, for one thing, but flowering weeds nourish your native pollinators and seeds feed your birds- not to mention the beauty of butterflies if your “weeds” include food for them. Sustaining nourishing plants on your property for as much of the season as possible will likely keep local populations of pollinators high.
Mulching is essential in my methods because my nursery lacks irrigation and mulch DOES help keep weeds down, especially if you are focused on spring weeds. It also makes my soil more productive for fruit tree production and not only reduces evaporation, but woodchips store a great deal of water- enough to get all but my smallest nursery trees through the worst droughts we get here. As they break down to humous the water-holding capacity of the soil increases as well. For established trees this can become a problem in the humid region if trees become excessively vigorous. But trees cannot be too vigorous in my nursery or when establishing trees in my orchard.
Bob is correct that for pristine properties mulch can encourage some very invasive perennial weeds and I’m not suggesting his advice isn’t good for typical suburban landscapes.
For me, the down side of woodchips is that some apple varieties seem to develop corking on fruit from excess K and chips are loaded with it, especially if the chips are from trimming of smaller branches. Also, it’s possible to make soil too good for fruit trees because moderate growth is always the goal once fruit trees are established. Excessive vigor damages fruit quality and increases pruning.
Shredded wood mulch can completely stop weeds if there are not strong roots of weeds below and even then, it tends to matt up and deflect water, thereby eliminating weeds when you spread it to about a 3" depth at the base of trees. Contrary to the literature, having it right up to the trunk rarely damages trees (don’t they mulch themselves right to the trunk in the forest?). At least if it isn’t a soggy mulch.
I’m more of a farmer, Bob more of a suburbanite landscape manager. I fricking hate lawns, and got into my business to make sod useful, as a means of holding on soil for the trees I love.
Pruning in late summer instead of dormancy tends to reduce overall growth of trees, so adequately vigorous, established trees may require less pruning if they are managed by annual pruning at this time.
I’m not exactly maintaining “neat sod”. Some of the lawns have plenty of weeds, dandelions, etc and I am fine with that. But, they can’t be growing out of control (tenants, neighbors, and eventually the town would complain). As long as they are mostly greenish and about the height a lawn should be, I’m fine.
When you said “a powerful mower”, did you mean a “weed whacker”? It sounds like the amount of rocks and hills on your property makes mowing limited.
I’ve got rocks and hills at my house as well and would really prefer a nice open area. Much easier to manage.
Agreed, though even with mulch you may still need some water when it doesn’t rain for a month in summer. But I’m not against mulching to improve the soil or improve water retention. I don’t see it as a viable solo weed suppression strategy (for me at least) to rely on. It sounds like you use it to make WW more effective.
That may be part of the reason I don’t like relying on mulch. I don’t usually get it down early in spring. Spring is a time for me to graft, plant, prune, spray, and start mowing. I might do some mulching as part of planting, but large-scale mulching is often delayed until those others are done. By the time I think of do it, things are already way out of control.
When I do it, it is quite a bit of work to clear the weeds, lay down cardboard, haul the woodchips over in a wheel barrow. Not something I can do in so much yard. If it kept an area weed-free for a few years then maybe it would be worth it, but it seems to only buy a few months.
Mowing on the other hand is something I need to do anyway, given that it is a yard in a populated area and I have at least 5 direct neighbors- my yard is a bit over-sized for the area.
One apparent exception to this is jujubes. The best quality jujubes I’ve grown have been on the most vigorous sites (which also require the most mowing). The trick is to shift them from growing to producing by heading back the new growth in late June or July. Once you prune them, the flowers (which continually bloom for quite a while) start setting fruit. And plenty of water doesn’t seem to hurt brix- any decent jujube will be 25+ brix, with some into the mid-30’s (40 is my record, but that was a very non-productive graft with 3 fruit on a huge branch). Those brix values are when they are crunchy- if you start to dry them, the brix obviously goes up.
I don’t think there is as much difference as you might think. I just have an extra requirement that things need to look acceptable in a suburban/city (average property is 0.1 to 0.2 acres) neighborhood. Not pristine, but good enough that I don’t get complaints.
You probably have aesthetic considerations for the orchards you plant as well. You just don’t need to worry about doing their lawns
I love big open lawns- I look at them and see a lot of space to plant things in. Though I’d hate to keep such a lawn in it’s current state, as that would be a waste.
Of course, when looking at properties to buy, while open lawns (all around) are best, I’m open to ones with big trees, Much better to get one with trees, than one where the trees are in the neighbor’s yard. I can have my trees cut down, but neighbors with trees often want to keep them.
I think it all comes down to what model you have. If you have a beast that I see the tree guys with that you just toss everything and it, it would be much faster. BUT, those are expensive and possibly a lot of maintenance. So, probably not worth it unless you have a lot to get rid of. If I had a 10 acre orchard, I’d probably want one.
But, when using something like this (I went down to the basement for the pic), it’s more trouble than it’s worth to trim all the side branches and feed it all through.
Probably improving your soil. Even thick layers eventually vanish and they are a lot of work to cart around.
It won’t last any longer. If anything, it lasts for less time.
But, there are a few benefits:
1.) Much better to run over with the mower
2.) Free
3.) Easier to carry around- a little goes a long way, if you just mulch a foot around the trees. Rather than using wheelbarrows full of wood chips to fill large beds, I can bring a bucketful to mulch several trees.
I’m surprised no one else has a robotic lawn mower. I’ve got kids and I like the way a clean short lawn looks. I was mowing 3 times a week in the spring to abide by the 1/3rd rule! My old craftsman tractor has been taking a beating and was in the market for a walk behind to avoid drunkenly driving through my fence again when I pitched to my wife the idea of a robot. It has it’s pitfalls and it seems to always know when you have a hose out or there is a spot he could get stuck but now that I’ve got the kinks out it works fantastic. It can get hung up on larger branches but it’s a lot easier to stumble around picking up sticks than to operate a motor vehicle.
And how much did your robot mower cost? I have 5 acres and I would love to use one of those and save myself a LOT of time. I see a couple of them in my neighborhood the last couple of years.
I know for sure it a lot of work to cart the wheelbarrows full of mulch around. My yard is not flat so it makes it even harder. The bucket of leaf mold would be easier but if it doesn’t last as long I am right back at weeds and the such in the same areas. It is a constant battle. Like you mentioned as long as my grass area is green it can have weeds in it. I saw my dad trying to fight the weeds and mostly the dandelions over the many years at our house. Whatever method he tried the weeds would still grow. So he just finally gave in and let them grow along with the grass. Harmony in the yard.
I would look at leaf mold as more of a suppressor, than a blocker. The key difference is that it is fine to run over with the mower (the real thing which stops weeds from getting 3’ tall…), while still building the soil, retaining moisture, etc. But if the area is one you can’t reach with the mower, then I don’t think LM is the answer.
I’m guessing that your 1/3 rule is that you can’t cut more than 1/3 of the height off at one time? Though I’m not sure it really matter if you are just going to come back the next day and cut more…
My version of the 1/3 rule is “don’t mow until you can reduce the height to 1/3 or less of original”. Otherwise it isn’t worth mowing
I actually don’t mind doing the lawns. It get’s me some good exercise. I would think that I get enough from volleyball and badminton, but I play those during the winter and am probably not getting enough then, at least based on my fitbit. Once spring comes, then I’m active enough…
And mowing in early fall is pretty good, picking fruit as I go. Sometimes I’ll finish up too full for dinner, packed with jujubes.
By the time the leaves are down, I’m mostly hibernating indoors (once it is in the 50’s, I bundle up and venture out…). But, I often travel through neighboring towns which make residents bag their leaves up (my town just goes around with a big vaccum and sucks up the piles). So, I could quickly pick up a bunch of leaves to throw into my backyard. Maybe do it right before a big rain storm to minimize the loss due to wind (and fewer irritated neighbors due to my lost leaves).
I’ve picked up leaves like that to insulate figs (something I gave up on 3+ years ago), but I don’t think I’ve tried them for mulch. Getting them to stick on a steep hill would be the trickiest part.
When you are working hard the 50’s aren’t necessary to be comfortable. Apply your scientific bent to clothing and you can be quite comfortable once temps rise above single digits. People do ski for entertainment.
As long as that north wind isn’t blowing hard. I do hate winter north wind, but I’ve far too many trees to prune to be that picky. I’ve been known to prune during blizzards. I did it at Rodam Rockefeller’s place one year and was comfortable. The bitch was trying to get home… the Taconic was a bumper to bumper parking lot from The Stone Barns to Peekskill hollow road. I had to navigate side roads all the way home
My eccentric level of devotion did become a talking point among the people who hire me…anyone willing to prune trees in a blizzard must be truly devoted to their craft.
BTW, if the nectarines and peaches continue to size up on my trees I will feel good enough this season to invite people over, and my wife is feeling better also as she can once again interact with people without a mask on.
I have almost no J. plums, although the grafts of the variety you brought me is one with a decent crop, not sure if it’s the variety or the location. Tiny fruit remains on my E. plums and some are sizing up so the jury is still out on them. Peaches and nects are not consistent but some trees seem to be loaded.
By next week I should pretty much know, but I certainly won’t have a lot of stone-fruit thinning to do this year. One cold night in Feb was all it took to mess things up. Some of my customers have no stone fruit at all. North of me, no one has any unless they are in a site protected by nearby big water.
It’s expensive and for five acres you would need the big model but it is automated and saves me a ton of time. Mowgli is part of the family now that my daughter named it.
People are crazy. I tried skiing and decided that I could happily live the rest of my life without going out in the cold on slippery snow and trying to not die sliding off the side of the mountain into the trees.
During the winter, indoors, I’m wearing 3+ layers including a thermal layer. With that, I’m comfortable at 70F. Once it is 80F, I can go with short sleeves, though a sweater is still good. I much prefer 90F to 40F. Maybe someday I’ll add some insulation inside my body…
I have gone out in the winter, but anything more than a 30 second trip and I’m bundling up with a ski mask (one good thing to come from skiing…) and parka. And still making it as short of an excursion as possible. When it gets into the 40’s or 50’s is when I cut scionwood.
Which means I often don’t finish pruning, even with far far fewer trees than you manage. In fact, I’m actually still doing some pruning now. In a way, I like it, in that I can see where the fruit is when making decisions about what to remove.
Glad to hear that your wife is doing well and you may have another get-together. It’s also great that many of your trees did set. Too bad about the J plums and apricots. Mine are hit or miss, though the apricots at the rentals (closer to the ocean, 5 vs 1 mile) seem better. My J plums are actually worse than apricots in the most have no set or 1-2 on the tree. The only one with more seems to be Flavor Grenade (Geo Pride next to it has none). FG still doesn’t have enough to need thinning. After typing this, I remembered that 2 cherry plums (Sprite & Delight) had good set as well, but it also had lots of black knot and I pruned it low and grafted pluots on yesterday.
My peach/nectarines did set well. I’ve got a lot of thinning to do, though that is a much better problem than a lot of your Northern customers have.
