All those plants look awesome, heck the blackberry looks fantastic! Good choice for blackberry btw!
I bought the other 4 in 1 pluot a few years ago, but my cold winters have been killing the fruit buds. Still, the plant is doing well. Mine was from Bay Laural.
I put mine in the ground today. First trees Iāve ever planted. Cross my fingers and see if they ever produce fruit.
You guys would know better than me but those 4-in-1 trees sure are ugly. I guess thatās why most people graft their own. Since I feel like Iām starting late I just want to get a jump on a few varieties.
Here is a picture of that asian pear I mention with the 5th variety. It needs some trimming for sure. Any advice on what to chop? Obviously the two internal branches heading toward the center of the tree. The growth looks too vertical and I guess I should cut them short to an outward facing bud.
The cherry is an ugly tree. Itās very think but Iām not sure whatās going on with the top graft. As you can see in the pic Iāve labeled each branch and also drawed arrows to 4 limbs Iām not sure what they are. There are no labels. The top graft is glacier and itās grafted onto that large limb which appears to be grafted onto the thick trunk. Not sure what the heck it is.
The black gold cherry looks pretty good to my eye. any pruning need done to it?
The 4-in-1 apple also looked pretty good and would be fantastic for espalier because the 4 grafts are in a horizontal plane. I think I should clip the branches some and train them to make sure they grow outward. Or maybe I should clip them to a bud that moves out of that horizontal plane.
I bought a potted Honeycrisp tree from Lowes today as well. It looks to have a pretty good branching structure. should I prune down to 4 scaffold branches?
Well after not getting any kind of shipping notification on my second shipment I called raintree today. They apologized that my trees missed the April 15 shipping day and told me they will ship out on May 1st. So that means Iāll get them around May 7th. Kinda late for planting bare root trees in 6A isnāt it? I guess as long as they are still dormant theyāll be fine but Iām gonna have to get them in the ground and watered well as soon as they get here.
Iām in 6a and we have freezing temps, and my trees are just now budding out. I have a house full of tomato plants I canāt put out yet. I wish spring would get here. May 7th works for me. Seems about perfect. Low tonight is 28F
Our low tonight is 30, with another 30 tomorrow night. I almost planted tomatoes last week- itās good I held off.
I just got my Raintree order today. The original tracking said Tuesday, but it looks like it took them from Friday until Tuesday to get the package to UPS in IL.
Iām not sure where they got the Nadia trees, but they are very nice. Far better than anything Iāve gotten from Raintree before. They must have known that Nadia would be a big seller and were well prepared.
It was about 1" caliper with a great structure. I counted 13-14 good sized branches. At least 3-4 of them have flowers, so I figure Iāve got a good shot at fruit next year.
The other parts of the order were OK, but nothing special:
3 black currants: Ben Lomond, Strata, and Black Reward
Rootstocks: 5 Krymsk 1, 2 OHxF87, and 2 Quince
I received my Raintree order on the second week of April. Nadia tree was the biggest and really good. It started to leaf out already ahead of the other trees planted at the same time. It should be very vigorous! The worst tree was Bella apple. It is tiny whip about 2 feet long. It is healthy and all, I just think that it doesnāt cost 27$ + shipping that I paid for it. I received the same tiny whip of Belmac apple last year along with 2 other apple trees which were decent size. So I would not recommend Raintree nursery if you are ordering apples. You are risking to receive tiny whips for quite a big price.
I potted up/planted out my Raintree order yesterdayā¦seemed about typical for a Raintree orderā¦nothing horribleā¦ One thing I did was cut everything back. The trees they sent were very tallā¦some were far too branched out for my needsā¦i like trees with low branches if i can get that.
Wow reading through this thread makes one wonder just how bad the BB stores really are. I was at Loweās last week and most of their trees were really nice. I guess if you just wanted a tree and was not too picky on the variety or the rootstock then maybe the BB store would be the way to go.
I also was at Southern States yesterday and it seems that everything I had previously said about them has changed. Their trees were still of decent quality, but no exciting varieties. For example the apples in stock were Jonathan, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Macintosh, and one other old variety I cannot recall. Terrible selection across the board.
Iām curious as to what orders from Schlabachās looked like this year?
I have been buying from Raintree for years .
Was always satisfied. Sometimes stuff just happens.
But the trees grow and fruit well.
The trees never look as good as the potted trees in the big box stores
mi
Mike
In our Menards store we have so nice varieties of apples that it was really hard to resist buying some. We have Zestar, Honeycrisp, Snowsweet, Candycrisp, Fuji, Gala, Sweetsixteen and some others I do not remember. They are big and well formed trees. With my whips from Raintree I am about 2 years behind. And they cannot cross pollinate my two other apple trees as it was planned. Well, lesson learnedā¦
Wowā¦that is a nice selection. Too bad we donāt have a Menardās around here.
Antmaryā¦what do the trees sell for at Menardās? I wonder if they also offer the 1 year guarantee like the other BB stores?
I just checked for the closest store and itās 3 hrs. away in Massilon,OH. Darn it.
They sell them around 22-24$ I do not remember for sure. Menards is a really BB store in our area, bigger then Loweās or Home Depot. I usually do not buy plants in it, so I do not know if they have 1 year warranty on them. To bad that they do not list varieties of plants on their web site, like Loweās does. This year the managers did really good job there.
I got my nadia in this week on thurs. and going to plant it today. I took a pic of mine with
the roots which had some damage. There was a big gash all the way around one of the roots
between the red arrows and had to cut the root off thatās within the red circle I put on the picture. Doesnāt look like a lot of root is there to me.
My question is what do any of you think I should do to the branches on the top of the tree if anything at all?
Thanks
My top was similar to that. I cut off the top 1.5ā of the main trunk and have 4 branches coming out for scaffolds. There are too many limbs on them the way they come. Your roots are not as good but the tree should still do fine, thats just one spot.
If you want an open center, which works well for most fruiting trees, then pick out 3-4 branches and cut right above that.
As far as your roots, as long as they arenāt rotted (black, dried, etc) when you cut into them youāll be just fine. This year I kind of did my own little experiment concerning that very issue. A lot of people complain about that stuff, thinking that if they have tons of roots they will be things better off than of they only had a few. I planted various trees, some with tons of roots, some with very few, some I had to do severe root pruning to prevent issues later on, etc. Every single one of them that I dug up this season to replant in pots had tons of new roots. And if you were group them by caliper you would be hard pressed to notice any difference in root growth.
This is my Nadia. I left lower 4 branches and pruned off the bushy top. I planted it in the ground, I hope it will be hardy enough.
Looks good Antmaryā¦nice rich black soil you have there.
This year is the first time Iāve ordered from Raintree. I havenāt received my order yet because Iām on the tail end of the shipping schedule. I hope they can fill the order. Sometimes I get the feeling that retailers in this business give priority to shipping order, rather than āfirst come, first served.ā Many times, from other retailers, Iāve gotten partial orders with packing slip stating that things were out of stock. Is this because they end up with more bad stock than the statistical norm? It seems to happen to me frequently. In some cases they donāt clarify whether the out-of-stock item will be sent later or it is completely canceled from the order. I often wonder why they couldnāt send me an earlier notice so I could change plans accordingly.
Iāve noticed that all branches are typically left on the large caliper trees. I guess this is to allow more flexibility for shaping the tree. In my case, I would cut off all the lower branches. I prefer the scaffolds to start around 4ā so I can deal with the wildlife issues. The only thing I donāt like is that most of the branches are at narrow crotch angles. Iām starting to develop a preference for smaller caliper whips. I stick them in pot for the first year and grow them to the shape I want. Then I plant them in their final location following year.