Mother Nature bats last!

General Gardening
#1

Subject is Rule Number 5 of Farmer Fred’s 10 Rules of Gardening. It’s so true! I had three grafts take and grow but now, a whole year later, are dead. Really!? They were fine last fall. Most of my grafts are fine, but it still stings!
I had a spider infestation and I didn’t notice it in time. I guess as 7 of 8 pluot seedlings died. The last is still in critical care too, so waiting for Mother Nature’s turn at the plate!

Now many things are going great. All can be redone just a pain and may never happen.
I’ll have more pluot pollen floating around this year, it may be for the best anyway! I’ll have more options. More genes to choose from. Plus if the one survives, it shows vigor over all the others, this is a good thing!

My mulberry seedling is leafing out. It is a Morus nigra from Bulgaria, from zone 6 in Bulgaria. The only nigra in that area. It produced both male and female flowers and I managed to grow a plant from a seed from this very rare (and somewhat famous) tree. My plant may be the only example in this country. The tree produced both sexes because it has a fungal infection. About 150 years old. It looks like the experts in Bulgaria were able to help the tree, but time will tell. No other nigras have ever grown in such a cold area. This is a very important plant.As some feel nigra is the best fruit in the world. And we may be able to grow it in colder zones now!

3 Likes
#2

Oh wow, a fungus infection can make you turn bigendered? (Or at least in trees…) Is it a safe fungus, you will not do harm to local trees and plants if you plant the seed?

#3

Nope, seeds don’t carry it, the tree has to get it by spores. The spores would not be inside the fruit, which is where the seeds are. We save trees all the time from canker and other infections by taking scion and restarting the trees. I just did this with an apple tree. Not mine, an old heirloom a friend asked me to save.
Some infections could be carried by seeds, but this is a canker from what I understand. You would not find that in seeds. Many of us have canker infected peach trees and trade scion freely.

2 Likes