If my body no longer contains the cough medicine I was given at 10 years old, I don’t expect a grown tree to retain the spray from the original cutting it grew from; it would’ve long been metabolized and/or eliminated by the time it grew. That said, if he doesn’t want sprayed branches, it’s his prerogative.
I myself have somewhat strong feelings against agro-chemicals (particularly *-cides, not so much ferts), but I don’t consider them an absolute deal-breaker. I trust that my fellow fruit growers will use their good judgement, and not send me something that will overtly poison me.
I once bought a daylily from ebay with the intent to eat from it, and on asking about the matter, the seller said they would send my particular roots untreated, so I could harvest the first season with confidence. So I’m sure if you raise any concerns with the person you’re dealing with, they’ll take your preferences into account.
As a related tangent, I bought some snail baits that were said to be “organic” (Garden Safe was the brand). I decided not to use them for a while, out of concern for my local millipede population (they’re wonderful little compost makers). I ended up using it as the snail and slug population started booming again, and while I haven’t checked on the millipede population lately, I think they’re probably doing fine in the compost pile – I know the centipedes are doing fine.
The snail baits did come with the standard warnings, but as they were safe to use with root veggies, I wasn’t too concerned. My question to those who aren’t as ignorant as I am… ¿Should I be concerned about the snail baits?
I am glad to know you were not in kind trying to troll me too.
In short, my point was that if I were to acceot from strangers scions, and they use multiple poisons regularly, it may still have some of it on the scion. So besides scientists may have done studies on that, I do know that trace chemicals impact other plants.
For example all my neighbors and me hate how many poisons of unknown names onto the grass. One day we were notified keep pets off grass 48 hours as moss killer was sprayed. I have never seen moss in the grass here, but where Iused to live it did not bother me. My cat eats grass, dogs poop in the grass, and kids walk barefoot in it. 2 years ago my grapes were affected by one of these many weed killers. I had an ingredient causing less fruits to ripen and took a year to improve. I researched the damage to the grape leaves is how I discovered it was not a virus but chemical. The studies showed grapes are very sensitive to many chemicals and suggested to use a different weed killing mix which does not contain that chemical. Last year no deformed leaves and fruiting was a bit better.
In that one herbicide used, it never was sprayed on my grapes or even near it. They said in the article merely being in the wind a tiny trace would do that. So with the complexity of genes, human, animal, and plant, and that fruiting and leafing can be dramatically impacted if you use certain chemicals, I really do not want to get something saturated in who knows what and graft it, and then anything bad happen…be it to my other plants nearby, to that plant itself, or to me.
As I PMd an admin, we have too much cancer in my family. Anything that I can eat or grow with as little poisons I will. Nobody else has to copy my ways. But I do have that choice myself to watch what I consume.
With established mature trees, I think it depends on a number of factors (soil, type of tree, vigor of rootstock, etc.). For example, in my climate where the soil is good and summer rain generally plentiful, mature peach trees still tend to slow down too much, if sod is allowed to grow up next to the trunk. Optimum fruiting wood is a shoot about 18" to 24" long. Mature peach trees surrounded by close sod tend not to produce that type of good wood, assuming they are growing peaches, and not taking a year off because of frosts. They will produce a lot of 4" or 6" shoots, which don’t grow the very best peaches.
I think a mature apple on standard roots may well benefit if surrounded by sod. They generally have so much vigor anyway, the sod may calm them a little bit.
Except for Creekweb. I don’t know any more about Creekweb beyond reading his posts to the old forum, but those posts gave me tremendous respect for him, especially his knowledge of persimmons. I still check the old forum just to see his updates, like an excellent one most recently on the new hybrid persimmon Kasandra.
Why can’t all the peripheral discussion from this thread be taken to the politics category? If I were a moderator, and if I had been following this discussion from the beginning, I would have removed every tangential comment after Scott’s recommendation to move on. Even if these kind of discussions are appropriate for the General Fruit Growing category, they’re hijacking this thread. If anyone wants to continue any of the tangential discussion, I’d encourage you to do so, but take it to the Politics category. I’m going to go ahead and start a thread there just for that purpose.
Do you have an idea you bad the situation is with Dicamba drift in NC? I’ve read really bad stories from Arkansas and Missouri, but I haven’t heard anything else yet.
I doubt the situation has improved. Looks like the drift in NC is effecting Tobacco and specialty crops which carry a high dollar value per acre.
Also noticed that Farm Bureau insurance now had a new endorsement where you can add coverage for spray drift if you are a policy owner of their farm policy
I get the opportunity to witness the tremendous variation in tree growth response to sod competition. Certainly peaches suffer the most- they also suffer the most from competition from nearby forest trees.
You are completely correct that the type of soil can make a huge difference, and a soil that encourages very vigorous growth for most species also will likely do the same for peaches and peach trees in such soils can be long lived and very vigorous with sod right up to the trunk.
What is strange is that after all my years installing orchards in a very wide range of soils I’m still unable to accurately predict how trees will react to any particular soil- I mean sometimes it’s obvious that a soil will be good or challenging, of course, but surprises are still frequent. I must just not have adequate intelligence to sort these variables out.
I was at a site today that the soil was so compacted when I installed the trees about 16 years ago the holes were impossible to dig with a shovel, it required hours of pic work breaking up the highly compacted soil- a compacted silt, not a clay.
We broke up enough soil to assure adequate size, but not enough to achieve the size that the trees have obtained, with continued high vigor while competing with sod. The peach trees were 3 yrs. old when they went in and are continuing to provide a maximum level of vigor and yield while competing with a mowed sod. .
Do you suppose it may have something to do with having been installed in the property’s leach field?
Incidentally, it is the most conventional method of commercial production of all common fruits in this country to have sod middles and herbicide treated tree rows to assure maximum productivity.
I checked the snail bait bag, and the only major warning was that it could irritate the eyes. The active ingredient was iron phosphate. ¿Would that be considered particularly toxic to man or nature? I recently mulched my vegetable garden bed with grass clippings and sprinkled more of the bait, out of concern that the mulch would attract slugs.
And regarding the millipedes I mentioned earlier, I haven’t checked under rocks for the round ones, but I saw plenty of Polydesmids in the big yam vine container, so they seem unaffected by the bait so far (though admittedly, I hadn’t sprinkled near there last time).
I hope everyone following this saw my new title and/or posts made above whereby I stated several reasons why I am now very confident that my peach tree problem was not due to herbacide drift from my neighbor, but from my own use of copper (perhaps worsened by the Vinegar I used to acidify the water which apparently increases Phytotoxicity of copper on leaves (Thanks @Olpea ).
Anyway, I thought you should all see how bad things got with my peach and plum trees. Remember these photos the next time you decide to use copper as a fungicide on trees with leaves. Not that it shouldn’t be done, just remember to reduce the strength of your copper from what you use on dormant trees!!! I warn you, these photos are not for the weak hearted! ha
The good news is the trees did not drop much fruit, and they are very rapidly putting out new leaves- both at the tips and all along the limb/stems where old leaves were. So honestly the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d have thought.
My binary was a bit rusty so had a chance to use BobC’s post as a refresher. I was struck by the law of unintended consequences several years ago when I mixed Daconil with Neem and sprayed my tomatoes. The result was an alarming level of leaf curl but ultimately no harm to the plants or the fruit. Please note that I was trying to use low to very low impact fungicides to avoid damage. Be very careful what you mix and what strength it is mixed when spraying plants.
While the method was a bit unusual, I liked what Bob’s post said. For those who don’t speak binary, there are some translators out there you can cut and post his message into. I suspect he did it this way because some of the moderators were warning folks not to say anything wrong so be safe he just sort of coded his message.
Nope and nope. Clark clued all us admins in what Bob said in binary. Even before Clark’s translation some of the admins knew what the message said. We admins aren’t the country bumpkins you assume .
Keep trying to deliver secret messages in secret posts, and we will employ the Turing machine against your enigma codes. You can’t win… This is our latest secret meeting among admins, about deciphering Bob’s recent code:
ha
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