I have hundreds of plantings and I only shoot 13-lined squirrels on occasion, or, groundhogs. That’s the extent of what I do here.
My buddy’s family (split land) has dogs chasing everything but they use no traps of any kind. They do shoot squirrels and rabbits and whatever else there… deer/you name it.
Dax
I shoot all the critters. Possum, Raccoon, squirrel, Dillo’s etc. I haven’t had any worries from deer so far but if i do i will at least shoot at them hopefully they won’t come back. They eat to much they may not get to again. I had one eat ALL the leave off of one Pecan and one Mulberry last year. they both recovered and were young trees and look nice this year but i did wrap them both with 6 foot chicken wire just in case
Buds are breaking on Mcmillan grafts that I made about 10 days ago. I cut the tops off the trees Saturday to force the grafts into growth.
I’m seeing some mouse-ear leaves on a few of my pecan trees. I found this Horticulture Specialties site that sells nickel plus spray. Does anyone know of a cheaper source? I called several of the nickel plus distributors in my area, but they
deal in large amounts. Is there another form of nickel that is as effective as nickel plus. I don’t need much.
These trees were purchased last year and came looking like this. I was hoping this Spring they would snap out of it, but they actually got worse.
While it is not as fast as foliar spray, basic slag as a soil amendment does wonders for missing metals such as nickel and copper. It is high PH so be careful not to apply excessive amounts.
Lol, when I first read “basic slag” my first thought was to pick up all my welding slag. I’m glad I googled basic slag. Thanks for the information.
Half of my potted pecan grafts are growing extremely vigorously. The other half is soon to follow. Looks like all my bark grafts are taking; however there was a hiccup. As I pulled up to the farm I saw a bird sitting on my pecan graft that was growing well. Apparently, the perch was not suitable for him. I made another bird perch and moved it closer (about an inch) from the scion. The prior perch was about 3 inches away. Hopefully, someone can learn from my mistake. All the growth was knocked off, but there was another bud that was swollen green under the parafilm. Luckily, this was the only tree that I did two bark grafts on. It has a double central leader form so the other graft is fine. I would prefer the former graft take since this leader is straighter.
I finally got a minute to post this interesting photo. This “tree” has three grafts on it (it’s for scion wood only, I will keep it bush form). You can really see how apical dominance and larger understock affects the scion vigor. The two higher grafts are both bark grafts, the lowest graft is a saddle graft. I really like bark grafting pecan, but I look forward to trying some 3 or 4 flaps; I trust Dax’s experience with these. Nothing come close to the amount of cambium contact with the banana style grafts.
I know my trees are way less “kept” than others on this forum. I take a more wild approach… not really, I just don’t have time.
I have about 30 emerged seedling pecans and about 500 seed in starter cups. I also have about 400 treepots ordered from http://www.stuewe.com/ to grow them to grafting size and age. Barring incident, I want to have at least 200 seedlings to plant on my land next spring.
Which pot size are you going with? Also, did you purchase the trays to root prune or are you constructing something yourself? I am amazed at how quickly pecans send roots out the bottom of the 14 inch tall pots.
Edit: I meant to ask earlier, were you able to get Prilop grafted. I have at least one successful graft of all the pecan scions you sent me. I’m pretty sure I can say the same for the black walnut. I was shocked to see many of the black walnut grafts I did almost 2 months ago are waking up now.
going on memory, the pots were tp818 which should be 18 inches deep and about 8 inches square. I based the decision on Wes Rice’s recommendation in his book where he states that they are large enough to grow a seedling to grafting size.
I do not yet have scionwood of Prilop. It is not as high on my priority list after I found out it is getting scab pretty bad in some areas of Texas.
I have some of the 6 X 6 X 16 inch treepots. I like them a lot. The only drawback is the trees do best spaced apart vs. crammed together. That much root creates a lot of above ground growth. The bigger fabric style pots are nice too, and they don’t have to be propped up. I like the deeper roots of the treepot trees more.
I’m starting to see some results from the pecan grafts. Overall average is about 70% takes. I still have plenty of scionwood so will put on a few more grafts this weekend. With the recent rain, these should give at least 50% takes. If I put 2 grafts per tree, most of them will wind up with at least one viable scion.
With multiple grafted trees, results are good so far for Lakota, Kanza, and Cherryle. With 1 tree of each, McMillan and Adams #5 grafts are still green but the buds have not opened.
I put on another round of grafts with Miss L, McMillan, and Adams #5 onto some trees at my brothers house. I also grafted a few black walnuts onto trees at my mother’s place. I still have several varieties of hickory and pecan that need to be used so will do some more grafting this week.
Its been a challenging and learning pecan grafting season for me. Now I realize it started last fall with a hard freeze of 29 on October 12. I lost several one and two year old grafts. Dead right to the ground and many seedlings also. This spring has been very cool, coldest since 2002. So I started grafting about two weeks later than normal. Many of the seedlings that I thought were not affected by the fall freeze, did not sprout from the top but from the ground. The trees I did graft just sat there as the temperatures were cool. Finally in early June they begin to sprout and I was feeling redeemed, however on June 10 the temperature hit 32 degrees and decimated the grafts. Only trees that were in an upper meadow survived and the ones that had not sprouted.
Today I grafted the ones that froze and checked to see if there was green buds on the ones that had not sprouted. In most cases I cut down to one bud.
The weather is now headed into the 90’s so I’ll know in a few days if the holdovers are viable, if not will graft again.
I settled this land in 1974 and planted apples, pears and cherries. Now have over 50 varieties of organic apples. I always wanted to grow pecans, but it was too cold, not enough heating degree days. Since 1974 I had a weather station and watched as the climate warmed and warmed. In 2010 I stared pecan seedlings and started grafting two years later. I’m located at 3000 feet in Northwest California. I have close to 30 Far Northern Pecan cultivars.
Had some good wood this year including some Hickory and Hican that was lost in the freeze. Good news is all the trees that froze to the ground have sprouted except for one.
Happy Solstice Pecan Lovers!
Life is full of tough lessons. I hope your rootstocks are northern born and bred.
I grafted 7 more trees today putting 2 or 3 grafts on each. I am topworking trees so each graft takes about 5 minutes. I also went through my scionwood and threw away about 20 varieties of black walnut. I’ve grafted all the black walnut that I will do this year. This leaves me with about 20 varieties of hickory, hican, pecan, and one persian walnut that I can still graft. We have had abundant rainfall over the last 5 days so the bark is in perfect condition for inlay bark grafts. I’ve had 2/3 takes of grafts under similar conditions last year.
I took pictures of some of the grafts that have broken buds so far. The best is Cherryle which has over 6 inches of growth. Second best is Hall with 4 inches of growth. I grafted Lakota and Kanza each of which have 2 to 3 inches of growth.
I grafted Hickory Major from Auburn with zero takes. I’m waiting on several more varieties to break buds. Some may completely fail. Such is grafting.
I’ll never bench graft again. It’s all about seedlings in-ground I’ve also learned the difficult way. Life used to be so easy grafting (bench) until I got taken by nut trees quite literally. And I still don’t understand… but I’m done questioning.
There’s always next-year, right?
Dax
Hey, its not over yet. I’ll have a whole new batch of whippings next year to play with. I love the challenge of Pecan/ Walnut propagation. Humility keeps us awake.
And paranoid. 
I’m putting on more grafts today.