Yes I have made so many mistakes. Seems I learn better when I do it. I already made one this year, but I don’t want to talk about it 
I need battery acid for breeding brambles. The seed has a coat meant to go through a stomach. We digest our food with sulfuric acid. So I have to soak them 20 to 40 minutes in sulfuric acid to get them to germinate. So I used it for water treatment too. I usually have enough rainwater these days. . I need to have it on hand still. My current project is to breed for a primocane fruiting Yellow cap raspberry (the black raspberries’ version of yellow raspberries). Lynn’s Black which is soon to be become world famous was bred by me. I have others but this one stands out.
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I have my battery acid ready to go. But what soil medium do you start your seeds in. I have just about 12 seeds of the species I with to grow and I want to give them the best chance.
I have so many projects I have to make things simple. I use the peat moss based (and cheapest) Pro Mix, and i add a little large particle DE in. Any Pro Mix can be used by itself too. Bramble seeds also need to be cold stratified. So what I do is use a nursery flat tray that holds Propagation trays. I fill it with soil.You can use perforated or not trays. After scarification (battery acid) I wash the seeds well and you set them right on top of the soil. I don’t use dividers but you could. Press them in slightly. And I keep them moist all winter in the garage. You could put them in the fridge too. I leave them all winter and then put them outside with overhead protection but full sun. The seeds need light to germinate.
Bramble seeds are about the hardest thing ever to germinate. An alternate is to plant somewhere outside and wait two years. In 2 years the coating wears off and they will germinate. No easy answer here.
My pink raspberry is doing well too. I named it Irene, I think I’ll rename it Irene’s Pink.
It’s green, then yellow, then orange then pink! (Polka(pollen) x Anne(flower))
The problem with this cultivar is it looks just like Double Gold. Taste of both is excellent yet not the same. Some other differences too. They do not fruit at the same time.
Double Gold does not turn orange first. But the end product looks identical. I wanted an orange and I will try again. I want to cross Cascade Gold and Josephine. I’m not going to try till next year. Working on the yellow cap this year. If I have time I may attempt the cross.
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Uh, hydrochloric (HCl) actually.
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I have been corrected! Yes, good catch!
Can some of you please tell me approximately how many gallons of liquid spray (doesn’t matter whats in it too much) you use on average when spraying a mature peach tree? I seem to use just under 2 gallons when I use my battery powered sprayer but I really soak each tree pretty well. Is that in line with most of you, or am I too heavy handed (or even too conservative- which I doubt).
I imagine those with air/mist sprayers use considerably less but I’m interested in results from all types of sprayers. For example, those with pump-up sprayers, how many full size semi dwarf peach trees can you spray (ie how many gallon per tree). Those with regular battery sprayers like mine please chime in too. whatever you use, I’d like to know how many gallon you apply per tree.
THanks
@thecityman,
My semi dwarf peach trees are not as full as your trees (from the old pics). I use about 2/3 - one gallon per tree. It is a pump sprayer.
It looks like nobody answered this? The ammonia smell is normal. Also the look.
I’m surprised to here about this. I spray one gallon hand held sprayer on 10 trees. Now I’m wondering if I’m not giving them a good spray every time. But I do have much younger/smaller trees than you two.
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A full grown peach tree that has lot of leaves does need good coverage. I spray 2 mature peach and 2 younger peach trees with about 3 gal of spray.
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I usually don’t use much at all. In the summer the only problems are the fruit, bugs, fungi. If spaying for leaf problems that’s different. I use more. So I only spray the fruit during the summer. I may spray the ground and trunk to keep insects off. Most of my sprays are to protect the fruit, so it is all I spray. I’m trying to only spray for what I have problems with. I don’t have fungal or insects problems concerning the leaves. If I do, then I’ll spray them.
Cool. Thank you. I almost threw out the bottle. 
I will use it.
How do you spray the fruit without hitting branches and leaves?
Also, for PC, spraying twings and branches help as they like to walk from one fruit to the next.
Thanks for the answers on spray amounts. The problem here is that I fear we may not be talking about similar tree sizes. My peach trees that I use almost 2 gallons on are huge, even though they are supposed to be semi-dwarf. So we all may be closer on amounts than we thought. I’ve let my peach trees get too tall too. I’ll try to post a couple pics to see if mine are a lot bigger than those of you using less sprays. Meanwhile, I feel like most of us are fairly close, though if @Susu is spraying 10 adult trees with one gallon you are surely on the light side ! Not saying that is wrong or bad, just a lot less than me and maybe others.
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You don’t but you don’t need to coat them either. Also a hand pump, at least mine it’s not a huge spray, fairly easy to direct. It’s not that I don’t want to spray them, it won’t hurt may even help. Fruit is spaced so I spray around each fruit. Also lot’s of areas with no fruit that do not need to be sprayed like the newly grown tips of branches, near the trunk on peaches etc. My trees are kept small. I can reach every fruit just by reaching for it.
I guess its our geographic location difference, but I absolutely have to spray the exact areas you say you don’t- ie the tips and new growth. If I don’t, none of my immature stone fruit trees would ever get any bigger. OFM pressure here is so high that If I go more than 10-14 days without spraying the tips, they will bore into them and the top 4 inches or so will die, and it will be a month or so before those dead tips are replaced with new growth. This is especially frustrating for me because even in years when I have no peaches at all on my trees, I still have to spray them if I want them to put on new growth. And we aren’t just talking about a few flagging tips. In my orchard, if I don’t spray for 2 weeks, each and every single tip on every single peach tree and most plum and pluot trees will be killed. You can always pull them apart and find the little OFM larvae inside too.
I also have peach leaf curl on many of my stone fruits, fire blight and CAR on apples and pears, black spot on grapes, persimmon psylla and scale, and other fungi and diseases of the leaves. If I didn’t spray leaves I would be in big trouble. But I will concede that I may be too heavy handed, which is why I’m curious about how much liquid others spray.
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Man that Murphy guy must have lived near you when he came up with his theorem. “If it can go wrong it will.” You have a whole ecosystem going there. Well good job even getting a harvest! I panic when I have deer pressure! Which I’m sure you face too. And those herbicide wielding neighbors of yours. You could probably work for a university you have learned so much! Show them a thing or two!
I have not seen OFM yet. No deer can get in my yard. PC pressure is low. Brown rot too.
I have seen black knot once and promptly removed it. That was 3 years ago. I do have a shorter season, but rarely do we have late freezes. We had one 2 days ago and maybe another Monday night. Rare, and I don’t know if I had any damage? In a few weeks I will.
At my cottage I have deer pressure but again it’s low. None there this last winter.
I’m going to stop bitching about my short season after hearing what you face! Maybe one day we can push them out of existence. .
@thecityman,
You have my sympathy. In my area, I have seen flagging shots into late Sept and sometimes, early Oct. And OFM is just one of many pests we are facing.
I can’t wait to try your Dragon Tears this year.
I meant to take a photo today to show…but I’ve already been hit this year with the OFM flagging shoots. Actually, it was a case study in the effectiveness of imidan! I say that because I sprayed all my trees except one about a week ago. I ran out of spray and it was getting dark so I planned to spray it the next day but got busy and forgot about it. Anyway, just this afternoon I was walking through my orchard and I noticed one single tree had every single limb tip on it wilted over. Then I remembered…it was that one tree I never did spray last week. So if anyone ever wonders about the miracle of Imidan, that tree is the perfect lesson!!! Not a single other tip on any other tree in my orchard was flagging/wilted, but the tree I didn’t spray had every single tip wilted over. I slit open the shoot just below the wilt and in every case, there is the little larvae!!! So yea, here OFM hits hard and hits early. Those bore holes were probably done a couple days ago. Apparently even cold weather doesn’t deter them! GRRRR
BTW…for all the excitement and love I have for Dragon Tears, here where I live it just isn’t worth growing and that is so hard for me to say. In the last 7 years I have got fruit on it only 2 times, and in one of those years I only got 3 fruit. SO really only one year was it loaded. The problem is simple…its cold hours are just insanely short…that tree honestly has bloomed in January some years and ALWAYS blooms in February. Now that is just crazy!!! But its usually when we get a few warm days here, which you probably don’t get in February so hopefully its working out for you. Do you remember when it bloomed for you this year? Was it somewhat in line with your other plums/pluots? At my place it blooms a full month or more before all my other stone fruit. I sure don’t want to discourage you after years of talking about it- because when it does fruit it is just out of this world. But one good year in 7 is just crazy. That being said, its so good when it does fruit that Im certainly going to keep it!
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It is not the first plum or pluot that blooms in my yard. It blooms with Shiro and the majority. It is not an early bloomer here. Thanks goodness. Hopefully it sets some fruit.