Taking note of early red bell
I will be reducing even more of the grass in my yard by enlarging mulch rings and planting more plants. When I bought my house I removed a lot of the flowers and showy plants because I didnt want to deal with watering and weeding and trying to remember what plant was supposed to be there and what plant was a weed. I just wanted to mow the grass and be done with yard work. Now that I am a little more wise, I see less grass to mow and more plant diversity to be a good thing.
I will be moving my composting area out from under a maple tree so that turning the pile is less cutting back roots and more actually creating compost. I will also be pruning back that maple tree over the summer to try and reduce itâs vigor and open up some light to the pawpaws under it.
From watching Skillcult I have come to regard each of my apple trees as a canvas, instead of looking at THIS tree as permanently a so-so tasting granny smith or THAT tree as permanently a terribly scabby, cedar apple rusted, defoliated by august, failure Fuji. I have been gathering scion wood and will topwork both of them, and partially topwork others to lots of new varieties to trial. I also ordered rootstock even though I donât have near enough room to plant every benchgraft. I may try stooling some of them. Eventually my cousin and I plan to get some land but that definitely wonât happen in the next year. When that does happen, I hope to be able to plant an orchard of my own benchgrafts using varieties growing on my own trees. He wants land to hunt and I want land to plant so it would be a win/win. I havent limited myself to learning how to graft just apples either. I will try my hand at grafting pear, chestnut, mulberry, elaeagnus, honey locust, pawpaw, and persimmon too.
I have come to realize that it is time to abandon the Mark Shepard S.T.U.N. idea for growing trees and actually do more than just watch the trees struggle. Instead I have been researching Michael Phillipsâ holistic teachings over the winter. Last fall I basically built compost pile rings around all of the trees in my back yard. So far this winter I have bought neem oil, BT for caterpillars, Surround, and fruit bags to do organic sprays/protect the fruit plus I have bought mycorrhizal fungi inoculant, kelp, fish, feather meal, and gypsum for ground and foliar feedings.
I am still on the fence about my Satsuma and Santa Rosa plum trees. They are planted on the south side of my house and have grown large and vigorous, but I have only gotten a handful of plums since I planted them in 2011 or 2012. Since they are not behind a fence and start to color up way before anything else is ready, they are especially tempting to the neighbors⊠
I have come home multiple times to find multiple plums on the ground with a single bite taken out of them before they are ripe at least two different years. You would think that people would realize that if the first plum that they tried today tasted as bad as the four plums that they tried a few days before, that maybe the second and third plum that they try today will also not be ripe yet⊠
The plums that made it past the people picking them too early always ended up with codling moth. And that is just the years that late spring frosts didnât kill the flowers. Those two trees are way too big to dig up and move, but I do have a smaller Bruce and a potted Ozark plum. I could dig up and move the Bruce plum with the Ozark plum to the northern side of my house and graft the Santa Rosa and Satsuma onto them in the hopes that being there would delay flowering a bit. The southern spot where the plums currently are could be planted to hardy figs or something that wouldnât be recognized as edible such as hazelnuts or elaeagnus.
I will also be installing a small bog garden for my Sarracenias and letting them overwinter outside next year under heavy mulch, rather than having them waking up in february in the garage.
There is a strip of woods near my moms house between a small park and a neighborhood that I have toyed with the idea of guerrilla gardening in. When I was a kid there were some horse chestnuts, black walnuts, and elm as the overstory and it was somewhat clear under them so there were blackberries and wild roses filling in. Now some of the older trees have died and it has become a thick jungle of black locust, honey locust, honey suckle, and other bird deposited weedy plants. I have thought about cutting back small spots and planting seedlings of walnut, pawpaws, mulberry, chestnut, persimmon, and asian pear just to see if they can compete and eventually replace the more weedy species, but a thirty something year old guy going back and forth through a kids park with pruners and a shovel might result in the cops showing up.
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Orléans Reinette is a wonderful apple in my experience (not from our own trees yet, though we do have it growing).
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Wow, reading about your neighbors makes me angry for you. Is it children doing this? Can you fence it or put up a sign? I myself donât mind sharing if people ask, but what youâre describing sounds plain rude.
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Do you have in mind a specific product? Can you share a link?
Does your Santa Rosa have sparse flowers with poor fruit set, or does it seem average? A number of people have said it it doesnât set well in the East, which has been the case for me. The plums are fantastic, but it takes a lot of tree to get a few dozen plums. Iâve been thinking about grafting over all but one branch to more productive varieties. I hate to get rid of it completely because its contrasting sweet and sour flavor is distinct from any other plum I have.
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Last year I used builderâs paper with straw on top to keep it from blowing away. I covered the whole garden and cut holes for the plants. Not only did it keep the weeds down, but it dramatically reduced soilborne disease issues I was having with cucurbits and tomatoes.
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Another cheap alternative would be jute-backed carpeting. You might be able to get some used carpet free from a carpet store dumpster if you ask. We were able to. To easily cut it, lay in upside-down on the ground or driveway and just slit it with a box cutter. It cuts very easily that way. The rain will go through the carpet, but it keeps weeds out. At the end of the season, just roll it up again or drag to a new spot. Just watch for staples along the edges of the carpeting. Keep the pieces manageable, as they are heavier when wet and dirty. About 4â by 5â or a long strip is about a manageable size. I have only used it under squash so far, and it worked great. You might get some weeds poking through the cracks between carpet pieces, so overlap them somewhat. No mulch is required to hold it down, although a few rocks might help if you live in a windy area, as I have had a few pieces flip over in storms.
I didnât want to be the âget off my lawnâ guy but I did politely ask the neighborhood kids to ask me before taking anything after all of the plums got picked too early. That resulted in multiple young trees getting hacked with a pocket knife by someone too weak to cut through a tree in one cut. All of the damaged trees were in my back yard behind a fence. When that happened, all of the parents got talked to. Of course everyoneâs little jonny wouldnât ever do such a thing. Last year I had a neighbor who wanted me to let his granddaughter pick all of my apples and pears in late July. I explained to him why he could not pick anything in the summer. He then asked my cousin the same question a few days later. He asked again in early August. Then my honeycrisp started to disappear. Oddly enough nothing in the back yard ever gets taken, just cut. Stuff in the front yard gets taken.
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They are usually covered in flowers, they just donât set much fruit most years. We always seem to get a twenty something degree day once the flowers start opening.
That stuff with the neighbors sounds totally infuriating. Wish you could graft in new ones - neighbors, I mean!
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Time to call in the cops
Iâd feel entitled to be the get off my lawn guy after trying to be nice a number of times and still getting burned. Might even get a security cam if i were you. Kids will be kids but when it comes to something i love and pay good money forâŠit would be hard to be nice forever!
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I second @Katie_didnt_Z4b, get a camera. They are pretty cheap these days, for $60 you can have a wifi camera with motion detection that sends alerts to your phone. I like the brand âYi Homeâ and have 4 of their cameras but there are many others like Blink, etc. Trust me, you will want evidence if you ever need it in the future. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Also its a bit tacky but you should consider a no trespassing sign otherwise its easy to claim ignorance.
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