Risky Plantings?

Zone pushing is attractive, but sometimes you just can’t find local sources of in-zone stuff.

So far as I can tell there is no local source of plums, peaches, and pears near Richmond. Plenty of berry farms and a fair supply of apples, but not much else.

If I didn’t zone push I would be left with pussy willows and crab apples. LOL I found that most places err on the side of caution and zone 2 is not very often recommended. As a result I have been able to taste Sweet 16, Discovery, Wynochee Early, and Honey Gold apples. I am now working on plums and pears.

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Well, why not try honeyberries? And for landscaping, Siberian carpet cypress. Both will do pretty well in zone 6 but would probably be zone 2 hardy.

Good to know those apples are that hardy. That’s impressive.

In general I agree with you, but their are exceptions. I grow Spice Zee nectaplum 250 chiil hours
Here’s my current chill

Below 45 Model: 2544 chill hours
Between 45 and 32 Model: 961 chill hours
Utah Model: 842 chill units
Positive Utah Model: 853 chill units
Dynamic Model: 46 chill portions

This tree tends to bloom late, every year since maturity it has produced. Never lost a crop. So some low chill plants do fine, are high chill adaptable. Another I grow is Indigocrisp Blueberry 300 chill hours and it fruits every year.

You know I have only bought one raspberry plant, and 3 strawberry plants locally. I have almost 40 fruit trees and all were delivered here over the years.11 blueberries, 18 raspberry plants, honeyberries, blackberries, figs, mulberries, pomegranates, currants, most of my strawberries (I have about 300 plants), grapes, all came from mail order. I don’t order much anymore, no trees, just scion and a couple fruiting shrubs this year.

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Drew, I too am trying to grow Indigocrisp, so far with limited success, though my sweetcrisp are thriving, in fact the sweetcrisp are probably growing better than any of my other 12 or 13 varieties (1 to 4 plants of each).

Considering you have zone 6b some years I could not picture most if any pomegranate varieties surviving without a major micro climate setup. Maybe if the most cold hardy ones were hybridized together you’d have a better chance

Mine is not I have had it 4 years and still waiting for my first sweetcrisp berry. It looks good this year, I should get some. The plant died back so far, it finally recovered.

Haskaps ( Honey berries) do very well here but we have 2 u pick haskap farms within 10 miles of us and unfortunately they are not our favourite fruit. Wild blueberries are in abundance and I would much rather have those. I don’t grow them because the wild stands are very productive so there is no need to work to replicate that in the yard. I am interested in trying a few of the high bush ones though.

Thanks- I will look into the Siberian carpet cypress, I haven’t seen that one yet.

I don’t radically zone push, but I try different growing methods such as hungryfrozencanuk’s idea that a multi stemmed apple has greater chance of success, or laying down grapes simply to take advantage of the large amounts of insulating snow, or growing apples and pears as step over espalier to gain the same snow insulating value. I am new to fruit growing so have had some limited successes and many failures ( and after this winter I am expecting a few more).

I am in it for the fun.

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I’m not in 6B, I’m in 7A. The average lowest low is about 5F here. Since getting the pomegranates I don’t think its gotten below 4F.

It would definitely be good to breed together some of the cold hardy ones to see if hardiness could be improved!

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Northof53…I get your point. There are several of the U of Minnesota apples that might work for you, and some from Morden, Manitoba I understand. For the Siberian carpet cypress, the Latin is “microbiota”.

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It is now on my list, thanks.

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The wild weather swings have been the worst for fig trees here, this past fall the first freezing night was below 20 f and none of them were dormant yet, most trees that were not covered didn’t stand a chance. Hoping the older ones will grow back from their trunks, it is obvious some older trunks are already dead though.

Drew here is a photo of the smaller of my 2 Sweet Crisp blueberries planted from 3 gal pots about 18 months ago. It has several dozen new blueberries growing on it. For size scale the bird net hoop in the background is made from a 10 ft section of 1/2 inch PVC.

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Brent,

What are your most reliable in-ground fig varieties?

Tony

Yeah the plant doesn’t work here, still trying though. It is one that wants to grow early. I put it in a very shady cold spot a few days ago to try and keep it dormant.
I would at least like some pollen to try and cross it.

I guess there is an error written for your zone then.

There are different things that make pomegranates resist cold better. later leafing helps some, for some reason regardless of leafing time some varieties are just more cold resistant. There are some varieties (very few) that have an ability to flower on new growth and old growth both, which might mean fruiting the same year as serious die back. As my collection of cold hardy varieties grows I will have a better understanding of these things. I will start a cold hardy pomegranate hybridization project of my own, the only problem with that is I do not have enough space to do such a project justice, it will likely take at least a few thousand plants per cross to get some plants cold hardy enough, healthy enough and that have decent fruit.

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That is true, but it’s fun to try anyway.

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I know a few people locally that can help me with it and we can have success with the project, yet it will take way longer than i’d prefer. It will take lots of patience.

The Etna types are still the best for me overall. Florea is earlier, but more prone to splitting and can have an open eye that makes it easy for ants to get in, lots of bugs and rain here in summer.

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