So, will fruiting laterals sprout from where the live and dead part of the cane meet? I assume I’ll see some new primocanes come up in the next couple months.
BTW, I’ve already seen some new primocanes sprouting from my Prelude raspberry, and my Anne rasp has pushed out a few green leaves.
So, will fruiting laterals sprout from where the live and dead part of the cane meet?
Some may sprout at that point, but many will come up several feet away, too. The season is too short here for those, and the previous year’s canes often freeze out, even when covered well, so I don’t plan to maintain mine, just let them freeze out or till them up in spring.
I have a friend in Tryon NC who has the creeping/trailing rosemary, coming over a stone wall. Very, very lovely. But every time I’ve planted it in Kentucky I have lost it within two seasons.
Rosemary is often sold as a zone 6 or 7 plant. However, with the exception of a handful of hardier varieties, like Arp and a couple others, it’s really more zone eight.
Anything below about 5° - 10°F or so will kill it, especially with no snow cover.
As a sidenote, my climate in Maryland and yours in Kentucky are probably fairly similar at least as far as average temperatures and precipitation, frost and feeeze dates, etc.
Main difference here is that I probably get more winter precipitation (both liquid and frozen) thanks to nor’easters, and you’re more continental than me so you run maybe a half zone colder.
Arp cultivar is ‘supposed’ to be zone 6.
I actually think Wet Feet do it in more than just the winter minimum temperature. It needs good drainage.
I had a rosemary that was 20 years old. It died several years ago and I have not gotten a good replacement… looks like my third successor died this winter. Maybe that old one was a more hardy variety, I will get a more hardy one next time for sure.
Yes, I expect sucker primocanes to start coming up soon. If the darker canes don’t sprout anything, I’ll prune them off, and at the end of the floricane season, which I assume will be pretty early (maybe May or June?), I’ll prune the fruiting ones down to the ground.
I started pruning yesterday and was pleased that I found only one winter killed/damaged branch. It was a small diameter branch on a 3 year old Walden Large pear (wild tree from Walden Heights nursery). If the rest of my trees look as good, I’m going to be really pleased.
I lost a couple of different grafts. I have back ups so I can replace the variety but my question is why did they die? I removed the tape I used to graft after the leaves fell off. It seems like on my cleft grafts I always have the scion set more to one side of the rootstock since the are never an exact size match. This results in the graft healing on the side where it lines but usually leaves a split on the other side that is slow to heal over and I suspect allowing cold dry into the graft union in winter killing the graft. Maybe should wait to remove tape until spring???
Derby, I’ve had the same problem. For what it’s worth I don’t remove the grafting material until it’s practically falling off on its own. (That’s with grafting rubbers and parafilm plus wax for insurance- if I’m using temflex or plastic tape I cut it longitudinally late in the season.) I think it helps. Some of my clefts have taken a long time to heal over and have been pretty gnarly, but they hold.
I use black electric tape so it has to be removed at some point but I think I will take your approach and just cut it longways and may wait until spring to do that.
I used bright pink garden tape on some grafts. It helps me notice my grafts a mile away. If graft unions do not look like they are strangled, I leave them alone until the next spring. In fact, I just removed the tape from about 10 remaining grafts last week.
I like the idea of flagging them with something highly visible so I don’t forget to remove tape
All of my grafts that died (after they took, had at least one growing season and died the next spring) were all nectarines and peaches. Most were small scionwood.
One of my theory is that those small scion did not have enough energy to withstand harsh winter like we have here.
The other theory is delayed compatibility. My two grafts of nectarines on a peach tree grew very well, fruited for a couple of years and then were dead (one is dying) in the following spring.
I’ve seen this also, grafting several new varieties on my peach tree over the past couple years. The new grafts (like <6") that have small size going into winter have a much greater chance of winter kill. Bigger grafts like 10"+ typically do better.
I did a closer inspection of the PAF today. It looks like most of the big canes are fried. On a good cane on another plant, a scratch test reveals moist and bright green underneath. On the Freedom, you have to scratch pretty hard to get anything, and it’s just a dull green. Down on the base of the main cane, it shows green underneath the brown crinkly bark, so maybe it’s okay there, but on the longer offshoots, they appear to be done.
But, there are a couple skinny canes about a foot long next to the main cane that are viable. Plus, it looks like a new shoot is starting to spring up as well.
So, it appears PAF floricanes doesn’t survive below 10 degrees. I read somewhere that the second year canes are rated to zone 7 and primocanes to zone 6.
I did notice that there were leaf buds starting on the canes, so could it be that it survived the bad cold, woke up a bit early, and then succumbed to a hard freeze afterwards?
All the other blackberries are in good shape. I checked on my raspberry row, and Killarney, Prelude, Nova and Caroline all have new shoots coming up.
I have the same problem with the rootstock splitting and it seemed to me that it leaves a place for moisture to enter during the next season. I now cover it with wax right after I graft.
Ok…i was walking around looking at trees today and the moonglow pear that i was sure was dead was looking like it had buds that were swelling. I scratched the branch near the tip, and it was green! The trunk seems completely dead- if i scratch it, dead wood flakes off. Maybe a sliver of trunk made it and is sustaining the limbs? Or…i have no idea. It really shocked me and in still wondering if it’s really alive, or just a fluke.
Trust it, Katie! Sometimes it amazes me that spring ever comes at all, and then …