Spring signs!

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Here in Upstate South Carolina I saw the first fully bloomed wild pear tree of the year. Also:

-Wild Black cherry having some obvious growth

-Peach trees are showing significant bud swell

-Blackberries have started to leaf

-Heard large groups of frogs near our pond for the first time last week

-Goji berries started leafing this last week

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This guy popped up while I was fishing this past weekend. Pretty good sign that it’s warming up.

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Yep, when the wood frogs get going it won’t be long until spring flowers are blooming. Good time to go looking in any standing water. We did last night. It’s such a cool sight and sound. All the glowing dots are frog eyes.

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My Chickasaw plums have decided that spring is here. Several pollinators out working them today, including at least 3 species of bees.

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Forget scionwood- it was warm enough today that it felt like I should be finishing up grafting and planting the garden. Instead I’ve probably got over a month until I start grafting. 75F in Feb is pretty extreme for here. As much as I don’t want my trees to bloom too early, I really like it for me. I took a half day at work and spent it collecting scionwood and planting trees. I lucked out in my first trees arriving today- Grow Organic ships pretty early, but it worked out.

3 jujubes and a peach in a very big box from Grow Organic:

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Wow, that is a big box. So, how do they look now that they’re in the ground? How tall were they in the box, what caliper, good roots?

Oops, I just saw your post on the juju thread, they look good. You got lucky with the timing of their arrival and the weather. I imagine middle of Feb the ground is still pretty hard and cold?

They could have fit longer trees in the box. They ranged from 29"-35" from graft union to top. But they were large caliper and had good sized roots.

Here’s the Carnival peach. I hadn’t planned to add any more peaches on Citation, but I made an exception:
1.) The Carnival which fruited for me for the first time this past year was just that good (15-23 brix fruit).

2.) Citation often runts out for me, but I’ve tried planting this one in an area which stays moist. A nearby plum is doing great on Citation, so I figured that I would give it a try. It doesn’t get standing water, as I’ve got the planting area raised over a foot (the big log in the pic). For that matter, there isn’t usually standing water under the log- just a bit squishy sometimes. But I probably won’t ever need to water it, as water from a good chunk of the yard drains to there.

There are a few flower buds which look like they are pushing a bit. Hopefully they can go back to sleep a bit with the coming chill…

It is sometimes. About 2 weeks ago, the ground was hard, but there have been a lot of days in the 40’s and a few in the 50’s, before the heat wave the last 2 days. So the ground was actually decently workable. I turned over some soil in the garden as well.

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Thanks for the reply. They look nice and thick with decent roots.

Good luck with the peach on Citation, do you think your older trees on this rootstock did poorly because of lack of water? I’ve got two pluots on Myro and one on Citation arriving soon. Would the Citation tree tolerate wetter conditions better?

It’s been warm here also, we got 70 on Monday and 77 yesterday, but it’s also been very rainy. So, there’s a lot of things I’d like to do (bush hog with the tractor, prepare a plot for my new raspberries and blackberries coming in, etc), but can’t because the soil’s so damp. I’m worried a bit about this brief warm spell, but next week it’s supposed to cool down to seasonal temps, and less rain.

I just want one week where we don’t get any more rain storms, so I can get some things done. Those pluots are coming in two weeks, and I’d kinda not have to stash them in the cellar while it dries out.

Now that it’s not nearly as cold as it was last month, I wonder if I should take the straw off my strawberries?

From what I’ve read, Citation is a bit more sensitive to dry conditions (goes dormant earlier, etc) than most. I think the main place where it makes a difference is on peaches & nectarines.

All right in a row and planted at the same time (3 years in ground):

  • A couple pluots on Citation which have grown pretty quickly to (maybe 10-12’)
  • A peach (Elberta) which got big enough to have some fruit, but only about 6’ tall.
  • Two nectarines which are 4’ tall little things.
  • And a peach on lovell, which is a tad bigger than the pluots (pretty big).

So I wouldn’t worry about it for plums. I think both Citation and Myro handle water better than traditional peach rootstocks like Lovel, where it causes problems.

Funny you should mention that- I pulled the pine needles off some of mine today, in order to mulch a couple of the new trees.

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I was out in the garden today and noticed the sorrel was starting to come up. So were some weeds. My trees appear to be holding out despite the two days in the 70s.

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I took those pictures yesterday, at the LA Arboretum. There might have been more than a hundred of peafowls.

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While outside today, I noticed that there are some teeny little green sprouts on a couple of my gooseberry and one of my raspberry plants. Also the wild blackberries are poking out small sprouts.Grass seems to have really greened up this week as well. This mild weather and copious moisture I’m sure is coaxing them out of their slumber.

Rain, rain, rain, and more rain!!!

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Looks like you’re getting your annual early spring monsoon. Crazy amounts of rain down south. I thought we were getting a lot and @Derby42 said he got 6" in one day?? So, I don’t feel so bad.

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We live right at the top of the watershed so we don’t flood much here but every ditch is running full todayUploading…

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Wow, that looks kinda like our creek that runs through our valley from last week. But, we haven’t got as much rain like you have. If we got 6" overnight, it would be flooding parts of the valley road. Last year we had about 3" of rain one evening, and my in-laws’ driveway was separated by 50ft of flood water from the road. It ruined their driveway. But, they live down along a smaller creek that drains into the main creek.

We’re lucky in that we’re up on a hill, and the worst that happened to us is that the lower driveway got flooded when the culvert going under it clogged up and the overflow went up and over the driveway. What a mess. Last week I went down there and cleared out all the brush and rocks that had clogged up the culvert. It’s draining nicely now.

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We have been dry over the winter so that helped but when we drove home from town there was water over the road everywhere

we’ve had so much rain it’s the first time in 44 years since I lived here that it has come into the basement.

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:flushed::flushed::cry::cry: