After a few years of trials, it might be a good idea to par down the number of projects so you can increase the overall size of the remaining ones. Depending on how ambitious you are, you may end up churning through thousands to tens of thousands of seedlings.
But, again, depends on how ambitious your goals are.
@a_Vivaldi That is a very good idea. I’ll likely end up focusing on one or two depending on how they go.
Just to throw another plant type out there … Gooseberry and currants
@EJh Those are great. I am planning to plant Minaj Smyriou black currant and Titania black currant between the plum trees.
sounds like you’re having fun. good on ya
Your plum plan looks interesting. I can provide wild goose scions when ready
Dennis
Kent wa
@DennisD That would be really appreciated! I also just wanted to thank you for some of the plum information that you have posted like your plum compatibility research and plum bloom time posts.
I’m amazed at the variation in American Plums. Different color, size taste and harvest times. Some selective breeding could quickly advice he best traits
Project updates:
Project 1: Cornelian cherry - Sunrise planted Spring 2024 still alive. It flowered this year but I am not expecting fruit (no pollen partner and still a young plant). I planted two Coral Blaze in Fall of 2024. Both have leafed out and have put on new growth so it is looking like those have established and will survive. I planted one Alyosha this spring. It has leaves so looks like it will survive. For now, I will wait for these trees to fruit.
Project 2: Plums: This spring I planted Lavina, Toka, and Pamela. I also have seedlings in pots for nana beach plum, goosesaw plum, prunus hortulana and wild type beach plum. It looks like Lavina, Toka, and Pamela are all putting out leaves and have a good chance of survival. The seedling plums appear to have germinated well and I have a good number of seedlings that I plan to plant in the ground hopefully this weekend (I figure it isn’t too late to transplant and would rather them not get crowded in the pots). I tried to germinate Mirabelle plum but so far have not seen anything germinate in that pot though those can be double dormant, so I’ll keep those going another year. I also planted 4 st julien rootstocks which will work for taking seedlings eventually and I want to try the fruit (I’m also curious if all 4 will be true to type because with rootstock it would be pretty possible to have variation that no one would be noticing as they do not normally go to fruit). I did not end up getting NY9 as I realized it would probably not be worth the disease pressure. My plan will be to plant out around 10 of the nana beach plums, 3 of the wild type beach plums, and 3 of the goosesaw plums. These will hopefully have resistance genetics that I will be able to observe over a few seasons. The nana beach plums is described as being dwarf with fruiting spurs and can fruit in a few years from seed. I am hoping to leverage the precocious trait to speed up the breeding process. Goosesaw was described as being highly disease and insect resistant, so I figure that is the best chance of a brown rot and curculio resistant genetic source. The wild type beach plum just seemed to be worth having for comparison to nana.
Project 3: Goumi - In spring of 2024, I planted 2 Tillamook, 1 Sweet Scarlet, and 1 Red Gem. I had ordered Sunrise Ruby but it was canceled on me due to crop failure. I ended up ordering scion wood for Wang Bo and Monez. It is still too early to know if my Wang Bo grafts succeeded but I messed up with the Monez scion wood so that won’t have a chance this season. My Red Gem got knocked back last season but managed to regrow a bit so is still alive. The Tillamook and Sweet Scarlet both grew well last season and flowered this year. I can see little fruits forming so it is possible that I will get a chance to try the fruit this year. I am keeping an eye on discussions of Daiougoumi because I suspect it will be available in the US from nurseries in a few years.
Project 4: Citrus - My location experienced a cold enough winter that nearly all of my hybrid citrus seedlings have clearly died. I am watching one or two currently that do not look to be in great shape but still have a bit of green in the leaves. I have been hoping that they will put on growth and overcome the damage, but it is not looking good. I am not planning on repeating the experiment so if the few with greenish leaves do not set vigorous growth by the end of May, I will clear the area and use it for other projects.
Project 5: Aronia - I ended up planting 5 seedlings and 1 raintree select aronia. All seedlings have put out leaves and look to be establishing. The raintree select aronia came as a potted plant and while it lost a few leaves when establishing it looks to have recovered and still has healthy growth. I’m hoping the raintree select makes it through the season because it will be my benchmark for all of the seedlings. I also came across the concept of mentor grafting. It is a bit of a crazy concept that by grafting a seedling to a mature plant and methodically creating a dependency on the mature plant, it is possible to have the mature plant influence the seedling through gene expression and possibly biological exchange. I planted 3 pear trees this season and understand that pear and aronia are somewhat graft compatible. Currently two pear trees have leafed out (seems one is either slow to wake up or will not be making it which is a bummer). I’m curious what might happen if I were to graft aronia seedlings to pear trees, let the aronia mature to the fruiting stage, grow out seedlings, then graft the seedlings to the pear trees and repeat. I saw a paper that indicated that pear can pollinate aronia but that there is a lethal element to cross that causes the aronia pear hybrids to die after germinating. If mentor grafting is effective then some strange results are possible and it might even allow for a cross. I don’t really expect much from this but it seems like a fun experiment and the only downside is that I’ll have a few less pears.
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Project 6: Apples - I read a lot about red flesh apples and decided to use the M26 for a more targeted breeding experiment. Currently, I have attempted to graft Otterson, Golden Sweet, and Roberts crab apple to the M26 rootstock. I also ordered bench grafts of Otterson, Golden Sweet, and Tolman Sweet that were planted this spring (all but one on Bud 9 with one on M111). So far, I have been closely watching the grafted scions and all but 2 have leafed out though I know it is still too early to guess on if the grafts have succeeded. My plan will be to grow out the sweet apple seeds and select based on if there are red leaves. I’ll then graft the seedlings onto the parent trees. My theory is that the acidless Golden Sweet and Tolman will offset the usual tartness of the red flesh apples to give an interesting apple. I suspect that one additional backcross to the acidless apples would be enough to get a fully sweet apple (that would at least have red leaves and likely red flesh).
Project 7: Currants and Gooseberries - I planted 2x Invicta gooseberry, 2x Poorman gooseberry, 2x Crandall clove currant, 1x Titania black currant and 1x Minaj Smyriou black currant this spring. For now, I’ll see how the plants do but if my other projects fail and these do well then, I will probably start growing seedlings of the ones that do the best.
Project 3: Goumi - Grafting attempt, flowering stage, immature fruit stage
Project 4: Citrus - post-winter seedlings
Unfortunately, many of my potted nana beach plum seedlings were killed by an animal so I will have lost a bit of the beach plum genetics. I’m not sure what animal did this as most looked to have been bitten through at the base of the seedlings but were not eaten.
I also noticed a hole near my Pamela plum that looks like an animal has burrowed next to the tree. Hopefully this will not impact the tree. Does anyone know what might have created the hole?
Looks like a rat hole, but I’ve also seen toads make holes like that.
Yep, around here that’s always a rat.
Thank you!
Any thoughts on what I should do with it? Should I fill it in?
Usually with holes like that I just step all around there and collapse all the tunnels.
I’ll try that this week, thank you!
