No pruning here yet. Like you said we are just now coming out of the coldest periodall winter.
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i usually start pruning once i can easily get to the trees. usually late Apr. here once the snow is near gone.
Snow wouldn’t be an issue here this yeat, at least not yet. Just a weeks stretch of brutal cold. Finally got about zero yesterday after almost a week.
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There’s so much snow. I’ll be waiting a while longer.
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I absolutely will! I’m planning on starting a dedicated thread as soon as the work is underway to document the process and results. The presenter mentioned the lecture slides will also be going online sometime soon. I’ll see if I can find them and post a link
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You in the U.P.?
Not yet. I am waiting for the snow to melt. It looks like this coming week is warm, might be a good time to get things done
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The "soilless " means using peat moss or similar material, no earth soil, right? I am a little unclear of the definition of soilless
I started pruning Sunday. Earlier than normal but it got up to 60 and was perfect out, plus no snow in NW IA. 10 day looks nice here. I think Ive read to wait on stone fruit pruning until things are pretty mild so i probably wont do those for a while. We saw minis 20 a couple times this winter which isn’t too bad im crossing my fingers that my reliance peaches and sweet cherries will produce some fruit this year.
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I’ve commented on this before, but I buried my blueberries in large plastic pots right into my native soil (filled the pots with peatmoss) and they’ve done excellent. I just hit them with some ferts a few times a summer. I prefer the large fruit type like Chandler.
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Someone was nice enough to put together a harvest schedule for USDA Zone 4 Minnesota and Wisconsin, so new home orchardists would learn what grows there and plan for wider and more balanced harvest times:
Let me know if you see anything missing.
P.S. Am I really the only one who decides what to plant by covering each period with something to harvest? Maybe it’s autism but I’d think this would be one of the most important things someone planning a home orchard would need.
I agree. The trick is it varies a lot by local climate and the varietiesn planted so there isnt a one size fits all chart for ripening dates
Anyone paint their trunks white in the fall? Ive never bothered and ended up having my sweet cherry split in the trunk… hoping it heals this summer. Nice size tree hoping to get some fruit from it some day.
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I paint mine about every other year. I put white interior latex paint, usually from a free paint recycling place in St. Paul, which I squirt on with a dish detergent bottle right through the hardware cloth cylinders around the trunk. It is a bit wasteful of paint, but works well otherwise. You can add a little water to the paint if it doesn’t squirt easily.
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When does one start carrot seeds??? Google says April 15th.
I’m doing mine this year in huge bins full of pine bark fines. I’ll just fert them heavily.
I paint mine. I buy white latex paint at menards whenever I find returns for cheap, usualy $9/gallon. I mix that roughly 1/3 paint with 2/3 water and put it in my backpack sprayer and spray the south side of my trees. Works pretty good and when you spray it on, IMO, it looks more natural and less obviously painted. It doesnt make my bark WHITE WHITE, but it lightens it up significantly and ive never had problems since I started doing that.
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Ever have apples or pears split? Wondering if the sweet cherry split because its borderline hardy enough for my area or it could happen to anything? I have window screen for trunk protectors afraid i would have to go to something like hardware cloth if i spray paint. Otherwise the holes would clog up and make it like a tube…
Trunk of my peach tree. Out of 50 trees i put tubes on only 4 of them in a pinch, the rest window screen. Sure enough a mouse took advantage and all but girdled this peach that was in a tube. It has 1/8 inch of bark intact. Guessing chances of survival are pretty low. All of my trees have 3 layers of protection, window screen for rabbits and mice, chicken wire for rabbits when we got a ton of snow and had to raise the height, fencing to keep deer off and I still lose some.
I had a Lapins sweet cherry on Gisela 5. Mine started to split badly over the years (the Lapins part). The rootstock did a good job of keeping the tree somewhat dwarf. I removed it several years ago. Mine was vary hard and produced a crop pretty much every year. I would grow it again.
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Would the splits heal up on it?