Visit with mamuang!

[HollyGates]

Last Saturday my kids, my mother, my wife and I dropped in at @mamuang 's place to meet her and check out her plantings. She and her family welcomed us graciously and we were privileged to sample some excellent strawberries grown up near the jujube trees, as well as delicious home made cookies. My mom (visiting from oregon) is an avid gardener too and really enjoyed our couple hours there.

Mamuang has packed a startling number of healthy looking fruit trees into an average size suburban lot. Numerous plums, euro pears, asian pears, cherries, peaches, pawpaws, and jujubes. Most if not all were sporting successful grafts, so the total number of varieties was huge.

The sideyards each have a line of trees running down them. One side has the newish jujubes (now surrounded by robust june bearing strawberries) and stone fruits.

the other is in the process of being populated with apples on dwarf roots. In back, there is a veritable forest of fruit trees. Check out the load of fruit on this cherry tree.

mamuang has bagged most of the stone fruit with different types of bags; I’ll be curious to hear about what works best.

You can see bread bags enclosing groups of plums on this tree by my mom and middle daughter.

Not only is the yard packed with fruit; the rest of the yard is full of beautiful flowers and attractive ornamentals, as well as a bunch of veggies and experimental plants in pots.

My son is especially fond of flowers, roses in particular, and there was a feast for the eyes and nose in this department. I’m sure I’ll never hear the end of the requests to plant more roses at our house now

Everything is very well maintained and lovely. It was inspiring to see what is possible in a small space in my region, something highly relevant to my own efforts. Even though the total area is bigger than what I have to work with, I certainly took away plenty of ideas about how things can be organized to fit the most into the space I have available.

All in all, it was fun to meet a list member in person and great to see a wonderful garden and orchard on a scale not so different from my own.

Thanks again mamuang!

[thecityman]

What a nice report with great photos. I think everyone here knows mamuang is one of the nicest people on here and has lots of fruit knowledge to share. She’s too modest to brag or even show a lot of her plants and trees, so I’m glad you did!

[Matt_in_Maryland]

Yes! Lifestyles of the culturally rich and fruit-forum famous!

[Moley]

@Matt_in_Maryland

fruit-forum famous

We Need T-Shirts made.

[mamuang]

Holly,
We were happy that you and your family could stop by. What a lovely family!!

Pleae ask your children esp. your son if he wants to learn how to do root cutting of roses. They can come over and experiment.

Hope your mother will be able to find that peony. It was fun talking to another gardener.

Pleae feel free to come again anytime.
P.S. My husband said please call ahead, he will fire up the grill cooking for your family.

[mamuang]

@Matt_in_Maryland, @thecityman - Checks are in the mail

Matt - next time when you come by Central MA, please stop by. Cape Cod is quite a way away from me esp.when you were heading to see Mrs. G.

@Moley, I like your idea!!

[Matt_in_Maryland]

Tippy,

I rarely get that far northeast anymore.

Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to visit… thanks.

[mamuang]

You never know. Your wife may have another business trip up here

It is fun to have those who love growing fruit as much as I do visiting. Only us can understand how it feels to go on and on about fruit trees, bushes, vines, etc.

[HollyGates]

Yes @Matt_in_Maryland , you seem to be a pretty avid fruit tourist, so if you made it up to MA there are several members places you could check out.

Truly, it’s much more fun giving a garden tour to someone interested. Most people’s eyes glaze over within about 5 minutes into seeing my garden, and by that point we are barely past the Goumi and Cornelian Cherries! Only a fellow fruit enthusiast could make it all the way through the yard without falling asleep under a bush.

@mamuang - I forgot to ask what you do for watering. Do you have irrigation hooked up? And what pest were the hanging lures in the trees for?

[HollyGates]

Thanks mamuang! Maybe when we have a spot open for another rose or two we could come by again and you could show us how to do rose cuttings. Those ones you said were trouble free sound good, though the light pink one (what was the name?) right behind Millie in the picture above was very nice - might be worth the trouble of spraying.

[mamuang]

We water potted plants as the mix dry up quick esp in small pots.

We have a sprinkler system that was installed long before I planted fruit trees. Needless to say sprikler heads are at non desirable location. We barely use it. We use use garden hoses to water young trees as needed.

Those red orbs. I bought several of them when I first started planting my first fruit trees, apples. Those are to catch apple maggot flies. I don’t think they are my main pest. Coddling moths, OFM and plum curculio are. I just hang them up since I have them. Not for a real purpose. If they could trap flies or moths, that’s great.

We had strong wind and a rainy storm last night. Four Clemson bags were on the ground. I don’t think I like these bags, hard to put on, get blown off easier and when wet, paper ripped easily.

[mamuang]

That is Abrahaa Darby, a David Austin rose. Very fragrant, reblooming and quite hardy. Black spot is an issue. I spray with Immunox when I spray apple twice in the spring. Vthe rest of the year, I spray with wettable sulfur or nothing. The leaves in late summer look bad with no spray.

[mamuang]

You meant this bush, right. If you were here a week earlier, before the rain wiped half of them out, the yrad looked very pretty.

I only did rose cuttings a few times. To me, the best time to do cutting is in mid spring like mid May when roses start to grow. Others with more experience can chime in.