I’m thinking about doing some more persimmon.
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Sorry, it is Indiana Berry. I had mentioned them so much on this thread, I just assumed folks knew. I’m a lazy typer, so…
My wife says I’m also a lazy talker, i.e. mumbler, as well!
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thats ok. i do the same! should have figured it out as i order from them often. its been a long day!
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I ordered from Pence last year. I liked the nursery stock I received from them. Pear trees, and some blueberry bushes. I will definitely order from them again. I like ordering from family businesses.
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I just learned an old friend bought some property and has given me permission to put apples on the property for cider.
Anyone have Rosemary Russet scion wood available for this year (it is kind of late to ask.)
I haven’t kept up with this thread, but here are a few belated responses…
Here’s some pics (and descriptions of my order from 3 years ago (and if you scroll down a few days in the thread, I have a follow-up with the 2nd batch from BL). Normally Bay Laurel sends very nice trees, often approaching 1" caliper. This year, they are the place I’ve ordered the most from- 7 jujubes.
I’ve ordered twice from ToA, a bit over a dozen trees total (plums and jujube). They have nice trees.
I grafted it a few years ago. Nothing yet, but it should be soon.
I like Zestar a lot more than Pristine. But, Zestar is about 2 weeks later than Pristine, so it isn’t an entirely fair comparison.
Are you sure you meant GR and not AK? AK is the one that is very sharp off the tree, with massive flavor. GR is mostly sweet, with a bit of kick.
Agreed on Golden Russet. I think Liberty can be good with extreme sun exposure, but get pretty blah when shaded. I’ve had it from “normal” orchards and wasn’t impressed, then had some from my mini-dwarf which I thought were pretty good. At least on the sun-exposed side of the fruit…A bit too fine a line for me, so it’s one of the trees I’ll be replacing this year.
I decided that I’ve got too many apple trees, so I’m replacing some of the smaller ones that haven’t grown that well (mostly mini-dwarfs on M27, G65, or interstems) and replacing them. Most of the replacements will be jujubes, though I’m also planting some of the pear and appricot rootstocks that I grafted last spring.
Jujubes are all I’m ordering for spring:
- Xu Zhou
- Redlands #4
- Shihong
- Jin
- Contorted
- Li
- Shanxi Li (3)
- Sugar Cane (2)
- Honey Jar (2)
- Coco
- Massandra
- Autumn Beauty
- Black Sea
I was wait listed on a tree (Honey Jar). They (Bay Laurel) emailed me, when it came available again (someone must have canceled). I emailed back to add it and they sent me a new receipt/confirmation- pretty easy.
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Thanks Bob for the reply. Good to hear about the BL trees. I do worry about them hacking the roots, but I’m just getting 3 trees (pluots), so maybe they will be alright. I wrote them an email asking about the caliper and branching and they said they’re usually 5/8" thick with a few feathers. I’m expecting them in early March, so I hope the ground is workable then, it’s been very cold so far this winter.
How did those nine BL trees do that you got back in '15? I see that you got a bunch of stone fruit trees then. I’d particularly like to hear how your Flavor Grenade and Geo Pride have done.
We’ll see about the Pristine, I got it mostly on reviews on here and other sites about it prob being the best early apple. I have had Zestars for the last two years, so I’m glad we planted one last year. It has a good balance of sweet/tart and keeps well. My tree has done OK, it put up a couple long central leaders, but not much else, so I may have to give the notching technique a try on it to induce some scaffolds.
Regarding AK and GR, I haven’t tasted an AK, so I can’t compare to a GR. The GR I have tasted tho, if I remember were pretty tangy off the tree, with the sweetness coming later. My GR tree has languished for two years in its spot. I think it’s going to have to be moved, maybe getting too wet during rainy spells. Or maybe it’s just a dog. I hate it because I really want that tree to produce.
I only had Liberty’s once and I liked them, I can’t remember too much other than they were tart as well, not real sweet, maybe we picked them early at the orchard. But I recall liking them, and they are a very nicely colored apple, if that means anything.
With all those jujubes coming in it sounds like you’ve gone “koko for juju’s”! And, what did you do with all those jj rootstocks from 3 years ago?
I think it was Alan who once said he isn’t interested in early apples because he’d rather be eating stone fruit at that time of year. I agree with that. It’s nearly February and I’ve been eating mostly just apples and pears since September and will continue just eating apples and pears for a few more months. And they’re great, and I enjoy them, but, man, I sure would enjoy a tree-ripened peach right about now. @subdood_ky_z6b, what interests you about early apples?
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I have two grafts that took last year and I can probably get a 6" stick from one of them. If you can’t find it elsewhere and figure one stick is better than none, let me know.
Slightly OT, but have you ever thought about fertilizing the heck out of those trees to get them up to size?
Good point. I picked Pristine because when I was looking to start our little orchard, I wanted a good variety of apples over the season, and it was the best for that time period, which ought to be in late July/early August. I think the next apples that would come in around mid/late August will be Zestar, and then Honeycrisp and Alkmene.
We’ve also planted four peach trees, so we’ll get some of those around that time frame.
I went thru a list of what we’ve planted over the last couple of years, and this coming spring, and it will be quite a variety of things, provided all the trees and bushes do well. I counted over 50 different varieties of fruits! 
My wife thinks I’m in over my head, considering we’ll grow a bunch of veggies too. She’s prob right, but we’ll can and freeze a lot of it, and maybe be able to sell some of the extras.
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Yeah, I only hit the 11 apples and 2 peaches once last year with some 10-10-10. I didn’t give them any the first year, which considering the poor soil, I should have. When and how often would they need to be fertilized? Once in March before they come out of dormancy, and one other time?
I didn’t get a soil sample of that area until last year, and it was acidic and low in nutes. If I would have thought ahead, I would’ve plowed up the whole plot, limed it, and given it some old manure and ferts a year before I planted the trees. But, that didn’t happen, so I’m having to play catch-up now.
Sounds almost exactly how pluots from my order were. Both 5/8", one with 5 branches, the other a whip.
From that order:
Loring peach on Lovell- nice sized tree, with a lot of large good tasting peaches.
Both nectarines on Citation- Very little growth. Both fruited last year, but they cracked/rotted. The Mericrest looked closer to usable (of the two, which is not a high bar…), but I didn’t get any in the end.
Elberta on Citation- somewhere in between the necs and the Loring. Big enough to give me about a dozen peaches last year. Not bad, but nothing special.
Of the apricots, Autumn Gold is still growing, but Monique died in a hard spring frost a couple years ago. The rootstock lived and I’m growing 4 other apricots on the shoots that came up.
The pluots have both grown very nicely. They flowered last year and I think most of the flowers got hit with the late frost. But, I still got a few fruit on each, most of which got PC bites. I think there were a couple which got close to ripe before something snatched it. I may have gotten one, but I probably I mis-timed it, as I don’t recall anything delicious (which is what I expect from both trees). I have high hopes for them this year.
Nectarines on Citation are useless runted things. But plums on citation are pretty good. In fact, I have some plums in a wetter part of the yard which get too big on Citation.
Here is a pic of the Flavor Grenade and Geo Pride. They are getting up to ~12’, and starting to grow together (only spaced 4-5’), so I’ll need to prune them quite a bit this winter/spring.
I bench grafted most of them and gave away some. Sad to say, but to my knowledge none are alive. Of the 35+ I kept, a few sent out a leaf or two, but none ever started growing.
Even suckers that I’ve transplanted in my own yard don’t seem to take off very quickly (though they live). That’s part of why I’ve been buying big trees- jujubes seem a bit hard to get started here and I think it would take 3+ years for a small one to get as large as the ones that I think BL will send. I say “I think”, as I got a couple very large (3/4" and 7/8" caliper) Honey Jars from Edible Landscaping last spring. They were reselling trees from LE Cooke. I looked on Cooke’s website and the jujubes they grow exactly matches Bay Laurel’s inventory. They also mention on the site that they resell stuff from LE Cooke, as well as DWN. So, my conclusion (to be tested this spring) is that BL will ship me large jujube trees from LE Cooke.
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I know I have a dwarf Rosemary Russet grafted. I can check it for sharable limbs.
Thanks Bob for the detailed reply. From the sounds of yours and others reports, a peach or nect on Citation doesn’t sound like a good combination. All 4 of our peaches are Lovell trees, but we have the space for them.
But that’s good to see that both of your pluots on that RS are doing very well. And getting fruit after two years is encouraging. It does seem that putting them only 5 feet apart is really close even tho they are still semi dwarf. But, I know you do that with a lot of your trees, considering your limited space.
Our incoming Dapple Dandy and Flavor King are on Myro and the Geo Pride is on Citation, so I have high hopes for all of them. On spacing, would 15ft be sufficient, or maybe more for the full size Myro trees? Also, how are pluots usually shaped? Open center like a peach/nect, central leader like a pomme fruit or oval like a plum or cherry?
Sounds like juju’s don’t like your climate, I thought they’re more of a West coast/southern type of fruit. Have you ever got any to fruit properly for you?
If you have enough water and want a very small tree, it could be OK for peaches, but I think Nectarines are a bit less vigourous and I’d avoid them on Citation in the future.
15 feet seems like a lot to me, but I suppose if you have the space it would be good. You’d have plenty of space to work around them then and avoid them growing together. Even at rentals where I wanted to space things out, I only used 10 feet…at most. 
I’m not sure of the ideal shape for plums. I’ve been cutting them back to whatever fits in the space, mostly central leader when the tree cooperates. I think if you have enough space, open center would be good.
The So I planted in 2011 has been fruiting well for the last 3+ years. But, 95% of the fruit is on the South side of the tree, which I think demonstrates the need for sun.
Pics:
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If that’s addressed to me, I’d probably stick down as much organic material as I could around the trees in that area—cold manure, compost, wood chips, etc. And I’d keep shoveling it on until I saw a difference.
Then again, I like to live my life dangerously, so… 
(In all fairness I’d probably take this approach because there’s no danger, as with a lot of prepared commercial fertilizers, that you’ll burn anything if you overdo it. Plus, if you just apply fertilizer, you’ll have to do it every year, whereas if you stick the organic stuff down, you’re (hopefully) making the soil itself better so that in time that tree should be able to manage ok with zero fertilizer. Of course, I’d go with that method because it’s largely idiot-proof. Idiot-proof is usually the best direction for me to go in. 
I think the only “bad” thing that could possibly happen is if your soil gets too fertile, but given how bad you say the soil is over there, I would think it unlikely, unless you did this repeatedly over years and years and years.)
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I have pristine and love it. Who has stone fruit ripening the end of July or beginning of Aug. in the Northeast?
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Good idea about building up the soil with manure and compost. Aren’t wood chips, tho, a N robber? I have straw mulch around them now, I don’t know if that would affect the fertility much at all.
I also will be throwing down more lime to get the pH up. It was around 5.0, when I tested it a year ago. I didn’t test it last month when I did the other plots.
If I do apply fert, when should it be done? Right before bud-break in March? And what about any more apps after that?
That is prime peach season- Redhaven is around Aug 1st (day 0 on a lot of variety charts) and most of the TangO varieties are in the first week of August (maybe +6). Around July 4th, I get the first peaches (PF1: -30 Redhaven) and Tomcot apricots (much better than the PF1). If you really want early stonefruit, Early Blush apricot is around June 20th, when it doesn’t get frozen out (always a danger with cots…).
There is a pick-your-own not so far from me (Silverman’s Farm) that I used to go to before I had a yard with trees. They would open around August 1st and we would get a few early Ginger Golds and Pristines on the bottom of our bag. Then, fill the top with peaches (mostly donuts, but a few Redhaven for variety).
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