What is your Tip OF The Day?

[alan]

I am feeling my arthritis and aches much more now that I don’t get bee stings any more

Sounds like a good excuse to invest in your first hive and become a beekeeper. Relief is just a sting away- maybe.

[Chikn]

I’ve been a beek for 20+ yrs. In the last year or so my wife has developed an allergy to bee venom and the last time she almost didn’t get out of the ER alive. The most expensive thing she carries in her purse is that Epi-pen.
When I first started with bees and was learning to handle them. I dropped a full frame of bees at my feet. I paid no attention to them till they crawled up my pant leg and over the coarse of the next 20 minutes gathered 200+ stings in both legs. That was 20 yrs ago and arthritis has been gone, now I haven’t been stung in 3 or so yrs the aches and pains are coming back.

[alan]

Interesting anecdote easily tested. Arthritis also gets worse for a lot of us as we age so I wish you would test it before mine sets in.

[Chikn]

Bee stings work differently for all of us. I already know it works for me and I will find bees this spring for myself. I think you will need to test this interesting anecdote on yourself!

[marc5]

My tip of the day, to go along with the arthritis issues: pneumatic pruners.

My orchard is not large–about 50 trees–but I’m beginning to feel some age and pain in my wrist. My neighbor, who has a commercial orchard, kindly loaned me a pneumatic pruner–wow! I’m sold. This is the model I’m using:

http://www.gemplers.com/product/171529/Bahco-Pneumatic-Pruner

I note that some models are very expensive. Given the lower price of this one, I find the price well worth it, and will buy one when I return my friend’s. My setup is a bit awkward, but it works. My orchard is 700’ away from the nearest electricity, so I load a small generator and compressor into my Gator, park in the middle of my orchard, and bingo! I smile with every press of the trigger and the whoosh of the air as another branch cleanly drops to the ground.

We’re not getting any younger! Save your wrist! What’s it worth?

[ltilton]

That sure sounds like what I need! Thanks!

I wish Gempler’s would give the weight of it

[alan]

I can’t believe the cost of the battery powered ones- insane. Obviously they don’t sell a lot of them. There seem to be a couple of Chinese manufacturers of them trying to get a foot hold here, but I couldn’t find any distribution. Lugging around an air compressor seems a bit much.

[ltilton]

And batteries add to the weight

[alan]

They could design it to hang the battery pack on the tree while you prune- but yeah, you’re right.

[Olpea]

My wife is 5’5" and 110 lb and she breaks shovels all the time. “Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world.”

One day earlier this spring my son and I were planting trees. I had four shovels at the farm that day, and he broke two. I finally told him if he broke one more shovel, he was planting the rest of the trees by himself. Those words were magic, somehow inexplicably, strengthening the handles of our remaining shovels.

I wonder if someone calculated the length of the lever needed to use with Archimedes’ fulcrum? LOL

Wouldn’t that depend on how tall and how close the fulcrum was to the world?

While I’m thinking of it. One handy tip I use to pull T-posts is a jack stand as a fulcrum. I take a small bit of 1/4" chain and wrap it around a lever (sometimes using another T-post laying around as a lever), then wrap the other end of the chain around the t-post fixed in the ground and push down on the lever with the fulcrum and the T-post will pop out of the ground. Sometimes I’ll use a log for a fulcrum, if I don’t have a jack stand handy.

Never pull a T-post out with your back, if you can help it. Good way to hurt your back. T-posts are always more determined to stay in the ground than you think, when pulling them out with your hands.

[alan]

You never have to remove rubber electric tape- it stretches and decomposes without ever girdling. Even vinyl only seems to stick to certain species in certain instances. This spring I unraveled the vinyl tape on every one of my peach and plum grafts without pealing any young bark- maybe because I did it before first growth, but even when I did it in summer it wasn’t a problem. Maybe it is a problem in mid spring when bark is slipping, but I never deal with this them. Also, vinyl electric tape seems to only girdle pears and apples- somehow plum and peach grafts can quadruple in thickness or more and vinyl stretches without girdling.

One change I’m making this year is when weather forecast is for hot, I will use white vinyl electric tape for plums and peaches.

[JayKidd]

Have been using those vinyl electric tapes for 3 years, will try leaving them on till the end of season.

[JinMA]

Thanks for explaining this, Alan. Just to follow up, at what time of year would you (or others) recommend removing vinyl electric tape from apple and pear grafts?

Edit: I just saw and read through the thread on this subject, and see that you were talking about removing tape during the winter/while trees were dormant. But unless I missed something, which is totally possible, I don’t think you mentioned whether that was pomes or stone fruit or both (you mentioned that apples and pears are more subject to girdling from electrical tape).

Thanks!

[BobC]

My tip of the day would be, KNOW YOUR ROOTSTOCK SIZE. After 3 months or so of gathering scions from all our generous members. I received my rootstock for plums and peaches. When asking for scions, I figured pencil size or close to it, thinking the rootstock would be close… BOY was I wrong… I received P Americana and Lovell and for the most part I would bet they are about 1/8 inch round… That was really disappointing as I have plenty of scion that won’t even cleft to it.

My 10 Myrobalan are about pencil size so not all is lost… So the tip of the day… Know what you’re getting…

With that said, I have a question, is it normal for plum and peach rootstock to come really small? I know I didn’t get a choice when ordering from Fedco and Burnt Ridge.

[alan]

The best time for me is late winter to early spring (not past silver tip for apples) on warm days so my fingers are free and the tape is flexible. Late summer is fine too- it’s just a matter of grafts being strong enough. Sometimes a graft has grown a great deal without fully merging with mother tissue. As mentioned, you can always tape it back.

[Derby42]

I grafted a slightly larger scion onto a smaller pear seedling this weekend. I found a little more difficult to line up. I was using a cleft graft. One of the big problems I had was getting the rootstock to split evenly, I usually set my knife right in the center of the rootstock and tap it with the handle of my pruners but it kept trying to split to one side by the time I had the split as deep as I wanted it.

[Auburn]

After reading other forum members post about different rootstocks for apples I decided to go with M111 a few years ago. This is not the most eye appealing root out there but it has delivered a healthy tree for me. I don’t particularly like the occasional sprout from the roots or it attempting to develop roots from above the soil line but as of now it has had no disease issues. My experience with other rootstocks is limited so there might be others as good or even better. Most all my M111 roots have Bud 9 interstems which appears to be bringing the trees into bearing early. My long term plans are for a disease resistant root, free standing, early fruiting, and somewhat drought tolerant.

[clarkinks]

111 bears very quickly here in Kansas. It’s a fantastic rootstock for our difficult soil.

[galinas]

Or get that special kitchen gloves the knife can’t get through. They are thin and do not prevent feeling the material. Works magically:grinning:.

[danchappell]

One easy way I found to pull up metal posts and rebar is to clamp on a pair of vice grips near the ground then use a supported crowbar under the head of vice grips to pull up the post just like you would pull a large nail.