Snowfall is light enough this year that I was able to drive the orchard with the Gator today. Lots of fox tracks in the orchard, I like to see that and the signs that they’re killing the voles. I also collected the Trail Cam chips and those revealed an owl going after voles as well. Not sure I like seeing signs of voles in the orchard, but glad to see something/someone controlling their numbers. I didn’t see a single deer track wandering through the orchard (knock on wood). Things look good right now, but I’m not liking these days above 32F with nights in the teens, I expect I’ll be seeing some southwest injury on the younger trees this spring.
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You rather have 54/30?
In winter I’d rather it just remain frozen.
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Beautiful day. Sunny and low 50s. Great pruning weather.
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Hmmmm…little birdies are chasing each other, the bees are buzzing, Southerly breezes are up, it’s not raining as forecast several days ago, have gotten a little pruning done, a little re-potting of plants, and got started grafting apples.
Honeyberries and red fleshed crabapples are coming to life.
Hellebores beginning to have a bloom or three.
But, having seen maple trees bloom in January one year, and they’re not out yet, this is nice but I don’t think it can last. And since sap is up, a lot of things are losing hardiness --if it gets really cold again there’ll be problems. I think 15 degrees is both likely and acceptable at this juncture, but zero and a lot of zone 6 hardy plants’ll be killed.
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Impressive. Mine are coming up. (I have hellebores blooming though.)
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Transplanted some male seabuckthorn cuttings today, bought 5 female bareroot plants and 2 potted plants will get them next month! Also I’m glad most of these cuttings I have aren’t rotting like last year, where I put them in straight potting soil with no perlite, and little to no consideration on sterlization, thank you coco coir and hydrogen peroxide!
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Congrats! Nice job.
My first successful rooted cutting of honeyberry from last spring…(I had 3 but 2 that rooted croaked since)…has a little leaf. That’s been about the toughest to root. And your seaberry aren’t easy, either.
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Trick is for seaberry cuttings is if possible get pencil width ones, and then gently pinch off all the buds except two or one on top. Then rub them down with a gentle solution of hydrogen peroxide and room temp water and the just stick them in a nice inert medium. You could possibly do without sterilizing but these cuttings were taken on a beach facing the sea, (someone took the name of the plant literally) surprised it grew so well in sand.
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My Eureka persimmon took a big hit in our extreme cold in 2021. It had a lot of trunk damage but in 2022 grew some strong branches from above the graft and also from the rootstock. I grafted the rootstock branches with scion that I collected from the original branches and it all grew amazingly well. This spring the original branches leafed out and blooms are already in place but the grafted branches are still bare. Today I noticed that buds are about to break on these grafted branches. It looks strange. Wood cut from the same tree was grafted back to D virginiana suckers but have taken several weeks to break dormancy.
We just experienced an earthquake. The gov website says north of Lebanon, NJ, 4.8 magnitude. Felt my chair wobbling.
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I sprayed copper @ the orchard today, 80 gallons and only got 7 rows done, 5 remaining. I’ve been tearing out ALOT of tent caterpillars this spring, haven’t even had blooms yet.
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