Fruit trees

[St. Phatty]

I put out about 35 new fruit trees, in groups of 2 or 3 or 5, according to who pollinates who.

Pink Lady pollinates Mcintosh pollinates Gravenstein, for example.

But now we're getting some COLD weather !

Good thing I didn't plant them in the ground.

Now I have to bring them all indoors, for a few days.

[Frosty Nuggets]

Wow that's dedication St Phatty.

[St. Phatty]

Wow that's dedication St Phatty.

Would it be OK to let the bare-roots get snowed on & maybe be hit by temps in the low 20's ?

Did that last year with a Cannabis plant. I guess 3 survived & 1 died. Or maybe it was 1 survived & 3 died.


It's interesting how our Appetite for Yield produces overly large & heavy plants, with fruit and with Cannabis.

When I feed my Summer pot plants lots of TLC food and moisture 24/7, and deprive them of pollen, they just put on lots of weight.


With the apple tree I guess that has 2 parts. Every flower has the ability to become an apple, if it is pollinated.

I had a 3 or 4 year old Fuji & Winesap that pollinated each other last year. It looked like the droopy pot plants with the heavy branches. 1/2 inch thick branch loaded with 10 20 or 30 apples.

I think in nature they are not pollinated so heavily, when they are in the 5 foot tall plant stage.

The Fuji & Winesap that pollinated each other contravened the Orthodoxy. Winesap is not supposed to pollinated Fuji. I think that part has to do with the time of flowering.

If they flower at the same time, they can pollinate each other. Something like that.

[Frosty Nuggets]

I don't think low temps will do any good but I may be wrong.
Sounds like you are getting a good crop of apples, I am only getting 2 apples from my 2 Red Love apple trees as the 2 year old in the next door unit pulled the others off, the parents let him run around the driveway between units unsupervised and he is a destructive little brat pulling the petals from roses and shaking the shit out of things.

[zif]

Playing the heritage lotto with a few apple seedlings.

I plucked the seeds from fruit of the 'chestnut' cultivar, pollen donor unknown. The mom is a large crab / small eating apple, with absolutely incredible flavor. The orchard where I picked these is full of tastier elites, so the dad is probably something good, too.

I have low expectations, but these 11 plants love the grow room, and might get big enough to graft on to mature trees this year. So maybe just a couple years until a taste test is possible.

[Frosty Nuggets]

Wow indoor apples, nice.

[St. Phatty]

Just moved my baby fruit trees outside.

The ones in the grow room with the LED, where the Cannabis plants are getting pollinated by an Apollo 11 F3 and a Romberry cross, STARTED FLOWERING.

That is the trick in "heeling" a tree, protecting it from the cold without making it think that spring has started.

Then again, the cotton wood is already covered with white flowers or buds.

Anyway, I knew the best option for the fruit trees was to get them all in the ground NOW.

I have one batch of 7 apple trees, 3 Fuji's, 2 Winesaps, a Gala, and something else. I'm trying to create territory for the birds.

I was wondering where to plant my potatoes. Guess I will give every apple tree 3 or 4 potato plants.

So now it's about 30 existing fruit & nut trees + 35 new ones.

It goes much faster with the new ones. I am planting a lot of them where they are surrounded by existing trees so making a deer fence is WAAAY easier.

[Frosty Nuggets]

Nice going mate.

[zachrockbadenof]

i have a question about lemon and lime trees... i have em in pots, outside in may, brought into a greenhouse room in oct - they grow like crazy... BUT... both r at least 10years old, and never have a had a flower...NEVER... so its now mid feb, should it be pruned back a bit and when to fertilize...

i bought a meyer lemon tree last spring from qvc (don't laugh) , and it had blooms on it, and i got 12 nice size lemons in dec n jan...

thanks

[St. Phatty]

Cannabis Aided Botany ?

just planted 6 altogether, 2 almond & some fruit.

Now, Chem cross smoke

and then got to plant 8 more

in the pouring rain.

But the holes are already dug, so it's a lot easier.

[Grover Sativa]

Would it be OK to let the bare-roots get snowed on & maybe be hit by temps in the low 20's ?

They'll be fine. If there is a hard frost then cover the roots with something as it can cause cracks. Fruit tree roots survive the winter every year (in the ground, obviously.) Some fruit trees NEED cold periods in order to 'rest' and produce good fruit the next year. This is called 'chill time' and every type of fruit has a different amount. Stone fruit, in particular, need this, as do apples and pears, etc... also grape roots - this is why people plant the vine outside the greenhouse and then train it in through a hole. The fruits get protected but the roots get a good chill period in the winter.

NTW - I am a fruit farmer! I have hundreds of apricots and thousands of cherries. I used to look after a vineyard, too.

Good Luck

[Grover Sativa]

i have a question about lemon and lime trees... i have em in pots, outside in may, brought into a greenhouse room in oct - they grow like crazy... BUT... both r at least 10years old, and never have a had a flower...NEVER... so its now mid feb, should it be pruned back a bit and when to fertilize...

i bought a meyer lemon tree last spring from qvc (don't laugh) , and it had blooms on it, and i got 12 nice size lemons in dec n jan...

thanks

lemons and limes should flower for 3/4 of the year (including all winter)
There should almost always be both flowers and fruits on your tree.

A non-producing fruit tree is a depressing waste of time and energy - just think of all the fruit you COULD HAVE GROWN if you had something that actually produces fruit instead of those trees for the last 10 years.

There should be no sentimentality with fruit trees. (As a farmer a non producing fruit tree costs me money to look after and gives nothing back. It's also a loss of potential earnings.) If they aren't producing get rid and plant a new one that may actually work. Choose more carefully. Home gardeners are often shocked when I rip out a shit tree a plant a good one for them instead but in 2 or 3 years, once established, they have a tree full of fruit instead of a bare tree and are thanking me for doing it...

My lime tree is an amazing producer - even here in the UK. It is in a greenhouse all the time and it is heated from October to March.

My other lime tree has produced 1 fruit in 3 years and my lemon maybe 5.

The non producers have already been dug up and promised to friends - I only want the producer. I have tried maybe 150 cuttings from her but never got one to root. I will keep trying - air layering may be the way to go.

A proper producing fruit tree is a gift from God! I had an apricot on a south wall that produced 1000 fruit a year. Such a joy but in the end it was just too big for where it was and I had to cut it down. It still saddens me now! So many apricots for so many years, though...

[TychoMonolyth]

lemons and limes should flower for 3/4 of the year (including all winter)
There should almost always be both flowers and fruits on your tree.

A non-producing fruit tree is a depressing waste of time and energy - just think of all the fruit you COULD HAVE GROWN if you had something that actually produces fruit instead of those trees for the last 10 years.

There should be no sentimentality with fruit trees. (As a farmer a non producing fruit tree costs me money to look after and gives nothing back. It's also a loss of potential earnings.) If they aren't producing get rid and plant a new one that may actually work. Choose more carefully. Home gardeners are often shocked when I rip out a shit tree a plant a good one for them instead but in 2 or 3 years, once established, they have a tree full of fruit instead of a bare tree and are thanking me for doing it...

My lime tree is an amazing producer - even here in the UK. It is in a greenhouse all the time and it is heated from October to March.

My other lime tree has produced 1 fruit in 3 years and my lemon maybe 5.

The non producers have already been dug up and promised to friends - I only want the producer. I have tried maybe 150 cuttings from her but never got one to root. I will keep trying - air layering may be the way to go.

A proper producing fruit tree is a gift from God! I had an apricot on a south wall that produced 1000 fruit a year. Such a joy but in the end it was just too big for where it was and I had to cut it down. It still saddens me now! So many apricots for so many years, though...

Why not splice a dozen branches onto a non-producer? My old man had 5 different types of apples growing on one tree.

[St. Phatty]

I have a plum tree where the root stock has taken over.

Some people are telling me to cut the root stock branches off.

BUT I was going to cut a few, dip them in Rootone, and try and Root them.

THEN try and graft parts of other trees onto them.


One other note about Plum Trees - THE THORNS.

Sh-t !!! Mucho de Thorns.

I was thinking that kind of plum tree - it's a Brooks - might be a good base for one of my elevated chicken coops.

They're designed so that some of the parts fall off if anything heavy climbs on them.

Not that I want to dump a raccoon skunk possum onto a big patch of thorns. A bobcat though ? Yeah a bobcat can get the thorn treatment.

[midwestkid]

I got carried away one summer and ordered a bunch of tiny fruit trees. Like over 50 maybe?
Spent my whole vacation digging holes...
Only a few survived.
My take away was to spend the money to purchase 5 bigger trees instead of 50 tiny ones.
5 holes not 50.
But I was younger and sillier. Live and learn.
Also at the time - the videos I watched said not to Amend the holes because the roots would just stick around there in the premium soil, rather than go searching for nutrients and spreading. I feel that video may have mislead me.
I definitely feel like I'd do things differently next time.
One year I harvested fruit from a persimmon tree, then cold stratified them in a bag of compost. Germinated them with my cannabis seeds that spring and they popped up.
I am a bow hunter. Deer love persimmons. Grow persimmons = deer bait.
Those are my fruit tree stories...
Mmhmmm (slingblade voice)