Otis Banks

My neighbors up the road stopped by this morning and asked if I'd cut down an old apple tree. It had a bad ant problem and had stopped flowering about a year ago. I'm not set up to graft, nor to start cuttings. Although I may get some rooting hormone tomorrow if I can find it in town and try to take a couple cuttings from the branches. I told them I would, hoping that if I did I could find some way to try to salvage it. When I got there I found several small trees sprouting from the roots. I dug those and tried to get as much root as I could, but even the roots were pretty much dead. The tree still had plenty of leaves but almost the entire trunk of the tree was bored through by large black ants. I checked the growth rings (didn't count them, I will do that tomorrow) and the tree had only been growing on about 1/4 of the trunk for several years.

The story is that the tree was planted some time in the 1930s or 1940s, and it was some kind of cider apple tree brought here to SD by the people who took over the homestead on that land after several failed farmers. I'm not sure how true that all is but I can verify the age of the tree tomorrow because I kept all the wood for smoking, but either way I'd like to see that old tree live on somehow.

So what I did was I potted all the sprouts I had deep in 12 inch pots. The soil is moist, but not soaked. I removed most of the leaves from them. Some have apparently decent roots, some don't. I have about 10 of these in pots. I put them outside under the north edge of my deck, where it's shady and cool (relatively), but there's a fair amount of indirect light.

Is there anything else I can do to help them along? How wrong did I handle them? Is there any realistic chance that they'll survive? I wish I'd had more time to plan this, but they pretty much were going to take it down today, and were just offering because they know I'm always looking for good smoke wood.

Thanks.

David Hartley wrote:Hmmm... What about fava/broad beans? They winter-kill at right around 20degF, iirc.

I hadn't considered any types of beans, because my understanding was that their nitrogen fixing was inferior to clovers, but I've been reading into it since you suggested it and it looks like it might be a good option. What I'm finding suggests that most legumes nave nodules present at 2-3 weeks post-emergence, and should therefore spend some time fixing nitrogen if they're allowed at least 60 days before killing frost or they go dormant. What I can't seem to find is how much they have fixed by that point, and if it provides any actual benefit.

David Hartley wrote:What about oats or barley or an oat/barley mix?

That's an option too, but I was hoping for something that would provide at least minimal nitrogen fixation. I know my soil has only adequate nitrogen as it is, certainly nothing that supports stellar growth. It's getting better every year by adding compost and chicken manure, but it's a pretty large garden and I never have enough compost and manure to amend the soil the way I'd like to. I'm also not going to add any fertilizers at all, organic or otherwise, because I have an aversion to any external inputs. Nitrogen fixation solves a lot of problems for me if I can pull it off.

Here's my situation.

I am looking for a fall cover crop primarily to add organic matter and N to soil and secondarily to prevent fall weed growth. I intend to no-till in the spring, or at most hand cultivate if needed. This is a raised bed vegetable garden in zone 4. Due to short growing season, most vegetable crops are planted as early as possible, too early to allow a cover crop to grow in the spring. I also don't want to have to use herbicide (obviously) or till to kill the cover crop.

What I've got in mind is using an annual white sweetclover such as HUBAM or similar, seeded late this summer or this fall, as areas of the beds become available as crops are harvested. I really want something that will winterkill, so I don't have to till or spray in the spring. I realize that I lose a significant amount of N and organic matter by letting it winter kill, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make at this point so that I don't have to allow it to start to flower in spring so that I can adequately kill it. Rolling also isn't an option unless whatever I plant can be adequately killed by May 1 at the latest.

So here are my questions for anyone that has experience with this.

Am I completely off base here?
Is an annual white clover going to fix and add enough nitrogen in say 30-40 days to provide any benefit?
Is it possible that I'll actually reduce available nitrogen if I don't let it mature enough?
Will an annual white clover winterkill in zone 4 so that I don't have to deal with it regrowing in spring/summer and becoming competition for vegetables?
If it does try to re-grow, will grass mulch suppress it?

If all else fails, I will till in spring, so if what I'm trying to do is better suited to a different cover crop that would need to be tilled to kill it, let's not completely eliminate that as a possibility.

Thanks.

Every place my chicken tractor has been so far this year has black oil sunflowers growing in it. It's the last thing the chickens eat out of the small amount of grain I give them, and usually some of it ends up buried/scratched in by them. Unless it's a pretty small tractor, 8 birds aren't going to scratch down to plain soil in half a day, so you're going to be planting into the remaining grass. And there will probably be a lot of it. If you want to plant into soil, you're going to need a few days for them to dig it up that much. But then you could just plant into it like it's a freshly tilled garden. Throw down the seed, rake it in lightly, and water.

Related story/idea, for what it's worth.

This spring, I left my son in charge of taking care of the hens for about a week while I was working long days. He didn't change their water and they stopped drinking because the water got scummy. They promptly stopped laying, all of them. After a week they hadn't come out of it, despite clean water and plenty of feed. I scrambled up a couple of eggs and fed them to them, and 3 days later they started laying again. Could be coincidence, but this has worked for both my brother and I. It seems like the protein boost from the scrambled eggs kind of kickstarts egg development again, or restarts it if it stalls.

I'm curious what you more experienced chicken folk think of that?