Thanks for your help. I'll follow up soon if we want to do that. Otherwise, this thread will probably be useful to other people who are looking into private groups.
I would like to find instructions for creating a private forum. I went to "Private Forums" https://permies.com/c/22 and clicked "new topic," which didn't work.
I'm seeing if permies.com is a usable platform for my local group, as our current online platform (Yahoo groups) is about to shut down. Therefore, we would be using it on an ongoing basis, and our members would need to be able to freely create new threads within the private group.
I have a nectarine tree that someone grew from seed, apparently a reliable variety. It got eaten by deer a few times, resulting in growing in a bushy form, currently 4 feet tall. Does anyone have any experience growing fruit trees as a bush (with many main branches coming out of the main trunk about 1 foot up), or should I just cut away all but one of the main trunks?
We have some fig trees that have been in the ground for a few years (around 2 feet tall). We covered them with a sheet when it was below freezing most of the time, but not always. The coldest temperatures were around 24 degrees. Each spring, around 6 inches of top growth dies. Most strangely though, the parts that are still alive take a month longer to start growing leaves than our figs still in pots. (It has been very warm for a month now, and the potted ones have full leaves, whereas the ones in the ground only have their tiny baby fig buds). It takes them so long to start growing each year that they hardly make any yearly progress in their size.
Why do the fig trees in the ground die back more, and why are they so delayed in growing each spring compared to the potted ones? The potted ones have been against the house.
How did large mature trees in my area first get established? I grew my trees from cuttings of those.
Thanks for your analysis and suggestions, John. I think you might be forgetting that I would have thrown hundreds of cherry pits there myself! So the seed could have been from anywhere. I will prune it and find a compatible tree to pollinate. Bryant, I think it did make some more cherries than last year.
Those all sound like good ideas. I've done about 2 dozen successful grafts of apples and plums, but no successful but grafts. Here is a thread I created with a question in that topic: https://permies.com/t/89228/apple-trees/Bud-Grafts-anatomy
I have a new idea about why it's not making much fruit: since it ripens about a month earlier than other people's trees, it probably also flowers earlier. Is there any way to find another tree for pollination that would flower at the same time?
I'm trying to understand the anatomy of bud grafting, but I can't find a full explanation in any book or website. If the tree's bark and cambium are lifted out (so that the only thing underneath is the actual wood), the tree's cambium would end up on the outside of the bud's bark. How are they supposed to match up and grow if the cambium of the bud cutting is only touching the tree's internal wood, not cambium? I haven't gotten any bud grafts to take.
I wonder whether I can cut back the main central trunk of my self-seeded cherry tree by a few feet. My purpose would be to keep the tree shorter, since it's now 15-20 feet tall.
For several years we have had an earwig infestation covering our whole yard, with the earwigs eating up brassicas, parsley, raspberries, etc. Now it's way worse, maybe due to a few factors this year: don't have chickens anymore; no wild birds this year other than scrub jays; haven't watered lawn so they concentrate in the garden area. I never studied the soil solutions, but right now I'm trying to protect a bunch of my baby grafted trees (apples, plums, figs) from another night of damage.
Things I've tried:
Bowls of fermented/sweet liquid {catches hundreds, but doesn't keep them off the plants}
Spray solution of vinegar and dish soap {1 part vinegar to 3 parts water) (didn't even keep them off the leaves, and started to burn the leaves}
Diatomaceous earth sprinkled on most leaves {earwigs were crawling all over it and eating still}
Does anyone know of some other quick solution that works? A barrier to put around each small trunk?
Thanks for your insight!![/color]
I'm inquiring to see if anyone has studied this kind of thing - thanks for your insight.
I have a cherry tree that came up on its own about 7 years ago, hasn't been grafted, and has always consisted of multiple trunks from the bottom. The problem is that it only makes about 1/15 the amount of fruit as other cherry trees in town. It grows well each year and has abundant flowers, but as the weeks go by, much of the forming fruit falls off/shrivels up (and maybe not many of them were fertilized in the first place). There is a cherry tree a block away, and I want to determine what the other possible causes for sparse fruit could be. Does anyone know if it's because of the genetics from coming up from seed, or if the multiple trunks are influencing it?
Hello,
I am wondering if anyone knows of or has tried using any materials besides plastic to cover up compost piles with. The purpose is to retain moisture, especially on the top layer of the compost pile, which gets dried out too fast - so it needs to be some kind of solid piece of material that's fairly non-porous.
Thanks.
They might not have enough light when it's getting dark to see so they can jump safely onto the perches (even though they can do a good job of "pecking" the perch a few times and then jumping up. If it's too dark in my coop, my chickens won't take the chance of jumping in the wrong spot and falling off the perch.
We used duck manure mixed with bedding on our squash and tomatoe plants, and it seemed like it was the best kind of manure. We have also watered our berries, trees, and garden with their pool water, and it seems fine.
