Tim Mackson

Thank you Nynke,

You've given me a ton of good information and I really appreciate it.  I need all the help I can get.
I might be pruning too aggressively and I'll have to slow down and take less off the trees.
This will be our second year of pruning ourselves and we have a lot to learn.

I wonder about the summer pruning though.  We are very hesitant about pruning then because of our location in Central Pa where we always seem to have very hot and humid conditions.  We're really careful because of the disease potential.  I don't think that my father in law pruned at all then.  I'm not sure.  

We still have much to learn and maybe I should be considering summer pruning?

Thank you again!    :)

Thank you for the video links.  Very good information.  I've actually been watching Stefan Sobkowiak and he's sort of the origination for my idea of leaving a central leader and then bending it down.

r ransom wrote:Looks like the rootstock grows faster than the graft tree.

We grow a lot of our fruit from seed and graft if they don't taste good.  This helps the orchard be strong if changes like odd weather or other stresses come to the farm. They might have done the same.

Usually we getthe opposite where the rootstock grows so much slower than thengraft and we get a massive tree sitting on a tiny base.

I'm glad that I asked because I never really thought about it in that direction.  Interesting.  Thank you.

My father in law passed and I never asked him when I should have.  

I'm sure that he bought the trees like this since he didn't start grafting until much later in his life  (I would guess that the trees are at least 20 years old judging from other trees that have died and which I cut down.

It's odd because he had of these trees staked like he was expecting a weaker root system.  They do seem to be weakly supported and most are leaning in one direction or another.

I was watching a video on interstem grafting the other night.  This is where you use a stronger root stock along with a dwarfing section and then the final tree.  I wonder if this might be the case with these?

More to wonder about I guess.  :)

Thank you  

Hello,  

I was wondering if someone could tell me what's going on with the trunks of these apple trees?   There's no problem.  The trees are very healthy and productive.  I just look at the growth and think that it's very odd.  I think about it a lot.  

Is there a graft incompatibility between the root stock and graft?  Just the type of graft?  Is this a common occurrence and are there trees like this in any orchard?  Only a couple of rows are like this. I'm not sure of the tree variety right now and I have no way of knowing what the root stock is,  but it is a dwarfing variety.

All of the trees in the row are like this.   They all were planted at the same time and are of the same variety.

Thanks for any replies.
Have a great day.    :)

Hello,  I was wondering if anyone might have any advice on fixing what might be a pruning mistake that has been going on for years?  I have rows of apple trees which have  large pancake growths on top.  The growths were caused by pruning waterspouts and suckers off the tree tops each spring,  which in turn caused even more growth for the next pruning season.  I've removed a couple of the larger growths,  they were massive and seemed to add nothing of value to the tree.  Maybe it was a mistake to cut them off?  

I have no idea if these are normal or not.  Do all older trees have these?   I only assume that they shouldn't because my father in law (who owned the orchard)  had some health problems and had to let people who had no real pruning experience start pruning his trees, and that the growths seem unproductive.

My plan (with no experience or knowledge of pruning) was to cut these growths off and to let them sucker again and choose one sucker and train it downward to stop the apical dominance.   No idea if this would work and I have no idea if these are actually normal or bad.  My experience is just a year of pruning mistakes and a hodgepodge of youtube pruning advice mixed together from several different techniques.  

I'm sort of at a loss.  Am I making a mistake by cutting them off?  Are they normal in any older orchard?  So many questions.    :).

The top picture is a smaller  "pancake" that I've already pruned.  The bottom picture is of a branch that hasn't been pruned yet.



Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you all.

Hi,  I was wondering if anyone could explain how these flowers (Chrysanthemum Carinatum) get their colors?  They're annuals, so they're grown every year from seed. From what I've read they might not come back the next year true to the parent plant.  Are they grown in large fields of the same colors and then the seed is mixed at some point?  I bought seeds from a small seller who I think produced his own seed.    If these grow well I was planning on saving my own seed but I'm thinking that I won't get the same results.  I think that the next generation of flowers will blend into some solid color.  Is this true?

Thank you for any reply!
Have a good day.
Tim

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:We store vegetables in the fridge for months before eating them.

In their natural ecosystem, peach pits stay out in cold freezing weather, partially germinated for months before finally emerging during warm weather.

Thank you Joseph,  This makes sense.  I could see the seeds getting enough cold to be stratified, then getting a warming trend enough to make them sprout and then another extended cold spell again.  

It's not like the refrigerator is going to freeze them (hopefully).  

Now, I'm wondering if this would work with any type of seed.  I might have to experiment with that.  :).

Hello,

I was experimenting with peach seeds just trying to see if I could get any to sprout and I had success with one (I only tried two).  Although it was just an experiment,  I potted up the sprouted seed.   I know that it's too early to start anything in our cold, dark house and that the sprouted seed is probably going to damp off and die or some other failure will happen due to lack of proper growing conditions.

While reading articles on this online, I came across an article saying to put sprouted seeds in the refrigerator to keep them until it's warm enough to plant them.

Has anyone had success doing this?  It seems sort of counterintuitive to me.   It seems like storing seeds at below 40 for any length of time would damage them in some sort of way.

Thank you for any replies!
Have a good day!
Tim

Anne Miller wrote:The best suggestion would be to put the seeds in the freezer to kill the bugs like is done with mesquite seed pods.

Are you going to grow mimosa trees or do something else with the seeds?

Hi Anne,   I was going to grow them.  I took the bag outside and just let the bugs fly away.   By good fortune I had sealed them in a zip lock bag so the bugs were all contained and not flying through the house.  I'll have to check to see how many seeds are still viable.   I'm assuming that they hatched from one per individual seed but I'm not sure yet.  I used an image search and found out that the bugs are actually bean weevils.  I think that I'm going to have to get more seeds so that I have enough.  I was just planning on getting a ton of seeds, very crudely scarifying them, and throwing the whole batch in a pot of dirt this spring to get seedlings to transplant.   I do this with redbud and it works out well for that.   I'll have to try your freezer suggestion.  Thank you.

Hi!

Just wanted to warn anyone who might be thinking about collecting Mimosa tree seeds that they might contain a hidden surprise: