Richard Kicklighter

Tanja Eskildsen wrote:Tfarm in Florida (tfarm is his youtube channel)

Do you have a direct link by chance (or an alternative option to get ahold of them)? For some reason I can not find them on YT.

Excellent, would be interesting to try these out! It sounds like these are around 9 months for maturity. Still keeping eyes out for ~<6 month varieties.

Looking for either small trees that can be shipped or cuttings that I can grow out either on their own roots or grafted onto trifoliate/flying dragon. If you are within a couple hours, I am fine picking up. Outside of that range (or within, if pickup is unavailable), I am willing to pay for shipping plus any costs of the material.

citrus cultivars: dragon lime, honey changsha, us 119, us 852, prague citsuma

David Good wrote:I wish I could get some of the fast-growing red-leafed type I had, as they would give us roots in only 4-6 months, meaning you could grow them in zone 7.

That would be excellent! My regular ebay and etsy searches have not yielded very much so far. I grew red jamacian cassava last year and am seeing how they handle my ~20f temperatures this winter. Hopefully the 5ft plants will survive and regrow (from roots) this spring!

I also follow David and am hopeful to try some cassava here in 7b. We'll see how it goes! I did go ahead and buy some sweet Jamaican red.
Supposedly there are some varieties that will yield decently after just 6 months. I have been looking for some of those and butterstick as well.

If you find a butterstick supplier, let me know please! :)

This will be my 2nd year growing citrus in ground here in 7b-- so 8b should be a lot easier! Some of the citrus I am growing is a little more cold sensitive so it is sheltered on the south of my house against the brick wall and fireplace. Just fruits and exotics I've purchased from before but unless you are in FL you'll need to drive down for a pickup. Mckenzie farms is also good and the owner is a great person to chat with-- I think they may ship(?) but their listings online are seriously lacking. The other site that was mentioned, I've not looked at previously.

I've purchased a number of citrus from one green world and they are great as well.

I would suggest some reading Cold Hardy Citrus for the South East. It is a little painful due to formatting (scanned from hard copy) but it is the only one I've been able to find. It will break down a number of varieties that can be grown. The list given there is pretty surprising at least to me and I'll be expanding out greatly with them.

California's Citrus Clonal Protection Program seems to also offer good grafting material. I've not purchased from them yet however.

Fruitwood Nursery has also started offering cuttings and I have a lot from them under light/heat now trying to get them to root.

Good luck-- cold hardy citrus can be an addicting hobby!

Mark Griffin wrote:I am a GIS guy so it's cool to see your place from the sky over the years! Anyone else in NC that maybe interested in aerial photos should check out this site:
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=91e02b76dce4470ebd7ec240ad202a04

Super cool, was able to find some additional images there as well-- I'll need to play around to see if I can overlay property lines on those images. I am continually amazed at how different things looked over the years! Too bad we can not currently look back over hundreds of years to see fine detail on properties here. There are tons of historic things around here (Battlefield for example is just several miles away).

It has been a challenging few days here, the well pressure tank failed and burned out my well pump. Finding someone to do the work at a semi-reasonable price and then getting it all together has been a multiple day ordeal at this point. Turning the pump back on, blew out a pipe in my house and then had to get that resolved. Now with all that fixed, trying to flush the well a bit-- pressure was once again lost. Tomorrow will be day three with no water and scheduled for the well company to visit again first thing in the morning.


Attached are two photos of the pump which had been running faithfully since 1976.

A little spotty in being able to reply lately. Had a few issues with neighbor's littering/trespassing on my property (it looks like the old barbwire fence was cut). I've temporarily just put up a new sign but will be ordering some trail cams to keep an eye on that portion of the land soon. Also, need to actively get that fence fixed...

A photo below, but also got a number of cuttings from fruitwood nursery. Have them all setup to hopefully root. If things go well, i can pot them in 1 gallon pots in late spring and maybe place in the ground in mid fall.

Varieties: Rolling River Aronia, Autumn Magic Aronia, McKenzie Aronia, Nero Aronia, Korean Bush Cherry, Hidden Springs Goumi, Golden Silverberry, York Elderberry, Samyl Elderberry, Sampo Elderberry, Samdal Elderberry, Nova Elderberry, Korsor Elderberry, John's Elderberry, Haschberg Elderberry, Guincho Purple Elderberry, Emerald Lace Elderberry, Adams Elderberry, Mexicola Avocado, Big White Mulberry, Black Beauty Mulberry, Collier Mulberry, Contorted Mulberry, Illinois Everbearing Mulberrry, Kokuso Mulberry, Pakistan Mulberry, Persian Mulberry, River View Russian Mulberry, Russian Mulberry, Tehama Mulberry, Wellington Mulberry, Evergreen Huckleberry, Bing Cherry, Compact Stella Sweet Cherry, Early Burlat Cherry, Kansas Sweet Cherry, Kordia Cherry, Kristin Cherry, Lapin Cherry, Mona Cherry, Montmorency Pie Cherry, Royal Anne Cherry, Stella Cherry, Stella Cherry, Sweet September cherry, Utah Giant Cherry, Van Cherry, Elegant Cornelian Cherry, Pioneer (Lukyanovskii) Cornelian Cherry, Red Star (Vidubetskii) Cornelian Cherry, Redstone Cornelian Cherry

I have a lot of stuff coming from cold stream farm as well (25 paw paws and persimmon seedlings each and 4 of the following osage orange, witch hazel, sassafras, spicebush, thornless honeylocust, and rosa rugosa.

I started some tree seeds as well from trade winds: dwarf paw paw, dead man's fingers, medlar, japanese raisin, flying dragon, and dwarf jelly palm. I need to put in another order, i forgot to get jujube seeds...

So the last couple weeks have been super busy! The east side of my home had a number of trees that were blocking sunlight greatly and I intend to use the east wall of the home for bananas so that wouldn't work long term. All told, i think we took around 12 trees down. Still a good number of logs remaining that I have use for already-- likely as edging around the driveway and the garden and to segment off the propane tank.

Additionally, the shabby work I did to quickly get protection up over my citrus against the house has been redone to a much more acceptable level.

I put in a few plant orders this week as well. I've ordered around 30 lily tree bulbs from Brecks for planting. These will go around the propane tank to block it from the home. Also, I ordered a couple newly released Yacon and Mashua varieties from Cultivariable along with some Chinese Bugleweed. With the bugleweed-- I will now have both Lycopus Lucidus and Chinese Artichoke (Stachys affinis) planted.

It is raining here tomorrow, so I'll mainly be gathering building supplies. Sunday however, I will be building beds for those air potatoes and ground nuts I posted about previously so they can get planted ASAP along with creating new beds for the dwarf red sunchokes I picked up from Cultivariable several weeks ago and the brussle sprouts I'll be putting in next month.

Speaking of sun chokes-- the advice I received regarding curing them like sweet potatoes was horribly wrong. Nearly every single one shriveled and turned soft/black in under a week. Further investigation shows keeping soil over them may be a better option-- I'll try that next year!

Harvested the sunchokes this week. Replanted new sunchoke beds, got the onions in the ground. Still have some blooms around and calamondins are ripening still. I have some kumquats as well that are still green. Hopefully they'll be ripe by December!