Trav Puteshestvennik

Myron Platte wrote: It would take a cup of apple seeds eaten straight to make you sick. That said, I have never gorged myself on the centers of stone fruits, so I wouldn’t know if it was just a low dose, or something.

So a friend of my mother's told us about an acquaintance of there's he saved his apple seeds supposedly for a year and made tea with them and he died, they're more dangerous when you head them and it was a lot, I eat apple, Apricot, pear, and many other seeds with no ill effects, I believe that they'll prevent cancer too.

Konstantinos Karoubas wrote:sea buckthorn. I am aware of but have not used in reforestation or on my farm. I should.

My experience with it is only from eating and drinking the berries, gathering, and observing them in my travels across Estonia, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia. It's amazing how it's able to live in very wet or dry conditions and somewhat salty water too, I assume from the way it grows close to the sea in Saraamaa, Estonia. I'm from the US and there's a very high demand vs supply, so you basically can only pre-order it in the winter, and I missed out the two years that I tried to buy it, but I'll probably get some this coming year, and I know one guy who has one, perhaps I can get a root cutting from him, that would be ideal.

I often think that would be the ideal areas to move to, lakes, good weather, 4 seasons, but plenty of swimming weather, fishing, hunting, great soil for fruit trees, great climate for everything from pecans to Persimmons.  My major obstacle is money and experience, I'm a country boy, but I don't know how to run a nursery or an orchard as a business.

Eino Kenttä wrote:Wouldn't it be neat to have an apple landrace with the suckering trait, so you can dig up suckers from the nicest seed-grown trees and share around? I think I'm gonna try to make this happen. I've found a source of Malus sieversii (yay!) and also been given a sapling supposedly from an old norwegian variety which was described as suckering (if it's true, double-yay!) so we'll see in a couple decades if I can start sharing out own-root apple suckers...

Interesting thing about the supposed sucker I recieved, though: it has what very much looks like a taproot. So either the suckers form something resembling taproots, or it's actually a seedling. Hoping for the former...

This is the way out ancestors mostly shared good trees, they would damage the roots with shovels, then after a good suckers grew up they'd dig it out and give it away, likely in the winter months or autumn.

You should try to do this with Northern Spy, Wolf River, Antonovka, and other apples that were used for rootstocks or grown from seed, they'd all have good roots, and suckering is not too hard to encourage.

Paul Vid wrote:Trav Puteshestvennik where are you located and can you send scion wood of the plum variety that succeeded in grafting? I wonder if you think any myrobalan plum would work? Did you try out some other closely related species yet?

Yes I can send some this winter, or at worst ask if my dad's friend could send it, he has the original tree or trees, there are three, that are suspected to be suckers off of the biggest one, but they're obviously the same species with the same fruit, Mirabelle, maybe a delicious myrobalan cultivar..
Unfortunately there is bad news since it didn't make it through the second winter, and I think that's due to "self pruning" or delayed graft failure. I hope that I will be able to get another graft on that tree, and I will try it as an interstem this time, hopefully that will provide the needed hormones to be a dominant branch on the tree, I just need to decide, what the best candidate for that is, maybe I'll just choose my best vigorous grower of the prunus trees I have.

Also, Capulin Cherry has been tested with more success, but that's for growing Zone 6 and up, maybe 5 with the right cultivar.

Also I've got to check this little guy, there were two grafts making it when I left, it will be interesting to see how they are when I get home. Santa Rosa plum and Red Haven Peach have hope too. This is out of 19+ species and cultivars tested, check the growingfruit link in my above comment for more details.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:"True Quince", (Cydonia oblonga) is an amazingly productive  perfect for homesteads. Survives summer heat with little to no irrigation, l

It's my experience that they grow in dry climates that are hot in the summer and pretty cold in the winter, I assume that's because they can compete there, not because they need the extremes.

Anthony Powell wrote:

Flowering quince is a bush, there's 3 or 4 species, common garden ones are Chaenomeles japonica (brick coloured flowers, small fragrant fruit with short shelf-life, dense bush - that I'm trying to extricate but it seems to have suckered to something really dense); and C. speciosa with flowers of various colours between white and bright red, fruit up to reasonable apple size that store pretty well. Both these fruit reliably, but are to some degree thorny.
Less hardy is Chaenomeles cathayensis, with the largest fruits and is very thorny.
Chaenomeles is so reliable in countries like Ukraine there are small plantations and research into developing commercial varieties, using various species and interpecific hybrids.

Im really surprised! It turns out that I must have Chaenomeles Speciosa with red flowers, and all along I thought it was Chaenomeles Japonica! I haven't don't a lot with the fruit yet, but it's like a firm lemon apple, texture is good but too hard and sour for fresh eating.

And that's amazing about the hybrids, hopefully we'll see the fruit of those labors soon! I will check it out and let you know if I get my hands on one of them!

Denis Huel wrote: It also likely could be readily hybridized with the commercial almonds and even with peaches. All in all a very interesting plant with a lot of potential considering its cold hardiness.

There a hybrid between it and wild Chinese peach, and apparently that makes the best nuts too and is a decent Rootstock as well, but suckers too much, so it sounds like a great but bush.

The flowering of short  almond lasts on average about 10 days. Most varieties have inedible or non-edible fruits, but there are also nut-bearing varieties, among which the "Posrednik" ("Intermediary") is the most hardy (sometimes it is distributed simply under the name of the "Michurin Hybrid" (Prunus tenella x Prunus davidiana).
https://www.botanichka.ru/article/kakoy-mindal-mozhno-vyirashhivat-v-sredney-polose/

Greg Martin wrote:, it's very interesting that most are not bitter but that some are.  Is the ratio of bitter to non-bitter the same on both of your shrubs, or does one have the majority of those bitter nuts?

We need to start selecting and perhaps we can just start sampling bushes, even ornamental ones and then start propagating the ones that produce good nuts from cuttings, verify that they produce good nuts as well, and it's not the conditions, it's the bush, name it and then start propagating, probably by root cuttings, or even selling the potted cuttings as a named cultivar.
I'll be looking for a Russian almond like this myself, since I'm pretty sure that one of my 2 died and I really need a good one now.

I got this on a Russian site, I've read about this before, it was sold as a rootstock I think.  You might also want to consider prunus Davidiana

The flowering of low almond lasts on average about 10 days. Most varieties have inedible or non-edible fruits, but there are also nut-bearing varieties, among which "Posrednik" (Intermediary) is the most hardy (sometimes it is distributed simply under the name of  "Michurin hybrid" (Prunus tenella x Prunus davidiana).

Doug Hack wrote:Today I collected 400 wild bitter almond seeds in a bucket and planted them about every two feet along about 800 feet of perimeter fencing.  If even 5 percent of them survive I will have 20 new trees to start my hedgerow/shelter fence.  

Have you considered Sea Buckthorn Berry? It's the #1 plant China is using to reclaim deserts and has the healthiest berry on Earth maybe. It spreads by runners too and is a nitrogen fixer, perfect for ariid soils.