Weekend project

[emetzger]

I planted some fruit trees this weekend that I had grown from seed and grafted. Also planted some chestnut trees. 11 fruit trees and 4 chestnut. These are 2 year old trees grown in root maker products. Real impressive root balls. I caged some and tubed the others.

 

[swat1018]

Looks awesome! My only concern is how fast those trees are going to outgrow those cages. I used 16' pieces of concrete reinforcing wire to make a cage, and I had limbs poking out in the first season with trees with nowhere near the roots you have.

 

[Benja]

I planted some fruit trees this weekend that I had grown from seed and grafted. ]

Very impressive! The photos really tell a story. Can you tell me more about growing fruit trees from seed? I see a tag for Arkansas Black (apple) . . . did you plant it from seed?

 

[emetzger]

Looks awesome! My only concern is how fast those trees are going to outgrow those cages. I used 16' pieces of concrete reinforcing wire to make a cage, and I had limbs poking out in the first season with trees with nowhere near the roots you have.

Swat,
I've grown apple trees in tubes and shorter, wider, wire cages but never in these tall ones. Now I have grown jap persimmon, I will try and take some pics. This may or may not work, but I cut every branch off inside the cage and am planning on starting the branching out of the top.

With these cages, there is no way to try and train the crotch angle. Not that I would do it anyway, maybe if I had time. At this point, I'm trying to use what I have and at least protect the bases from rabbits and mice girdling the bottoms and deer the tops.

What I'm thinking is let everything grow over the summer and continue to prune lower branches during dormant season. I will probably have to stake the tree, depending on how well they grow. I found the Jap persimmon cage. it is the same size. Little tight but there working out. Thanks for looking.

 

[emetzger]

Very impressive! The photos really tell a story. Can you tell me more about growing fruit trees from seed? I see a tag for Arkansas Black (apple) . . . did you plant it from seed?

Benja,
I grew some rootstock from ordinary apple and crab apple seed in 18 cell root maker trays. I moved them into 1 gallon root builders around June of the same year. Then in the spring, I cut scion wood off of know variety trees I had growing and grafted them on my rootstock. I grew those for the summer in 7 gallon bags and voila.

 

[emetzger]

I don't know about you guys but when I'm logging time in the stand all I'm thinking about is what else I can do to get more deer under my stand. For this spot, It was an older blueberry field that I have been struggling to keep alive for years.

I have some good deer traffic passing through here and all the blueberries are gone during deer season, so I decided, instead of filling in the holes with more blueberries, I will fill them in with fruit trees. Hopefully it will be productive In 5 years. I sure do love planting trees.

 

[Nebraskaz71]

Those roots look incredible!

 

[THE LLC]

Apples I've grown from seed seem to make GREAT rootstocks.

 

[emetzger]

This past weekend I pruned some blueberry, muscadine and apple tree. With the blueberries I'm trying to cut some old wood to promote new growth.

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[emetzger]

With the muscadines I'm cutting all vines except the main ones down to 2 or 3 buds. These are late fry purchased from iscons in GA. Late dropping in Oct/Nov.

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[emetzger]

I pruned my apple trees this year with a new sthil pole saw. That thing really sped things up and I would suggest for anyone with a lot of trees. I had to aggressively prune some hard learners, hopefully they will bounce back. If I didn't they would be on the ground eventually.

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[emetzger]

Also tried bottling a couple jars of honey from a bee hive I had that didn't make it. I scrapped into some mason jars and placed in boiling water just long enough to float the wax on top. Turned out pretty good.

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[emetzger]

Forgot a couple pics with the fruit trees. Last year I put 5' tubes on a bunch of apple and pear trees. Make sure you remove these and prune each year. I'm cutting everything below the 5' tube. Some I have to cut open for easy access. Check out these weird roots growing and early bud growth in Feb

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[emetzger]

Forgot a couple pics with the fruit trees. Last year I put 5' tubes on a bunch of apple and pear trees. Make sure you remove these and prune each year. I'm cutting everything below the 5' tube. Some I have to cut open for easy access. Check out these weird roots growing and early bud growth in Feb

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[DrDirtNap]

Looks like you've got a lot going on. Are your trees producing? That look big enough to be producing. Those root pictures from the trees in the tubes look like bur knots. Was the rootstock M111? I've had some bur knot issues with that rootstock myself. Thanks for the update.


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[emetzger]

Those trees are about 10 years old and have been producing good for about 4 years. Here's a 2014 pic of them.

The rootstock is from seed. So no m111s, although I did get some in today.

Not sure what to do with those roots, I'm sure nature will sort it out.

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[emetzger]

This weekends project was trapping. We ran it Saturday and Sunday. Not a lot of critters but we had fun.

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[emetzger]

We set mostly flat sets and also did some snares. See if you can pick the snares out.

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[emetzger]

We caught my best blond coyote yet!

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[Weasel]

Excellent! Looks like a great weekend.