Working at the Farm - Took a few I-Phone Pics

[Native Hunter]

I topworked some big trees today. This is uncharted territory for me. But, it will either work or not work, and I will be wiser either way. If the trees die, I feel certain they will send up root suckers, which can then be grafted. Time will tell. These were crabs that were pretty useless due to pea sized fruit.






A nice full sized tree I set a few years ago. Started fruiting last year and is loaded with blooms this year.



Got the final 5 trees set. Had some great help. Dad came and joined in on the fun.









Some more nice trees:



Chestnuts on the left just beginning to leaf out. Fruit trees on the right in full bloom.



That's it. I did some other apple and pear grafting today. Too early for persimmons. On to that soon.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

Looks like an awesome day on the farm!

Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk

 

[Native Hunter]

One more apple tree I'm excited about this year. A Caney Fork LT. Has been growing instead of making apples, but looks like this may be the dawn of some fruit.

 

[j-bird]

Your place and the work you do always amaze me Native.....

 

[Neahawg]

Native your place is always awesome!

 

[Satguy]

Fruit trees are looking good.
.

 

[Native Hunter]

Thanks everyone. Since I'm done planting trees - except for a few replacements as necessary - I thought you might like to see a list of the last ones I planted this year.

Some of these I already know work well here and some are experimental for me.

• 2 - Dozier Crabapples
• 3 - Becton Pear - A new selection from WG that has high DR and late drop
• 1 - Sundance Apple on MM111 - A PRI cultivar with high DR on all fronts and late drop time.
• 1 - Olympic Giant Pear - Proven by several folks on this forum but new to me.
• 1 - Franklin Cider Apple. This was a gift from DLH. He has one too, so we will see how they do in KY. Impressive up north.
• 2 - Sheepnose Apples - A wild cultivar from NWC
• 1 - Grey Ghost Crab - Another NWC tree
• 1 - 30-06 Crab - Another NWC tree
• 1 - Droptine Crab - Another NWC tree
• 11 - miscellaneous apple, pear and cherry trees for my son's new place - for human consumption. The apple and pears are proven varieties and the cherry are experimental for us.
• 4 - Golden Hornet Crabs - This may be a bad choice for me, but I can topwork later if necessary. Came from Wafler and were very nice trees. I really think the cultivar will be okay here, but saw one thing after I bought them that placed slight doubt in my mind.
• 2 - Yates persimmons
• 2 - Deer Candy persimmons
• 6 - 90 chromosome persimmon seedlings

Now can you see why I'm done planting trees?? With these and what I've done over the last 12 years, it's time to stop and give more attention to maintaining than planting. Now, I do have a few little chestnut trees to move, but we won't count that as planting.

 

[lakngolf]

Looking good native. New apples this year. Your top dressing looks like more alien stuff. Ky must be a landing area

 

[Native Hunter]

Looking good native. New apples this year. Your top dressing looks like more alien stuff. Ky must be a landing area

Either that or a Bigfoot Signpost....

 

[Native Hunter]

Looking good native. New apples this year. Your top dressing looks like more alien stuff. Ky must be a landing area

Lak, if you want an evening of laughs, turn on the Destination America channel and watch the show "Mountain Monsters." I won't tell you about it and ruin the fun. Just watch a couple of episodes and enjoy.....

 

[DLH]

Good job Steve sorry I wasn't able to attend this weekend hopefully we can do persimmons and maybe top work some fruit next year since you are done planting anything.

 

[David]

"it will either work, or it wont work, and i will be wiser either way"

I often have the same feelings. you must plan the best you can, but even then, be prepared to fail.

 

[Native Hunter]

Good job Steve sorry I wasn't able to attend this weekend hopefully we can do persimmons and maybe top work

I wish you could have been there Daniel. Maybe we can do the persimmons soon.

 

[Native Hunter]

"it will either work, or it wont work, and i will be wiser either way"

I often have the same feelings. you must plan the best you can, but even then, be prepared to fail.

So true. And the lessons from failure are just as valuable as the lessons from success.

 

[Triple C]

Native...Good stuff as always! How cool is it to still have your dad around helping out! Love your place and your thread.

 

[Native Hunter]

Native...Good stuff as always! How cool is it to still have your dad around helping out! Love your place and your thread.

Thanks TC. Yes, we enjoy the tree planting fellowship and he will be there to help mowing too. So great to have him around.

 

[dogghr]

You trying to pic up extra channels with that top dressing? Or maybe you smoking a little too much of that " bluegrass". We just legalized ours. Seriously cool how you did that. I fig too late in green up for that work. I started to do graft on apple last week but decided not dormant enough. Maybe I'm wrong. Could you show how you did that, and is that just electrical tape? I do similar but I'm not the guru some of you guys are.

 

[Native Hunter]

You trying to pic up extra channels with that top dressing? Or maybe you smoking a little too much of that " bluegrass". We just legalized ours. Seriously cool how you did that. I fig too late in green up for that work. I started to do graft on apple last week but decided not dormant enough. Maybe I'm wrong. Could you show how you did that, and is that just electrical tape? I do similar but I'm not the guru some of you guys are.

If you think it looks funny now, wait till I put tree tubes over all those grafts. Just kidding. But I will likely add some cane sticks with duct tape later on to help support successful grafts and keep them from being broken off until they get strong.

Basically, I just did a standard bark graft. Make a wedge shape on the scion - split and peel the bark back on the tree - insert scion - make good bark contact - wrap with electric tape - then seal with something to keep the moisture out. I used the black gooey stuff made for that, but most folks just use toilet bowl wax. Rather than cutting below the forks in the tree, I left the forks and grafted them. I had trained that tree to start forking about 5 foot off the ground. It was a nice tree but kind of useless since the apples were too small. I bought a bunch of cheap trees once and got a few like that, but also got some good ones.

Fish has some good pictures on this forum last year of how he did the scions, and I did mine the same. He might still have those pics and post them.

The tree was leafed out but the scions were dormant in the fridge. That's how DLH and I grafted apples last year and had a high success rate in grafts taking. My problem last year was a severe wind storm on July 3 that got a high percentage of my persimmon and apple grafts, but some did survive it. That was the storm (you remember) that took down many big oaks on my place. I had some scions out over 3 feet long by that time that the storm got.

I'm new to grafting - just started last year, so still gaining experience. What I've learned so far is put some wind protection on the ones that take.

What I do know is if this experiment fails and the tree dies, I have not failed yet. When the big tree dies, it will send out shoots from the ground. With about 2 years growth they will be the perfect size to graft. So, no way for me to lose with this experiment. My tree is really too big to topwork in my opinion, but worth a try for the experience.

 

[Fish]

Gotta admit, Native, i got a lot more satisfaction this year protecting last year's trees than planting more. But i still planted more....

 

[dogghr]

I've only done dormant to dormant. Will rethink that in the future. Always learning from the likes of you, Fish and others. Thanks.