tomatokate
Chillin' In The Garden
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Hi! I just got 2 mcintosh apple trees, a bing cherry tree, and a bartlett pear tree! I can't wait for next year!! by then, I'll have fruit!! :bun
New, fabulous fruit trees!!
- Thread starter tomatokate
- Start date
Hi! I just got 2 mcintosh apple trees, a bing cherry tree, and a bartlett pear tree! I can't wait for next year!! by then, I'll have fruit!! :bun
rebbetzin
Garden Addicted
My neighbor has a Granny Smith Apple tree, I was surprised we could grow any Apple trees here in Tucson. Next year you will have to post pictures when they are in bloom!!
Debby
Chillin' In The Garden
I know just how excited you feel.
Two weeks ago I drove out to the Gettysburg area and picked up my order of nine fruit trees from Adams County Nursery. To beat the rain I pruned them and started planting right away and worked till twelve midnight! Luck was with me, the moon was bright and the air was cool but still. With the peepers singing in the background, it was a fine night to be cutting worms in half and straining my back.
The next dry day I top dressed with some lime, mulched, put a rabbit guard on each trunk and sprayed them with dormant oil. What a nice feeling to have them in. I'm sitting her now and can hear the rain on the roof, so I know they are being watered. Aaah.
I was limited in what I could get because I ordered a little late in the winter. I got a three apples:
Granny Smith
Honeycrisp
Royal Empire
A sour cherry and a sweet cherry:
Montmorency
Black Gold
Two peaches:
Cresthaven
John Boy
And two plums:
Methley
Satsuma
I'm told that a yellow delicious is good for pollinating and that Liberty is a very disease resistant variety. So I don't think I'm done yet. I'll have to get a couple of more apples, some pears and more cherries, I think.
They are all semi-dwarf rootstock. I hope 15 feet apart is going to be enough. After getting them in the ground I read on this forum that I should face the graft scar to the north. Whoops. Four of them are not. The instructions from the nursery didn't mention this and when I asked a neighbor who managed a commercial orchard about it, he said it isn't as strongly recommended as it once was. I hope he's right.
They are all breaking bud nicely now.
I'm going to paint their trunks with white latex paint diluted 50/50 with water. The deer are kept away by a perimeter electric fence.
Here they are so small you can hardly see them, but I love them anyway.
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/6233_img_0915.jpg[/img]]
These are my first fruit trees. The learning curve is very steep indeed. My next question is going to be how I can control pests and disease with as little spray as possible.
In related news: I have ten nice two foot high stocky blueberry bushes in pots. I just tested the soil where I'm going to plant them and found it to be a pH of 6.5, so I will add some sulfur. Does anyone know exactly what that sulfur is called? Aluminum sulfate perhaps?
Happy gardening everyone.
Debby
Two weeks ago I drove out to the Gettysburg area and picked up my order of nine fruit trees from Adams County Nursery. To beat the rain I pruned them and started planting right away and worked till twelve midnight! Luck was with me, the moon was bright and the air was cool but still. With the peepers singing in the background, it was a fine night to be cutting worms in half and straining my back.
The next dry day I top dressed with some lime, mulched, put a rabbit guard on each trunk and sprayed them with dormant oil. What a nice feeling to have them in. I'm sitting her now and can hear the rain on the roof, so I know they are being watered. Aaah.
I was limited in what I could get because I ordered a little late in the winter. I got a three apples:
Granny Smith
Honeycrisp
Royal Empire
A sour cherry and a sweet cherry:
Montmorency
Black Gold
Two peaches:
Cresthaven
John Boy
And two plums:
Methley
Satsuma
I'm told that a yellow delicious is good for pollinating and that Liberty is a very disease resistant variety. So I don't think I'm done yet. I'll have to get a couple of more apples, some pears and more cherries, I think.
They are all semi-dwarf rootstock. I hope 15 feet apart is going to be enough. After getting them in the ground I read on this forum that I should face the graft scar to the north. Whoops. Four of them are not. The instructions from the nursery didn't mention this and when I asked a neighbor who managed a commercial orchard about it, he said it isn't as strongly recommended as it once was. I hope he's right.
They are all breaking bud nicely now.
I'm going to paint their trunks with white latex paint diluted 50/50 with water. The deer are kept away by a perimeter electric fence.
Here they are so small you can hardly see them, but I love them anyway.
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/6233_img_0915.jpg[/img]]
These are my first fruit trees. The learning curve is very steep indeed. My next question is going to be how I can control pests and disease with as little spray as possible.
In related news: I have ten nice two foot high stocky blueberry bushes in pots. I just tested the soil where I'm going to plant them and found it to be a pH of 6.5, so I will add some sulfur. Does anyone know exactly what that sulfur is called? Aluminum sulfate perhaps?
Happy gardening everyone.
Debby
Debby
Chillin' In The Garden
It been about two months and the little fruit trees are doing quite well.
There were some blooms but no fruit this year, which is just as well. I don't know if I would have had the heart to take them off.
I sprayed them with dormant oil and I go out and hand pick forest tent catepillars off them in the mornings. Other than that, I haven't sprayed with anything except deer repellent, and the leaves look nice and healthy. I heard about an organic product called surround that is a very fine clay suspension.
http://www.groworganicapples.com/surround-kaolin-clay/
It is supposed to make the leaves less attractive to bugs. If I have trouble, I'm going to try that.
But I see lots of good guy bugs on them patrolling for the bad guys. Lightning bugs, lady bugs, and something that looks like a tiny wasp. I don't want to do anything that will discourage them if I don't have to. So this year, while they are nice and small, I think I will rely on hand picking.
Happy gardening, D
There were some blooms but no fruit this year, which is just as well. I don't know if I would have had the heart to take them off.
I sprayed them with dormant oil and I go out and hand pick forest tent catepillars off them in the mornings. Other than that, I haven't sprayed with anything except deer repellent, and the leaves look nice and healthy. I heard about an organic product called surround that is a very fine clay suspension.
http://www.groworganicapples.com/surround-kaolin-clay/
It is supposed to make the leaves less attractive to bugs. If I have trouble, I'm going to try that.
But I see lots of good guy bugs on them patrolling for the bad guys. Lightning bugs, lady bugs, and something that looks like a tiny wasp. I don't want to do anything that will discourage them if I don't have to. So this year, while they are nice and small, I think I will rely on hand picking.
Happy gardening, D
Debby
Chillin' In The Garden
TomatoKate,
I'm just putting two and two together and realizing that those were the little trees you put in this year. Maybe it isn't such a bad thing that the deer took off the fruit. I have heard that the first year the fruit should be removed to let the tree concentrate it's energy on putting in roots and getting established. I don't have any actual experience, you understand,
but it sounds good and maybe it will take some of the sting out of the deer damage to look at it that way. I hope they didn't browse off the growing shoots.
Debby
I'm just putting two and two together and realizing that those were the little trees you put in this year. Maybe it isn't such a bad thing that the deer took off the fruit. I have heard that the first year the fruit should be removed to let the tree concentrate it's energy on putting in roots and getting established. I don't have any actual experience, you understand,
but it sounds good and maybe it will take some of the sting out of the deer damage to look at it that way. I hope they didn't browse off the growing shoots.Debby
