uh oh! i'm gonna be in trouble with a capital T

Chickie'sMomaInNH

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i went a little overboard this year between early seed orders, ordering fruit tree rootstock & going to that fruit tree scion exchange. i also got a lot of new gardening tools since last fall to help both me & dh get the stuff planted & make our lives a little easier doing all of it!

just some of my purchases this past year: garden tractor scoot in blue from Gardeners.com
https://www.gardeners.com/buy/delux...-131.html#q=scoot&simplesearch=submit&start=2
a 5 row manual seed planter-good for all the lettuce, carrots, beets, radish & other small seeds i could think of throwing in one of these things!
5 Row seed planter.jpg

just got a fruit picker basket. now i won't be trying to knock the fruit out of the tree like i did last year.

and this handy device i got last year with the expectation i would be doing some more fruit tree grafting in the future. just wasn't expecting to graft over 75 trees this year! it made short work of 30 trees last weekend. i just got 20 more rootstock from Fedco & i have another 25 coming from Cummins Nursery.
Tree grafting tool.jpg


which....brings me to why i posted this under the trees & shrubs category! i won't have enough room for this many fruit trees for 1 acre of property & many are going to be duplicates since the scions were long enough to get more than one graft done. if anyone here is interested in some heirloom apple & pear trees i would suggest hitting me up for some before you go & buy from someone else! (unless they are from a local source).

i'll list what i have for duplicates later when i have a full grasp of everything that gets done. most of the apples are done on Bud9 and i have G11 which are both dwarfing rootstocks, so good or tight spaces & very cold hardy. the pears are on OHxF97 so full sized trees.
 

ninnymary

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You've got enough trees there to start a business. And here I'm worried about buying lights and a fruit picker. :p

Mary
 

Chickie'sMomaInNH

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interesting thing about my neighborhood is most of the street names are fruit related. around the corner is Apple Orchard Road & Cider Hill Road but there are no fruit trees that i can see planted on anyone's property-new or old trees at all. the street i'm on is not named after a fruit but we have some of the oldest houses & a few of the old trees survived. my dh said when they bought this house in 1977 that it had a few ancient pear and crabapple trees on it. they have since died off. :(
 

Nyboy

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I once read Europe's fresh water ways became so polluted you could not drink from them without becoming sick. People drank apple cider instead of water. By turning it to alcohol (hard cider) it would store for long periods of time. When setters came to new world they believed water was unhealthy to drink and also only drank apple cider. Because of this belief every farm had apple trees for cider. When people realize they could drink the water apple trees became less important
 

Chickie'sMomaInNH

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trying to keep full sized trees could have contributed to that too. with a lot of the dwarfing & semi-dwarfing rootstock we have now it makes it much easier to harvest without having to use ladders.

here in NH we have a lot of old farms but nearby where the rivers run there are large industrial factories that used to be run by those rivers. most of the textile mill buildings still stand & have been turned into more useful structures. this is part of what happened to those orchards in our area. most were destroyed to put in mills & most farm workers moved away from farms to work in those mills. houses are so clustered together in those areas there is not much space between properties. i see lots that are only 1/10th of an acre & were split into multi-unit homes & some are still set up that way.

my home city used to make shoes & had a lot of railroads run through to transport the goods to other areas. used to have a lot of agriculture going on too. we have one of the few state agricultural fairs in our town. the city doesn't have much manufacturing left. a lot of jobs we have to travel to other areas now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester,_New_Hampshire

Elwin Meader (UNH Agri Professor known for some strawberries & raspberries) lived on the border going into Farmington, NH. i pass by his historical farm on my way to my favorite pick your own farm. UNH also has some historical orchards around but they don't seem to keep many of the heritage apples or fruits going anymore. they do make & sell cider in the fall.
 

catjac1975

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i went a little overboard this year between early seed orders, ordering fruit tree rootstock & going to that fruit tree scion exchange. i also got a lot of new gardening tools since last fall to help both me & dh get the stuff planted & make our lives a little easier doing all of it!

just some of my purchases this past year: garden tractor scoot in blue from Gardeners.com
https://www.gardeners.com/buy/delux...-131.html#q=scoot&simplesearch=submit&start=2
a 5 row manual seed planter-good for all the lettuce, carrots, beets, radish & other small seeds i could think of throwing in one of these things!
View attachment 25473
just got a fruit picker basket. now i won't be trying to knock the fruit out of the tree like i did last year.

and this handy device i got last year with the expectation i would be doing some more fruit tree grafting in the future. just wasn't expecting to graft over 75 trees this year! it made short work of 30 trees last weekend. i just got 20 more rootstock from Fedco & i have another 25 coming from Cummins Nursery.
View attachment 25474

which....brings me to why i posted this under the trees & shrubs category! i won't have enough room for this many fruit trees for 1 acre of property & many are going to be duplicates since the scions were long enough to get more than one graft done. if anyone here is interested in some heirloom apple & pear trees i would suggest hitting me up for some before you go & buy from someone else! (unless they are from a local source).

i'll list what i have for duplicates later when i have a full grasp of everything that gets done. most of the apples are done on Bud9 and i have G11 which are both dwarfing rootstocks, so good or tight spaces & very cold hardy. the pears are on OHxF97 so full sized trees.
I have something similar to the scoot that I used for weeding. My chiropractor hated it-said it was a bad stretch for the back. I do use it just not continuously.
 

flowerbug

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I have something similar to the scoot that I used for weeding. My chiropractor hated it-said it was a bad stretch for the back. I do use it just not continuously.

i have ground pillows (not asian ground parrots :) ), which at least puts me closer to where the action is at. i convinced Mom to make me a few more last year or the year before because it is nice once in a while to take all three and stretch out and just lay there for a few minutes and rest and watch the clouds (ok, so that's my story and i'm sticking to it :) )... they are not easy on the body because sitting isn't very comfortable for me, but it saves a lot of up and down movements and i can scoot them along on the ground or pathway when needed to move. other thing i use them for is kneeling on them, saves the knees/butt on all the crushed limestone around here. very heavy fabric that has stood up to being abused so far. don't get washed, just let them dry and knock the dirt off.
 

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