Apple blossoms

Winter was hard for our fruit production, especially for the blackberries that were decimated by the rabbit population. Snow drifts allowed access over the fencing and the rabbits feasted on the blackberries as well as the apple trees.

We may get a handful of blackberries this year but, for the most part, it will be a lost year.

For the apples, we found a source for the Ambrosia variety at a decent price and we added them as well as a couple of Fuji to the grove.

As we are working towards a more balanced pH for the fruit production, we're encountering more of these than in years past:

Apple blossoms

 This means we may be able to have some apples for ourselves instead of the raccoons taking them all (maybe.)

Tree planting 2015 YTD

We are way behind on planting this year. Our focus has been on infrastructure, adding to the berries and cleaning up

It seems like the weather has been 3-4 weeks behind average: a late frost, dry April and now a wet May. So long as we don't have a dry, hot summer, we should be fine to plant seedlings into June (if we time it between the rains.)

I learned a lot from last year, and we can apply it going forward. Here's a red oak I planted by acorn last year:

Taken in early May, this was planted in the south section in April, 2014, in some "empty" space among the walnuts.

So far this year, we planted 30 bur oak acorns and a couple of apple, apricot and hazelnuts trees.

Get to work - another 34 trees planted this weekend

With showers coming, we planted another 34 seedlings: red maple, hard maple, red oak, and white oak. We've had a cool, although dry, summer that's allowed us to plant seedlings in July and now August. Hauling water in the 80's is sure easier than hauling water while in the upper 90's.

That brings our seedling plantings at 317. With 184 acorns planted in the spring, we now have over 500 planted this year.  

And I got the chance to mow:

 

Too bad I didn't have shade like that the whole time I was mowing.

Get to work - planting more trees

We received a couple more apple trees from Stark Brothers on Friday and we rushed to get them planted on Saturday before a storm front passed by.

Suncrisp - a cross between golden delicious and an orange pippin, this is supposed to be cold hardy and should store well.

This more than doubles our apple trees, honeycrisp, red and golden delicious, gala and now suncrisp.

The question has been asked of us regarding why planting this many different varieties of apple trees. The short answer is before we invest in dozens of trees for our orchard grove, we want to find out want grows best.

Also on Saturday, we added a couple of concord grape vines next to the neptunes we planted a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, cages all around which is putting a strain on our depleted fence post inventory.

Four more chestnuts were planted on Sunday to bring that total to 13 (so far).

In between planting, weeds needed cutting and I had to oblige. I'm way behind in the weed management department. But the upcoming 3 day weekend might be dry enough for us to get ahead.

Thanks to our 2014 suppliers

David over at True Blue Sam helped give us a start a couple of years ago with our coffeetree seeds and last year gave us a few seedlings (swamp white oak, catalpa, chinese chestnut, and a few more coffeetrees). And the gallons of chestnuts nuts. From those nuts, we have about a hundred growing and have transplanted a few to our new chestnut grove.

Chief River Nursery in Wisconsin was our source for 100 (plus a few extra) black hills spruce seedlings and river birch that the rabbits got into and clipped a few. Both have been doing very well for the little amount of rain so far this year.

Stark Brothers out of Missouri was our source for a couple of grafted pecan trees and a dozen blackberries. We thought we lost a few of the blackberries as I didn't think I hardened them off well enough but all are responding well with good growth. We decided to try a couple of nectarines to add to our fruit trees and they are doing well. The pecans? Here's a look:

Stark Brothers have discounted many of  their plants and we decided to add gala and red delicious apple trees to our small orchard, adding two more nectarines and started a vineyard with three grapevines. We planted these on 6/14 and on the 17th they looked well coming our of dormancy.
 
Henry Fields was where we got a couple of butternut starts and a few more pecan seedlings. I'm reserving judgement right now as this has been a difficult start of the year. One of the butternuts is showing good growth but the second one is slow coming around. The pecans are a bit behind as well. We also tried some juneberries to add to our fruit section and all are doing well so far. Lastly, we got a couple of sweet cherry trees but have them potted right now instead of planted at the acreage.

Our local Lowes had a few larger blackberry plants that we added this year and a couple of nectarine trees. We purchased an 8ft red oak from them last year and planted in recognition of the Mrs and I being together 25 years and it's done well, so we decided to give them another chance.

Theissens had a couple of ranier cherry trees that were on sale, so we decided, "why not?" They look very good so far where we planted them just below the pond and caged up to protect them from deer.

My acorn sources have been native red, black and swamp white oaks around the area. The red oaks have had a nearly 99% germination rate while the swamp white oak have been disappointing. The germination rate of the neighbor's catalpa seeds have been at about 10%. Another neighbor's hard maple tree was very generous last fall and I have plenty of small starts so far. My red maples at the homestead also produced a good crop of seeds this year and I have about 25 potted "yearling" red maple seedlings ready to go.

If I get every seedling transplanted and every seed and acorn planted, we will have nearly 1200 trees in the ground this year. 

2014 Tree Counter

Keep an eye on the upper right where we will be keeping a count of the number of trees planted in the ground.

So far this year, we are at 135 trees of various species, including chestnut, pecan and butternut for a variety of nutty flavors; river birch and black hills spruce were planted this weekend; and fruit trees are also in that total, among which we planted cherries and nectarines for the first time this year.

To tack on a total of 230 kentucky coffeetree seeds, red oak and black oak acorns that were planted.

Oh, and another 14 blackberries in the ground this year.

The way I figure it, when all of our assorted fruit and nut trees and bushes reach maturity, we will be harvesting from July to October.  

We aren't done yet for 2014...

We've juneberries that we ran out of time to get in the ground and are in wet peat moss, two more of both cherries and nectarines that are potted and ready to go. 200+ black oak, red oak and chestnut seedlings that I'm waiting a few more weeks before planting. Red maple from last year are potted and ready at any time. Add another +/-400 acorns and 100 coffeetree nuts to go in the ground to the mix. Red maples will be dropping their seeds soon and we will be planting them for sure and I'm digging hard maple sprouts this spring.

And the nursery where I got the spruce from sent me a 20% off coupon if I order by the end of the week.

Preparing coffeetree seeds for planting

Two years ago David over at True Blue Sam sent me a large batch of coffeetree seeds and I've had a 20% survival rate after two dry years and I'm cautiously optimistic after this winter. I found a local source and was able to get 177 seeds for this year's planting.

Known as scarification, my method of preparing Kentucky coffeetree seeds for planting is simply to scratch my way through the hard shell of the seedcoat to get to the meat of the seed. About the size and coloration of the popular candy, Milk Dud, I would not recommend playing a trick on your friends by throwing a couple of seeds in the box.

My original method of scaring the seed was to use a triangular file and spending 15+ minutes filing to breach the seedcoat. I switched to an oscillating cutting saw and could prep a seed less than a minute but this made me a bit nervous having a vibrating blade near my fingers. One slip and I'd never play the violin again.

I picked up a Dremel 8100 tool this past weekend for this specific purpose. Except for the limitations of the original cutting wheel (it's not designed for cutting plant fiber and would gum up), I'm pleased with the results so far. This particular model holds a charge for about 15 seeds, or 30 minutes, and I think I will get better results with a different cutting blade and I ordered one.

Some cautionary pre-instructions:

1. Do this in a well ventilated area and you may need to wear a mask. The dust can be an irritant and the cutting wheel can end up "burning" the seedcoat which irritates the eyes as well.
2. Do not hold the seed with your hands. Common sense
3. Make small cuts and go slow.
4. Wear eye protection. Chips from the seedcoat can fly up into your face.

I use this ratcheting clamp to hold the seed: 

Use the cutting blade to cut the seedcoat, make small cuts and stop when you reach the yellow "meat" of the seed.

I've had more success when I cut about 90% to 100% around the seed, but I'm experimenting the results of cutting about 50%.

It's not the neatest cut, but does the job. One interesting note is that sparks can fly using the cutting tool blade.

Others recommend soaking the seeds in water for 24 hours after scaring but I plant the seed right away, either in the ground or potted. The moisture in the soil will soften the seedcoat in less that a day. I planted these seeds near the surface in pots and the previous best results is to keep the soil moist but not too wet, otherwise the seed will soften and rot. In about two weeks, the taproot will start to form.

I'm conducting tests this year as I can afford to with this many seeds. I bagged up some in wet peat moss and will plant them at the tree farm after germination. This worked well with the acorns, so why not? I soaked some in acid to see if this would be an alternative to using electric tools. I'm working on a couple of other ideas including the cut direction, temperature and seed planting depth. There's not much information out there as the coffeetree is not a popular tree in the public's mind.

I'll report our progress and share the best method that works for us.

Spring planting update, 3/16/14

As of 3/16, we have 35 chestnut sprouts from 55 nuts potted on 2/22:

And the red oak are breaking ground after initial planting on 2/22 and 3/1:

Our small "forest" numbers about 200 acorns and nuts planted so far in the basement. As the frost is below 6 inches at the acreage, I planted 20 black oak acorns (10 on 3/9 and 10 on 3/15) and 5 coffeetree nuts on 3/15.

No signs of white oaks or chestnuts that I planted in the ground last fall. Yeah, I know it's way too early, but I'm impatient and want some progress.  

Spring planting - getting ready

In the crisper tray of a basement refrigerator is where I have acorns, chestnuts and a few other seeds, some of which were stored in bags of peat moss. While always in the back of my mind, I haven't made a habit of peaking in our stash.

On Saturday I discovered that a good majority of the red and black oak acorns had germinated:

Now it's time to think about getting them in the ground soon, except the ground is frozen down to 24". The next best thing is to put them in dirt in planters. I was impressed with the star trays that we received the aronia plants in, and I purchased a few for this purpose. The trays that came with the aronias are currently in the garden filled with white oak acorns (with hardware cloth covering to keep the critters out.)

I put the nuts in a peat moss/sand mix and gave them a good soaking. These are placed under a south facing window near a heat vent.

Since nearly all of the chestnuts germinated as well, some with an inch plus root, I planted some of those in a tray and a few extra pots. Those 32oz drink cups from the convenient store work very well for planters. 

Potted this past weekend: 45 red oak, 38 black oak, 52 chestnut.

The Reason for cages

In a word --- deer.

I mowed about a half acre of goldenrod and sawgrass to plant our aronia plants and we found several small elms and a couple of good sized cottonwood saplings. And more walnut trees. I decided to not mow them over with the intention of transplanting the elm and cottonwood elsewhere. With about 3000+ walnuts on the place, I wasn't worried about those. I ran out of time to transplant or cage them and decided that I would put them on the list for the following week's work.

With clearing off the weeds and grass, now the trees are visible and vulnerable to deer. They were hidden before mowing and now it was like I put a spotlight on them and a giant arrow to point the deer right at them. Below is a cottonwood sapling at about 8 feet tall:

And this is what was left of the walnut:

With the rut starting earlier this year compared to the past two years, the rubbings started in late September and are about a month ahead of last year. Repellents do nothing to discourage these giant rats, and with three trails that cross the property, hunters have not been able to keep the population down.

The trees should recover, but they are set back years. All because I waited a week.

I found that it isn't always necessary to wire the cages to posts but just having the woven wire cage surrounding the tree is sometimes aggravating enough to confuse the deer. Because of the numbers of walnuts we have there is no realistic opportunity to cage them all. But others, like the coffeetrees get caged up.

The best supplier of fence, wire and posts has been farm auctions with my latest acquisition of about 800ft of 30" woven wire and another 500ft of barbed wire. I loaded up two pickups and an 6x8 trailer with rolls of used and new wire for $70, disappointing an older farmer in the process. Earlier this summer I was able to get 90+ steel posts for $40 with a few wooden posts thrown in.

It's best to protect the trees and berries as much as I can

Fall Planting Days

Two days of planting our inaugural Aronia berries.

After getting rained out* on Saturday, we went back at it Sunday to finish up. Using an antique post hole digger, I was able to dig 43 12-15 inch holes in about 90 minutes (33 holes on Saturday). It was recommended to us to plant at 2 feet apart but I was planting at about 30 inches. This was because the mark on my digger was at 25" and I used the handle to sight the row in and then rolled the digger up and started my first cut.

Getting soaked on Saturday and enjoying a cloud-free day on Sunday, the Mrs and youngest son joined me and we were able to get our two flats of aronia plants in the ground and a woven wire fence put up on both sides to hinder the deer. It's reported that deer won't eat the plants but they pull them out of the ground.

Some ground felt to keep the weeds down and some wet straw for cover.

*"Rained out" - that's the first time I've used that phrase in over two years.

One of 76:

Our finished row:

I then added 3 more pawpaw trees for a total of 9 after planting 6 the week before. 

Pawpaw trees need shade for the first year or two of their lives or they will burn up. I could have purchased tree tubes but I opted to use burlap since I have to build cages to keep deer under check. I also surrounded the seedling with hardware cloth to keep rabbits and mice away. To top the cage off, I used some old barbed wire to aggravate deer if they stick their noses in. We will probably need to raise the shade up next summer.

 Pawpaw in a burlap and wire cage:

We added a light 10-10-10 commercial fertilizer in each of the holes, both berries and pawpaws.

We picked up the plants from a local grower during a demo field day last week. I've been researching the aronia berry for awhile now but I got my first taste during the field day. A sweetener is recommended. No sugar needed for the pawpaws, though. With a taste that is a mix of banana and mango, it was also our first experience with the fruit and the Mrs. insisted we get a few trees.

Learn more about Aronia berries with the common name of Black Chokeberry.

More information about the Pawpaw.