Transplanting Fruit Tree and Vine Starts. 10.18.14

Hollywood Plum after 1 season of growth. 10.18.14

 I replanted some of the fruit trees and a grape vine that I started in the raised beds. 

The Hollywood Plum was from cutting late winter this year, so one season of growth.  Pretty good.   Some of the others were eaten by deer.  I know they need protection but someone else left the gate open  :-).

This was one of the better cuttings.   It did not need any pruning.  I planted it in the location of the dead Satsuma plum.  That might not be wise, but my tree autopsy suggested the problem was, the tree was root bound in its original container, and I had failed to correct that. 

It's useless planting a little plum tree without protection, so I protected it.

The peach seedlings were volunteers.  I think they are from one of the genetic dwarf trees.  They have short internodes, so I think that is correct.  I dug them out, bare-rooted them - easy - and replanted in potting soil in containers.  Rationale - leaf curl disease is carried by rain during the winter.  If I keep them in the garage, I may be able to avoid that frustrating problem.    Depending on how they grow, I could either see what the peaches are like, or use them as a rootstock and graft scion from the other genetic dwarf peaches.  The plan - keep them out of the rain until dormant, then place them in a shed along with containerized fig trees, for the winter.  That may also have the advantage of delayed bloom.

Roots of Hollywood Plum, one season after starting cutting.  10.18.14

Transplanted Hollywood Plum.  10.18.14

Protected from rabbits, voles, deer.  10.18.14

 The grape was from cutting of Price grape, about 2 years old now.  The roots grew down through the screening underlying the raised bed, so I was unable to salvage most of the roots.  I think it will still be OK.  I pruned off the bottom node, which I had badly damaged in digging it out.   Now it's planted in the row with the other grapevines.  I like that I grew my own from a cutting, and Price is one of my favorites.

Peach seedlings and Price Grape Cutting.  10.18.14

Replanted peaches.  10.18.14

Pruned grape cutting.  10.18.14

Replanted grape.  10.18.14

Fruit Tree Shipment. Raintree Nursery. Apples, Jujube, Peach. 1.30.14

 The order from Raintree Nursery came today.  I've ordered from them many times.  As always, very well packaged.  The packing is shredded used paper, so environmentally friendly.  Compostable.  Based on this and other experiences, Raintree is AAA in my book.

The trees are very nice size.  I'm very impressed.  A little taller than the box, so bent over a little.  Not injured, straighten up nicely out of the box.

The miltigraft apple is Rubinette, Queen Cox, and Pristine.  Each branch is labeled.  All are listed as disease resistant.  In this climate, disease resistant is important.

When I get them to Battleground, I'll plant them and addend this post.

The Jujube looks many-times larger than the ones I bough 18 months ago at One Green World.  Those barely grew last year, so are still only about a foot.  This will need a pollenizer, but it's a start.

Now anxious to get out and plant.  Later today.  Good day for planting, overcast, cool, not pouring rain.  Yet.

The peach is Q-1-8.  Again, bought for reported disease resistance.  So frustrating to lose peaches to leaf curl.

Packaged Fruit Trees.

I take photos of the roots and newly planted trees, so there is reference I can look back too.  It helps me remember what I've done.

Q-1-8 is listed as peach-leaf-curl resistant, tested at the Washington State testing station at Mount Vernon "A sweet and flavorful semi-freestone, white fleshed peach. Great for fresh eating. Ripens early August. Showy blossoms. Self fertile".  Most peaches are self fertile.  Not that they would say one is not sweet or flavorful  :-)

Of the Apples, all 3 sound interesting.

Apple Roots

3-way Multigraft Apple

Q-1-8 Peach Roots

Q-1-8 Peach

Back Yard

By necessity the yard is in a state of benign neglect now. Fortunately I did a lot of pruning and clean up in previous weeks. Nice the fruit trees and bulbs are blooming.An antique narcissus variety. The bunches each started with 1 to 3 bulbs. Now I need to find the name again. They could stand to be dug up and divided this summer. Hard to see but there are also Juno Iris in the photo. The chive barrel is growing nicely. Maybe Ning will make chive dumplings in a week or two. Comfort food.

Plums From Seed, part 2.

There are many conflicting versions regarding how to sprout wild plum, and other stone fruit seeds. I have a pretty good supply, from collecting plums. They have been washed and allowed to dry. Most are in an envelope after being allowed to dry overnight. Based on several you-tube videos, I chose 5 pits for removal of the hull. I used a vice grip so I could adjust the force, and because I don't have a nutcracker.

Vice grip and plum pits, dried overnight. These are wild plums. The pits are the size of a sweet cherry seed.

The first pit flew across the room. I used a little more finesse for the others. They cracked easily, releasing the inner kernel. Cool! They look undamaged.

I moistened a paper towel, squeezed out the excess, wrapped the pits, placed them in a ziplock back, and placed them in the fridge. Now I need to wait one to 2 months. After that, I don't know - if they start growing, it's the wrong season (fall) to plant outside, but maybe they'll grow on the window sill. I did a web search on coat removal and stratification and scarification. Coat removal would be a "complete" version of scarification. It appears that coat removal is beneficial for germinating seeds of fruits with pits, and many other seeds. In addition, stratification for peaches and plums, by refrigerating, shoulf last about 10 weeks. For example, from Iowa State Horticultural News, Cherry, Peach, and Plum (Prunus species) Harvest fruit when full mature. Remove the seed. Seed may be sown in the fall or stratified seed may be planted in the spring. Stratify the seeds at 33 to 41 F. The sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) requires 90 to 150 days, the peach (Prunus persica) 98 to 105 days, and European plum (Prunus domestica) 90 days. Seed of plums and peaches should be planted 2 inches deep. Sow the seed of sour cherry at a depth of 1/2 inch.

Spring Garden Chores

Today (Saturday), I...

Weeded the rose bed. This bed now has almost as many fruit trees, brambles, and plants, as roses, but still contains about 10 rose bushes. I had moved one rose bush to accomodate the new Surefire cherry, and today moved a second one a little further from that new tree. I also moved a David Austin rose from the front yard, and a peony as well. It looks like I butchered the thick peony roots, even though I thought I was digging a wide distance from the stems. We'll see if it grows. It's interesting how few roots the roses seem to have - surprising that they survive moving. I pruned the tops further back to balance the reduced root mass.

Mulched the rose bed with bark mulch. It's now basically ready for Spring and Summer. I did not add compust to most of it this year, because the roses were too rampant last year and I don't want to overstimulate the fruits and roses. I did give some chicken manure to the roses that I moved.

Sprayed most of the fruit trees and roses with Neem oil. Not the peaches - the flowers are opening.

Moved one Orchard Mason Bee house to the front yard, since there are many fruit trees there as well.

Turned over the soil in the tomato patch.

Pruned the remaining rose bushes.

Stood around and stared at the results of my labors.

Grafted 3 fig scions onto the petite negri tree. Just to see if I can. According to most references, it can't be done. I hope they are wrong.

This time I used rubber bands to tie, and used plastic tape to cover and protect. The plastic tape was made by slicing a ziplock sandwich bag. Also used petroleum jelly as an antidessicant, as I did with the apple grafts. It's not just stubbornness - I really would like to see if they grow.

Added some petroleum jelly to the apple grafts - forgot to do that earlier, purpose is to serve as antidessicant.

Also mulched around this red-bark Japanese maple, that I moved to this location a few days ago. It was a seedling in the rose bed, among many others. I had never got around to pulling it up, and now will see how it does as a specimen tree.

More on grafting - another you tube video

Planting Plum Trees

The new plum trees came 2 days ago. The varieties are Hollywood (a more columnar shape, purple leaf, nice blooming, purple plum, partially self fertile) and Shiro (wider branching, green leaf, juicy yellow plum, partially self fertile). According to everything that I read, both should do well in this zone and region.

Other than the grape pruning, this then is the first major garden activity to inaugurate the year 2009! I am stoked!

I think that they do a great job packaging the trees. Only two tiny branches were damaged, and they were very minor branches.

Nice roots, nice branches. I've been ordering from Raintree for several years, and their products, plant quality, and packaging have not disappointed me yet.


Soak the new trees for a couple of hours. Since it may still be cold and frost, I soaked to get the trees well hydrated.

Generous holes, with the trees planted so that the grafts were 2-3 inches above the soil line. I did add a LITTLE compost, but not enough to create the 'flowerpot' effect in the clay soil. One tree is in a raised bed with retaining wall, replacing a magnolia that I moved out last fall. This soil was amended several years ago, and the soil level is about 2 feet above the original grade. This area is well drained. The other tree went into less ideal ground, but I heeded the warnings not to over-amend the soil, just adding a little compost mixed in for 'luck'.

Watering them in. After tamping the ground firmly with my feet (but not my ENTIRE body weight, please?), I poured on a bucket of water. Once it soaked in, both were given a layer of well aged yard compost as mulch.

Now planted, ready for Spring. How cool is that?

New Trees

These came on the 14th, planted on the 15th. They were bought via maile order from RaintreeNursery.com. Impressive bare root trees, strong roots, sturdy stems, well packaged. I'm very pleased. The tallest tree is a tri-lite peachplum, a hybrid between a peach and a plum. Next is an El Dorado miniature peach. Finally, the smallest is Desert King Fig.

They were soaked in water for several hours before planting, while I went to the optometrist for a general exam (no significant changes).

A few broken roots were trimmed, otherwise no pruning was done.

Here is Desert King in its planting hole. The roots were so plentiful and long, the hole was bigger that the tree was tall. This is planted on the south side of the house, in a garden bed that has been worked with compost for 5 years. The only soil additive is a handful of crushed eggshells for calcium.

Desert King, planted. Today I also covered the soil with some fresh yard waste compose from H+H recycling.

This is the smallest tree of the bunch, but figs are fast growers.

El Dorado miniature peach. This is also on the south side of the house. These grow very slowly, and mature size is small (about 6 feet), so it was planted under a window.


Here is the ri-lite peach-plum as well. It is in the front yard.

One Year Ago. And Some Puttering Today

Here is a photo of Ning's Pond, Dec. 15, 2005. The fish are visible under the clear sheet of undisturbed ice.

Nice to have some perspective. This year, the pond has not frozen yet. I got out my "pre weblog" ie., paper-based-log, from the past 2 year (I suppose this would be a plog?) and reviewed some of the notes from about this time of year. One 12/21/05, I had pruned the roses, and spread coffee grounds around on the new tomato bed. I had reviewed the tomatoes from the year before, concluding that Lemon boy and better boy were the best in 2005 (production, size, and flavor, like we used to have in Quincy, Illinois), and the best gourmet-flavor was Brandwine; the worst were stupice and juliet, which I did not try again. Two weeks later I had pruned the grapes, and sprayed lime-sulfur on the peaches, apples, cherries, and roses.

Something to look forward to, by 1/20/06, the chinese chives were 4 inches tall, the hellebores were blooming, and the daffodils and tulips had broken through the soil surface and were 1-2 inches tall. That's only 3 weeks away.

By early January, I was also spreading compost on the raised beds.

For the most part, everything went well. I think that I was much too early, however, in pruning the roses, so they will be done much later this year (maybe early March).

As for today -

I did prune grapes ('Price' and 'Farmer's Market'), leaving the arbor grapes (Interlaken, Canadice, and Venus) for the next round. It's difficult to decide whether to prune by the "spur" or "cane" method, so last year I used a mixture of the two. These are in unconventional settings (Price is over a gate, and Farmer's Market is along a fence and growing up into an ornamental cherry) so the standard Kniffen method won't do. Basically, on each vine, 3-4 canes were kept, and a replacement spur for each cane, plus spurs on the trunks or older canes. I'll photograph the arbor grapes, when they are pruned, for record-keeping.

I also pruned the cordon - type apple (North Pole) to keep it columnar - shortening small branches back to spurs; the dwarf peaches to remove dead material and keep them open, and thin the new growth; similar for the back-yard cherries and pear.

The peaches have much evidence for disease - peeling bark and gelled sap, and dead twigs. Pruning them was the horticultural equivalent of debridement. I wonder if they will survive, let alone provide peaches this year? They look pretty good now that their 'surgery' is done, but only time will tell.

The ginkgos were lightly groomed (there isn't much there to prune yet). Just removal of twigs before they become branches in the 'wrong places'. I was careful to clean & sharpen the pruning shears before this (and between each of the fruit trees). The tallest one, in the back yard, did get 'limbed up' so that now the lowest branches are at about 4 feet. Just to find out if it can be done, some selected prunings were heeled-in, in a vegetable bed, to see if they will take root and grow next Spring.

Figs were also pruned - Vancouver, Petite negri, and Brown Turkey. The objective, here too, was to keep a compact, but open, bowl-shaped tree (similar to the peaches and cherries). Some prunings will be mailed to other gardeners, for cuttings.

A few lillies, galdiolus, crocosmia, and other dead stems were removed and chopped as well.

Nice day outside. It's a little dangerous leaving me in the yard with a pair of pruning shears - kind of like the saying. "Give a man a hammer, and he'll discover loose nails everywhere" - but I don't think that I overdid it. And I feel better now.