Kitchen Curtain for Halloween. Sewing Project. And a Face Mask. 10.6.2020

 I decided to do a little sewing project.  We didn't like the kitchen curtains.  It's just a valence - we don't want to obstruct the view of the back yard and Rufus.  I made these from a Halloween theme cotton fabric.  When Halloween season is done, I'm planning on a set for Thanksgiving.  It's a way to acknowledge and enjoy the holiday and season times, without going all out on buying stuff.

 These were fun to make.  I didn't have a pattern, so I reverse engineered them from an old set.  I don't think I made a lot of mistakes, but there were some learning points.  Next one should go even more smoothly.

I also made some coronavirus face masks using extra from the fabric.  It makes a nice Halloween theme face mask..

Rubinette Apple. 10.2.2020

 This was the first really good crop for Rubinette.  It fruited a little for the past three years, but not much and they were ruined.  I think they had San Jose Scale, which I treated last winter with dormant oil spray.  It worked.  I don't see effects of scale, at least not yet.

Rubinette has a reputation as the best tasting, or one of the best tasting, apples around.  I know, each year there seems to be a new "Best Tasting" apple.  This one really was excellent.  I would at least say it is among the best tasting apples in my orchard.  Truly delicious.  Decent crop this year, too.

Grenadine Apple. 10.2.2020

 These were the first of the Grenadine apples.   They have red flesh, as marketed.  They seem fairly scab susceptible, like Airlie Red Flesh.  Also similar to Airlie Red Flesh, the skin is mostly green, although some redness shows through as a muddy color.  The main difference is Grenadine is round and very tart.  Maybe leaving them on the tree longer will sweeten them up, but Wowza, this one was like a lemon drop!

This first photo compares Grenadine to Fuji Beni Shogun.  The Fugi was much sweeter.  I may have noted a little "Red Hawaiian Punch" flavor in the Grenadine.

Chestnuts. 10.2.2020

 These are the first of the chestnuts this year.  The Marivale and Precose Migoule both bore some nuts.  Marivale drops them in the husk.  Precose Migoule seems to drop the nuts before the husk, meaning that browsing deer or squirrels get them.  I knocked off the ones that I could, to let them finish in a bucket in a shed.

I'm keeping the nuts for a while in the fridge to see if there are more ripening that we can roast.

Cross Species Pear Graft Update. 9.29.2020

 Along with the apple grafts, I wanted to try some pear grafts.  Again, this was for making miniature trees.  However, I'm not aware of sources for miniaturizing pear trees. There are some less conventional ways.  Serviceberry, Hawthorn, and Aronia are pear relatives, although different species.  There is some info from the fruit growing hobby community that pear can grow with these as rootstocks.  Also, the apple variety "Winter Banana" will reportedly accept apple scion, so I wanted to try that too.

I grafted European pear onto Winter Banana on a Bud-9 rootstock, and also onto an existing apple tree branch.

I grafted European pear onto two varieties of Serviceberry, and onto a Chinese Hawthorn and onto a Black Hawthorn.

I grafted Asian pear onto Aronia.

Nothing took on the Serviceberry.  

The European pear did very well on Chinese Haw, growing about two feet.  Here is the graft, a little irregular but it looks OK.  That shoot is actually below the graft union, and is Hawthorn.

 The graft on Winter Banana on Bud-9 did not grow.  The graft on Black Hawthorn did not grow.

I lost track of the other two, because of location.  Now, I started Fall cleanup as well as picking apples, and discovered the Asian Pear on Aronia.  It didn't grow much, but then again (a) it took, and grew some and (b) it was buried in snowpeas and volunteer four o'clocks, and (c) it was not watered all summer long.

The European Pear on Winter Banana on an existing apple tree, did take and grew a little.  Again, not a lot.  I'm not sure what to do with this - I don't need a pear on an apple tree.  I might try cutting the graft at the Winter Banana and graft that, with the already healed pear graft, onto Geneva 222 or Bud 9.  Maybe the Pear/Apple graft needed more vigor to heal together, than the Bud-9 can provide but now that it did, it will grow.

Since these were sort of hidden and forgotten, I never got around to removing the graft binder ziplock strips.  That's most likely fine, but I'll do that today.