It’s that time of year again.
Now we are beginning our planning for the season. This year I decided to be more precise in the planting. I set up some drawings on grid paper, where one grid = 1 square foot. We measured the different gardens and started laying things out. This is still under discussion so I’m not going to share it just yet. Stay tuned.
Last year we had a long of fungus problems with the apples, grapes, and quinces. We have five production apple trees and about half a dozen or so crabapples on one of the espaliers. Last year we got actual crabs off some of them.
The problem with the apples is cedar apple rust. This is a fungus that, unsurprisingly, has cedars as the main host. Apples and other related fruit trees get infected from the cedars. Last year was particularly bad.
We have two cedars and while both of them have the rust, the south cedar’s infection is worse than the north cedar. The crabs aren’t badly affected and I attribute that to more resistance and the fact that the crab espalier is far from the south cedar though it is close to the north cedar.
The Granny Smith is so badly infected I think it’s acting as a reservoir. Two other production apples also have bad infections—to the point that they lost all their leaves in August. The remaining production apples have the infection but not has bad—though the Sops of Wine apple lost its leaves early as well.
The plan is to cut down the Granny Smith and the two other production apples. We have a ordered a Zestar! As a replacement apple. We’re still looking at other varieties. (See here.) We’re looking at Very Resistant varieties. (Note: according to that table, Granny Smith is resistant. This has not been our experience.) The problem is to find good pollination partners and apples that we like the taste. Apple varieties bloom at different times. Varieties that don’t bloom in the same time period are good pollinating partners. We found a Zestar! orchard locally and liked the flavor. The other Very Resistant varieties were either locally unavailable or didn’t taste good to us. We’re still looking.
We planted the new quinces on the same area that we pulled the plums from a few years ago. The plums succumbed to black knot. It affects plums, cherries, apricots, etc.—any member of genus Prunus. Quinces—being members of genus Cydonia—should not be susceptible. Well, lo and behold, we started seeing what looked suspiciously like black knot on the quinces. We had an arborist over for some work on two other trees and he looked into it. He said it was cedar quince rust.
Yay.
I trimmed off the infected bits and sprayed with a copper fungicide and additional material. We will see.
Meanwhile, last year, we also had a problem with grape black rot. It was time to trim back the grapes anyway so I cut them back to within an inch of their lives and sprayed at the same time I did the quinces.
Further spraying is no doubt required and I’ll have to keep up on it if we want to have grapes, quinces, or apples this year.
Moving away from the gardens to the wood shop, we attacked a lot of old wood.
Over the years, whenever we had a tree taken down or cut it down ourselves, I saved any wood that seemed pretty enough. This included chestnut, prune, plum, peach, apricot, apple, and hickory. There are probably some others I don’t remember.
I cut them, painted the ends so they wouldn’t split, and put them in a rack to dry out. Fast forward a few years.
Two years ago, a hickory split and half fell down on the property. We had to take down the entire tree. The following year a great cherry tree fell on a friend’s property. We also took down a few sumac trees (Native sumac is a big tree. Who knew?) and a couple of apples on a different friend’s property. To make a long story short, I saved as much wood as I could. But were was I going to put it all?
Remember that wood I’d already saved?
It turned out that I should have debarked them. like to burrow under the bark and into the wood. Some kinds of wood—notably hickory, apple, and prune—seemed resistant. Others, not so much. Chestnut, not at all. Some of the cherry and hickory were small enough pieces that I could store them indoors. So, I went back to my wood and winnowed out the chaff—i.e., wood I had misjudged to be of use or had rotted on me.
Let this be a lesson: use it or burn it. Don’t let it rot.
I’ve gone over about half of the old wood and it’s now replaced with hickory and cherry—and some cedar. I never let cedar go if I can help it.
That’s it for now.
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