A Thread About Trees

[veggietreeigrl]

Welcome, veggietreegirl! Cute tree. What other trees are you wanting to plant?

I'm wondering if your pepper tree is staying the same size because of the pot it's in? I have had plants get so far in a pot, then stop until they are in the ground.

Thank you. I was thinking the same. I'm thinking of moving it up to a much bigger pot till it grows to a size where my dogs can't trample it.

hehe Then I'm going to plant it in the ground. I also want some dwarf fruit trees when I have the money for them.

 

[RedIII]

Yes, I would like something like a dwarf apple at some point. My grandpa has one in his yard that must be a hybrid of some type. It's called a "prairie spy", and it makes very pretty, delicious fruit. It can't be more than eight or nine feet tall. If possible, I may try to go over there this summer and take a cutting off of it. But that's still a big maybe.

Well, I collected some seeds from our crab apple yesterday and sorted through them. I've got them soaking right now, and it looks like two of the six are good. Exciting stuff!

 

[veggietreeigrl]

Yes, I would like something like a dwarf apple at some point. My grandpa has one in his yard that must be a hybrid of some type. It's called a "prairie spy", and it makes very pretty, delicious fruit. It can't be more than eight or nine feet tall. If possible, I may try to go over there this summer and take a cutting off of it. But that's still a big maybe.

Well, I collected some seeds from our crab apple yesterday and sorted through them. I've got them soaking right now, and it looks like two of the six are good. Exciting stuff!

Yay! I hope those work out. My mom has a few dwarf fruit trees. One apple and one orange and I think lemon. They do pretty well except the orange one. It's only ever produced fruit one year.



Here's my re-potted pepper tree. I hope it does well!

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Here are some baby trees in the field that butts up against our chicken pasture. I can't wait to harvest them so I can claim this field for the birds.


These are peach seedlings, which presents a bit of a conflict with the chickens as they have to be sprayed with an insecticide to eliminate a particular parasite, and I don't allow spraying that close to the birds. I'm not sure why TPTB decided to plant them here ... we spoke about it extensively before they made that decision, and in fact this is the second time they've done it ... the next field to the right was dug this winter and was a total loss due to this parasite ... and everyone knew that before planting this field. Such a waste as this field would make great poultry pasture. Just your typical multi-generational family-farm weirdness.

@LeslieDJoyce

Are those little trees planted in the ground, or are they planted in containers buried in the ground?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

They are in the ground. They are seedlings ... peach seedlings sprouted from actual peach pits in the varieties that makes good seedlings or "root stock" for either dwarf, semi-dwarf, or standard fruit trees. For the nursery we can plant some seeds/pits to get seedlings, and sometimes we grow the seedlings ourselves from cuttings we plant in tight spacing in a specially prepared seedling bed, but a lot of the time we buy the seedlings from other specialty nurseries, then plant them in the soil with a special planter ...

One of my first jobs on the nursery was helping plant peach pits. I was just old enough to walk ...

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Ok, then that brings me to my second question... How do you manage to dig them up without tearing up the roots? I ask because just about every year we have a pecan seedling or two come up under our front porch (squirrels hiding them there for winter, I think) and it seems like I can't ever dig deep enough to get them out without breaking their tap roots and killing them. I don't know if I am just going after them too late and they have a really deep root, or if I am going about it the wrong way.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

We have a digging tractor. It is a modified caterpillar-style tractor, with the tracks customized to give a lot of clearance under the engine/body. There is a blade on the front that can be lowered while the tractor is moving forward. The blade cuts a trench through the field. The crew follows the tractor to pull the trees from the soil and shake the extra dirt loose. Then the trees are stacked, "bare root," on pallets.

We do this when the trees are two or three years old. We grow mostly your normal fruit trees that do well with this type of treatment. And we do it in winter.

Then the trees are "graded" and either tied up in bundles of 5 or 10 trees, or individually "packaged" around the roots with what basically looks like a bread bag that's filled with the tree's roots and moist shavings, then secured around the base of the trunk with a twist tie. You see those in garden centers or out front of grocery stores during winter/early spring. The idea is to get them in the ground by the time they start to leaf out.

Some of the retail chains that buy our trees put them in "containers" then water them for a full year to sell the second year. Having the tree "established" in a container like that extends the planting season a bit. The containers are those black plastic nursery pots scaled appropriately for that size tree ... sometimes people use metal cans for containers. In the 5 gallon size range, probably.

We don't do very many "B&B" trees ... those are dug with the surrounding soil, and the the dirt ball is wrapped in burlap ... bigger trees have a special digger that cuts a cone shaped hunk of dirt and then puts it in a wire cage ... that's specialty work ... But a little less seasonal ...

It could be you're digging the tree at the wrong time of year. Deciduous trees don't much appreciate being disturbed when they aren't dormant ... they are too busy trying to grow and reproduce when they have leaves and flowers or fruit ...

Our harvest season is winter, so right now ...

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Quote:
That could very well be the case. I usually go after them as soon as I notice them under the porch. I always try to get them out before they get too big to mess with because there isn't a whole lot of room under there.

How deep does your tractor have to dig down to get past the roots on the little fruit trees?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

How deep does your tractor have to dig down to get past the roots on the little fruit trees?

No deeper than 18" ... usually only 12" to 16" ... and that's for trees that have been growing for 2-3 years, usually. If you go look at trees at the garden center, either ones in pots or (this time of year) in bags, you can see how large the rooting area is compared to the above-ground part of the tree. Different trees have different rooting patterns. We mostly deal with fruit trees here because. The 18" is what we go for when digging walnuts.

We're careful with the roots, of course, but the roots generally get a healthy pruning during digging & packaging.

NOTE: we grow bare root deciduous trees, mostly fruit trees.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Here is a video of what it looks like in the field, though that is not our farm, not our tractor, not our trees. Our tractors are a bit different ...

You can see it really doesn't dig all that deep.