|
plums!
Jan 24, 2019 13:59:34 GMT -5
Post by mskrieger on Jan 24, 2019 13:59:34 GMT -5
I suggest that you try American beach plums as a pseudo-ume, blueadzuki. They're the same size, similar taste (but lovely edible raw), delicious, and native to our area. Salt resistant, too, so you can plant them along roadsides. The stock we bought from the New Hampshire extension service's nursery began fruiting in three years and is very tasty.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 24, 2019 13:54:31 GMT -5
Mixing up the varieties too much would create a huge headache for you with all the other variables. Make it easy on yourself, and make each row a single variety. Then you have the same variety, irrigated and not, and you can compare them easily.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 23, 2019 11:06:54 GMT -5
Well, I'm thinking about a lot of things and I don't have answers. For school it might be nice if it were done properly enough to write up as a study. I'm working on a second bachelors to teach science and a small scale study and write up is required unless I can perhaps substitute in a rare plant survey I've done in the past, but that isn't the same type of study. So to do it as a proper experiment I need to think about population size and doing more of a replicated trial. I really have quite a few questions. I would like to confirm that determinates really are worse for dry farming. I suspect some varieties and species are much more capable then others. I suspect some available sites are much better. Ideally I would like two replicates out on my garden land and one at my parents hayfield. Not sure about the site prep. Need to adjust the scale to be possible. Good luck with that, and bravo on aspiring to be a school science teacher! Let us know how you set it up...I'm curious to follow your results.
|
|
|
plums!
Jan 23, 2019 11:02:22 GMT -5
Post by mskrieger on Jan 23, 2019 11:02:22 GMT -5
Very true--I sometimes snack on the fruit of something that looks like A. prunus growing in the scrub along a pedestrian highway overpass near my house. Fedco claims its A. prunus seedlings have "very decent yellow and red fruit" but since it's a seedling, I've got no expectations. I just purchased it as a pollinator. Plant all the greengage and mirabelle stones you want, but European plums are going to give you trouble even if they grow. Our climate, blueadzuki, is black knot and brown rot heaven. A fruit growing friend of mine about 15 miles east of here who enjoys European plums cuts down all his trees every 10 years and regrafts clean scion wood to the A. prunus rootstock. You'll have better luck and faster plums doing that. And the squirrels won't eat scion wood.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 22, 2019 14:47:42 GMT -5
I just ordered four plum trees from Fedco: Cocheco (supposedly reddish bark and leaves, pink flowers AND tasty fruit), Toka, Hanska and an American plum seedling. The seedling is for pollination purposes; the other three are all crosses of various Asian plums with Prunus americana. The inspiration came when I found fruit dropping off an untended tree into the road last summer in my neighborhood...it was delicious. I'm hoping the American genetics mean we won't have to struggle with disease so much.
I'm planting them in front of the house, where they'll get good air flow and southern exposure (and hopefully attention from the cat, who spends a great deal of time lounging by the front stoop these days. She's getting old...we may need to invest in a second member of the squirrel patrol soon.)
Just sharing because I"m excited (and nothing like fantasizing about the orchard when it's 5F outside, right?) Anyone have any experience with these cultivars?
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 22, 2019 14:30:43 GMT -5
Hi William, RE:dry farming tomatoes, what sort of experiments are you thinking of? If it's just to compare irrigated versus non-irrigated, you could plant a row of four or five plants of the same variety right next to your dry farmed tomatoes (so same amount of sun, soil, etc.) but simply water them a few gallons/plant with a leaky bucket twice a week. Take a five gallon bucket and make a very small hole in the side right near the bottom. Just big enough so that the water drips out, slowly enough to make a puddle no bigger than a tea cup at the base of the plant. The water will spread out underground.
Because I have sandy soil, I would do two or three gallons/plant twice a week, but if you have more clay you might do better with five gallons once a week. In any case, it's a handy way to put water exactly where you want it (under a specific plant). You can also add a bit of fertilizer (pee, fish extract, etc.) if you're doing this for survival gardening (obviously if you're doing this as a dry gardening trial, the only variable you want is water and so you'd omit fertilizer.) Works well for tomatoes, eggplants, brussels sprouts and other large plants where a little water can mean the difference between a bountiful harvest and nothing.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 21, 2019 9:26:23 GMT -5
members.efn.org/~itech/Found a couple of the same opensource instructions in a book on gardening. At the bottom of the page there is a list of root system sizes for various crops. 5.5 feet lateral for tomato by 5 feet deep for the variety John Bauer. This was in 1927. www.seedsavers.org/john-baer-organic-tomatoThat would suggest starting a tomato plant every four steps in a grid (my strides are about 1 yard). Probably say 10 seeds, thinning to one. When I did dry gardening experiments in my sandy loam, I planted tomatoes 4' apart in rows 3' apart, and they grew massively and were very productive.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 21, 2019 9:19:47 GMT -5
6F here this morning, and windy. We did not get nearly as much precipitation as predicted, no murder sleet so I still can't report on what that is. However, it was a full moon this weekend, and the downtown along the harbor flooded with icy salt water yet again. This is becoming a regular occurrence whenever a storm coincides with a full moon. But I wonder how long until it happens every full moon, not just when there's a storm. I'm betting only a decade or two. And then...how long until the downtown becomes a new section of saltmarsh?
Arugula, scallions, leeks still standing in my garden. And some blackberries still have green leaves. Those things are tough as nails. Everything else has gone to ground.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 18, 2019 17:01:18 GMT -5
Beautiful light dusting of snow this morning, then it warmed up enough for it to melt off. We're supposed to get some crazy precipitation and flash freezes over the weekend, including something called "murder sleet". I can't wait.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 17, 2019 16:40:23 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that some trees and bushes can go into such hard dormancy when bare root that they appear dead, and take a long time to "wake" up. I received blackberries like that this spring. They looked dried and dead, and I stuck them in the ground and they sat for 8+ weeks and didn't do a thing. I almost called the farmer to request a refund, but then they sprouted and grew aggressively like nobody's business the whole summer long.
I'm a huge fan of bare root purchases.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 17, 2019 15:41:11 GMT -5
Sorry to hear about the lack of success. Have you tried growing them under row cover to keep out insects?
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Jan 17, 2019 15:31:13 GMT -5
Hi Janne,
I prefer to buy trees bare root from nurseries that specialize in trees. It would be ideal to plant in the autumn so the trees can work on their root system in the fall, then wake up in spring ready to go, but it's difficult to find nurseries on that schedule unless they are local--most mail-order places have a spring shipping schedule. If you have a dry climate or a hot spring and summer, you have to conscientiously water the tree or bush an inch every week it doesn't rain that first season.
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Dec 28, 2018 10:22:22 GMT -5
Theoretically, there is such a thing as too much organic matter... And note that Ruth Stout was growing in an entirely different climate and soil than you. Her Maine soil was very depleted and acidic, and she was using salt marsh hay, which is lovely stuff loaded with minerals and entirely lacking in weed seeds.
(Just a bit of local New England knowledge, which you probably already knew but just in case...)
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Dec 28, 2018 10:17:19 GMT -5
Some more commentary on breeding mushrooms, from a post-doc fungi specialist I know. He recommends "The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home", by Paul Stamets and JS Chilton, and says: "There's a bit of info on [crossing different fungi species] in a section about mushroom genetics! It can be tedious even to hybridize between strains of the same species because of tricky & unpredictable mating type compatabilities. But there are ways to try!"
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Dec 27, 2018 16:43:40 GMT -5
Matt's Wild Cherry has become a weed in my garden (just 20 miles north of Long Island, across the sound.) It does ridiculously well here. It also continues to produce into the fall until there's a hard frost, but it doesn't taste good. Needs heat to be sweet. Though when the days are hot, there's nothing better. All my kids graze from it constantly in July, August and September. And it's definitely a candidate for dry gardening, it does fine in the unwatered parts of my garden.
|
|