Current Tree Plan

[unicornduke]

It's mostly, aughh I don't want to spend the money right now but also I just want to get some trees in the ground.

So here's what I picked out. They're from Burnt Ridge Nursery who wasn't my first choice but they had all the different types of trees I wanted. 

• Fig - Hardy Chicago
• Chestnut - Connecticut Early
• Chestnut - Silverleaf
• Hazelnut - Bush 
• Hazelnut - Dorris
• Hazelnut - Wepster
• Apricot - Montrose
• Pawpaw - Allegheny
• Pawpaw - Campbell's NC-1
• Persimmon - Prairie Star

For the chestnuts I picked two that are selfpollinators and are European/Chinese chestnut crosses so they're blight resistant. My uncle is actually working with the chestnut restoration project where they're getting chestnuts that are 99% american except for the blight resistance genes and he said he might be able to get me some trees. I'm pretty excited. 

The hazelnuts, I got Bush, which is an american hazelnut and self pollinates and then I needed to get two different ones of the European hazelnuts because they need crosspollination

Apricot, why not because stone fruits grow well where I am

the pawpaws, I only wanted one but you need genetically different trees for cross pollination so I got two

And I got an american persimmon because the asian persimmons are hardy to my area. they sound awesome though.

The main expense is going to be the fencing. I'm going to buy some eight foot deer fencing and it tends to run about a dollar a foot for large orders. Which. Ugh. So I need to figure out how much I really need spacing wise and all that jazz. Plus bark protectors to keep critters from girdling the trees. 

These will be put up on the back hill where there's a little bit of a level out before rising up to the field. It's all woods the rest of the way up the mountain so I figured I might actually pay attention if they're on the lowest hill area.

Comments

[dragonlady7]

Do you know how to graft??
Aaron and I have talked about needing to learn how to graft. Because there are so many beautiful old apple trees on the farm that produce decent fruit, and Dude's mom has a great one in her backyard, and and and.

I brought back apricot stones from Kyrgyzstan and gave them to Aaron, along with some watermelon seeds. I wanted to bring back apple seeds too but it wasn't apple season. Apples were first domesticated in Central Asia, near where we were, and they had these fantastic little slightly-tart apples, but we didn't encounter many of them. Sigh.

And the flour ambassador's son brought us a pawpaw when he was working last summer-- there's a tree in their backyard, right downtown in Troy-- and Aaron saved the seeds from that too. He's going to try to get some established in the hedgerows-- a lot of the orchard plans for the farm are going to be like that, all the hedgerow areas. Annie's dream is to terrace the one hillside and have fenced runs for livestock right near the trees, so they can access the windfalls but not disturb the roots. Wouldn't that be neat?

Anyway I'm really interested in the results from your hazelnuts especially.

And my dad was obsessed with chestnut and walnut trees, and so for forty years has been carefully saving the nuts, growing saplings, and then planting them. I don't know what variety the chestnuts are, but he got one nicely established right near the yard, from a nut he saved from the beautiful 100-year-old trees lining the front walkway of the NYS Capital Building in Albany.
(The property is absolutely rotten with black walnut trees by now, too. He's obsessed with them. I collected a bunch to make dye from and then never did...)

I don't think they can do figs at the farm, but it's a dream of Aaron's. I keep telling them, they need to put in a nice real Victorian-style leaded glass conservatory. Connect it to the outdoor kitchen area, and bam, four-season entertaining. That's super feasible, right?? LOL.

[unicornduke]

I know the vague sorta how to graft but I have no established trees to graft onto. I'd have to figure out how to root them into pots and generally that isn't done because I guess they won't survive.

I'm not doing apple trees because my uncle has an orchard and he's keeping a great bunch of varieties and not changing them out and not adding too much into the orchard so he's got some that I haven't seen anywhere else. Not super old ones, but in the 40-50 years ago range. Thankfully his orchard isn't suited to the five foot incredibly intensive spacing that is all the rage with orchards now ($$$$$$$ is what's it's about but the plants just up and die sometimes - sudden apple decline. I'm like, obviously it's not working because apple trees aren't suited to it!!!)

The fig should survive in zone 5 but it will die back to the ground each winter and produce on new wood each year. I think I'm going to try and save seeds and select for more winter hardiness but I don't know if it's possible. My uncle (different one, down near philly) actually sells figs and trees by keeping them alive in large pots, moving them into greenhouses in the winter and also selling cuttings. Apparently he's making a lot of money off them.

I'm surprised your dad's chestnuts are doing okay with the blight!!! I'm super surprised to be honest. Unless it's a chinese chestnut somehow.....

If they want to keep the apple trees up, they should probably be doing some winter pruning but I don't know if they really want to lol. Or if they have a different spot in mind. Also some trees seeds need to stay wet the whole time or to be cold stratified.

Trees are a whole new thing for me. I decided to go with seedlings/actual trees from a nursery because I could raise trees from seeds in pots but it would be an extra couple of years and a giant pain in the butt to keep them alive so I figure I should start with plants that might actually fruit sometime soon. Plus the above issue with cold stratification and/or keeping them wet.

Apparently it's a big thing to run hogs under nut trees and finish them on acorns or walnuts or whatever. Apparently it makes lovely meat and they eat all the dropped nuts. That's some vague thought I've had of future things. Maybe a few pigs up on the hill for meat.

[dragonlady7]

Yeah-- the apple trees on the farm are mostly all being written off as probably ancient and dying, but it would be nice to save some of the ones that are actually good producers and well-suited to the place. THey're all scattered around the hedgerows, and many of them are so old they might well predate the Behuniaks (who bought the place from the original 1770s family in 1940). They're in inconvenient locations, but it's nice to have them around.

I hate those intensive tiny orchards!! And that's awesome, that he has cool old varieties!!

My thought on grafting is that if you can just get some decent rootstocks, you could then go nuts saving people's old weird apple trees that they have, and get some unique stuff going. There's no point just growing the same stuff everyone else is, they can make more money doing it with the weird intensive tiny orchards.

Aaron's pondering doing the figs in pots in the greenhouse thing, but as it is they don't heat that greenhouse during the worst part of the winter, they only turn it on once the seeds need starting. If he had things he had to keep alive, they'd have to heat it all winter, and that's a lot of propane.
(Zack has a niggling scheme somewhere that he'd love to combine the heat and moisture of maple sugaring with somehow heating a greenhouse, but he can't figure out how to make it work. Someday. In the meantime they're just not sugaring because it's not possible to be economical without scaling way up.)

I think my parents' chestnut trees are doing well because they're pretty isolated. I'm pretty sure they aren't Chinese?

Oh, I'm not saying you should've done anything from seeds-- you have such a complicated logistical underpinning to the whole thing, with your commute and all. But for the future.

Yes-- they would like to finish hogs on acorns or whatever, but that's like. a distant kind of deal. More pressing is putting up roofs over heads so fatalities go down. (You weren't around yet when they lost a whole hog farrowing, two sows' entire litters, to a sudden cold snap. That's what keeps the meat operation from turning a profit, things like that...)

I keep thinking I should probably take up forestry as my own little side project on that farm, though. I should start a bunch of oak trees from acorns and make a grove myself. And over where the old christmas tree farm is, I should do some clearing and plant a walnut grove so they can sell that lumber in their retirement, or their kids can sell it when they start out farming. Long-long-long term plans, here. ...
I'd also like to root out all the invasives in the woods near the yurt and replant it all to be a native forest garden, but as far as I've gotten with that is yanking out an entire garden cart full of garlic mustard last year, which feat I imagine I'll need to repeat this year. (Didn't put it in the compost, threw it in the mud near the loafing shed where the seedlings will get trampled down. If I do it earlier this year I'll make it into pesto and eat it!)

[unicornduke]

It would be very nice to get those old apples saved. Probably a bunch are also cider apples, which aren't as common any more. There's a nursery in St.Lawrence doing really cool old varieties of apples that are hardy to their area. Rootstock would depend but probably easy to find some good ones.

I think as far as figs go, as long as you maintain a certain temp that even a non heated greenhouse will stay above, it would be fine. I don't know what that is or if they'd be able to maintain. Since sugaring starts in february/march I don't know if it would help too much for over winter although the weather is all kinds of wild anyway.

You should definitely do some forestry things! There's so many cool plants out there, did you know passionfruit is a vine and hardy to zone 5 with a little protection? But also so many other things. I've been thinking of getting cranberries because you don't actually need a bog for them, just acidic soil, like blueberries. Maybe next time my parents put in blueberries I can stick in some. But also timber is a really good idea. The chestnut would be excellent for that since I bet chestnut wood is in demand because there's a lack of it.

Once the persimmons start producing, I'm sure I'll end up with more than enough to share haha.

[dragonlady7]

Do you know, of all people, who used to be a cranberry farmer?
Goose, the guy who owns the BBQ joint just across and down the road from the farm. He was a cranberry farmer in MA and he has the thickest Boston accent you've ever heard. He's hilarious.
But yeah-- they only flood the bog to make harvesting easier, you could absolutely grow those things with your blueberries! What a neat idea. And they're so good for Vitamin C and stuff.

I just want to make all of the forest deliberate, you know? And the more stuff there is that can serve more than one purpose, the better.

Black walnut is, like, the highest-demand lumber, but it grows so slowly. And my dad has this idea that it's valuable to plant it, but honestly it's mostly valuable in stands, where it's going to grow in long lengths without knots, as opposed to scattered throughout the woods in random shapes and random places. Still, he's right in that it's better than a bunch of blighted dead elms or junk box-elders or fragile ash trees.
I don't know much of anything about forestry, though. But maybe I could stake out some space near the greenhouse to start a lot of little trees in pots, a few every year, and learn as I go.

[graydon]

Turners who do fancy salad bowls and things often like fancy figured limb joins in black walnut, but generally you need to be a little careful with walnuts as fancy timber; the european varieties (which have much darker wood) generally need grafting on a NorAm rootstock to really prosper.

[unicornduke]

That's so funny that he grew cranberries! What a change in profession.

no time like the present to learn new things! But really, with trees and stuff, you kinda can't start too early with it because they take so long.

[graydon]

Currants might do well, too. And then you could have currant jelly.

[graydon]

That point when the deer fencing cost makes you go "how much would it be to get a tiger?"

That is an amazing list of trees!

I think of figs as nigh-tropical; very cool you can expect to grow one.

Also, here's hoping about the Eastern Chestnuts.

[unicornduke]

I know right. Some folks just get dogs that live full time in the nursery/orchard/whatever.

The figs will die back to the ground during the winter but put out new growth in the spring that should bear fine. If I had a high tunnel or greenhouse, I could move them in there during the winter but I don't. But it's why I'm getting a Chicago Hardy. If it can do that in Chicago, it should do just fine at my parents.

I'm excited about the chestnuts! We'll see how they do....

[dragonlady7]

oh and I MISSED the persimmons-- I'm excited about those!!! I was just researching them but like. I mean. *I* don't have much of a garden, and I'm not about to saddle Aaron with trees *I* want if they're not in his plan.