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Many of the gooseberry varieties in the nursery trade are immune/resistant to WPBR infection. Some black currant varieties have been selected for WPBR immunity, but new, virulent strains of the fungus have emerged that will infect some of those currant varieties previously considered to be safe...

While plowing and discing certainly have broken a lot of points over the past 300+ years, anyone who's spent any time knapping flint will know that a lot of broken points snapped just as the knapper was 'putting finishing touches' on a piece... "I'll take just one more little flake off, here...

Read up on 'Kaki Sudden Death Syndrome'.

BSE... first identified in the mid-to-late 1980s. By 2019, a total of 232 people WORLDWIDE had succumbed to variant CJD, the human spongiform encephalopathy attributed to the BSE agent (whether it's a prion or a spiroplasma is still up in the air for me). 232 people. 232... Worldwide... over a...

Trailman crab is the tastiest apple I've ever eaten. Looking forward to one day getting to eat Chestnut crab fruit from scions I grafted last year... it consistently gets rave reviews for flavor. Grocery store apples... I can take 'em or leave 'em.

My guess... they're some of the native crab species - Malus coronaria, M.ioensis, M. angustifolia, etc. You can harvest seed from the fruits and grow your own, or some of the wildlife-focused nurseries mentioned above may offer them. My dad had an orchard of those native crabs, back home in...

"Malus angustifolia). A shrubby tree that produces small sweet red and yellow apples" I'd like to see one of those with small sweet apples... every single native crab - M.angustifolia, M.ioensis, or M.coronaria(sweet crab - called 'sweet' because of the scent of blossoms, NOT because the fruit...

Hard to beat that technique, above... it pretty well maximizes cambium contact. I do a simple bark graft, and get acceptable results. The modification in that article above probably makes a slightly stronger graft, early on, so less likely to blow out or break out during the first growing...

This is a 10+ y.o. callery that I planted at one edge of a foodplot... and never got around to grafting it over to a good wildlife selection. Cut the top out of it on Apr 1 and stuck 12 scions around the outside - 4 each of Ms. Laneene, Gate, and Gilmer Christmas. Left that one 2-3" limb...

As stated near the end of that article, that big 'polystyrene'-looking eggcase is from the introduced Chinese mantis, which have become naturalized over a large portion of the country. The one in the original photo, on the apple stem, is one of the native Preying Mantis species (there are...

I've been all over our 80 acres of hardwood forest... have yet to find a morel this year. But... I did score some nice Chicken of the Woods yesterday. I think this one is Laetiporus cincinnatus.

If you're a quadriped and have to lose a leg, a rear is best... 60% of body weight is borne on the front limbs... there's a lot less stress on joints if they're only missing a rear.

I planted a couple hundred sawtooth acorns 25 yrs ago... sold the resulting seedlings to a friend to plant out for deer/turkeys... I have no idea how they did for them. I ended up with about 4 trees in the nursery rows that must have been so small that I missed them. I suppose they produced a...

IDK if deer will eat hardshell hickory nuts, like mockernut/pignut, shagbark or shellbark - I've never witnessed them eating them, or found any in rumen contents - but I can assure you that they will - and do - eat pecans at any opportunity.

Bitternut is Nature's ultimate practical joke - thin shell... as thin as some pecans, high kernel percentage, many crack out intact halves... but most are so astringent that even the squirrels won't touch them until everything else is gone. But... every once in a while, we run across one that...

Depending upon your desired consistency, you can cook the syrup shorter or longer; I like mine thicker than most store-bought maple-flavored syrups. If you go above the 1.5 C. sugar per cup of 'liquor', it tends to crystallize out - and not sludgy crystallization like honey - I'm talking big...

Mockernut... from a 'game' standpoint, are mostly only gonna feed squirrels and mice. I suppose bears might eat them, but we don't have them here. I have no idea what value they have, from a timber harvest standpoint. You can make 'hickory syrup' from the mockernut nuts (and toss in a few...

Mockernut hickory, for sure. That sort of 'diamond' ridged bark is typical and the brown nut & husk clinch the ID. Shellbark has 'shaggy' bark, similar to shagbark, though often a bit less 'shaggy'. Shagbark nuts are usually white/light brown, shellbark nuts are brown, and typically thicker...

Early on, my dad was crazy about building blinds WAY UP in the trees... had at least two that were 30-40 ft up in the air. Thankfully, he later realized that 8 ft up on posts was just fine. One of his high stands, built in the crotch of a big, old water oak, had a trap-door entry in the...

I've seen reports of sapsuckers severely damaging or even killing trees... but I've never seen it. See apples & pecans that are heavily peppered with holes, but never noticed it having a negative impact on productivity.