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I noticed today that the persimmon seeds that I ordered from England's and have stored in my refrigerator since Fall are showing signs of mold. Would love your advice on how to proceed.

...an orchard will be born and great memories will be created! This is my first attempt at grafting...It appears that I’ll get an 85-90% success rate...don’t be afraid to try it!

I'm looking for some help/ideas on how to recovery from some bear damage that occurred this summer. Background: A bear or multiple bears damaged 20 of my 50 fruit trees this past summer I'm working on getting and electric fence put around each of the orchards to stop/limit future damage The...

The Virginia Tech Tree Fruit Extension and Outreach just posted an interesting link from a Cornell project regarding Integrated Pest Management. Here's the link: http://newa.cornell.edu/ If there's a linked weather station near you, then you can get an near-term forecast for various apple...

I'm slated to prune in mid-March, but a friend visited the hunting land this weekend and sent a few pictures showing that some of the pear and crabapple trees have started leafing out. It'll obviously be 'worse' when I get there in about 10 days. Question: Is there any risk of giving these...

I've got several orchards at our hunting land and I've put those trees on large rootstocks, namely b.118 and m.111 for apples and OHxF97 for pears. Now I'm planning a small home orchard and would like to get your thoughts on apple and pear rootstocks for that setting. I could surely use the...

All, With apologies because I normally try to research questions before asking them here in case the answer is obvious, but I'm a bit jammed for time... My friend is going to spray our apples on Friday. We had a significant Japanese beetle infestation earlier this year and we sprayed in...

Most of us aren't fruit tree experts and aren't close enough to our trees to dote on them constantly. We do the best that we can and just hope that the results will be positive over the long-term. Sometimes, though, we get a particular specimen where it just all comes together. The cultivar...

I have had pretty good success scoring above buds on the central leader to encourage branches where I want them. Question: If I score above what looks like a fruit bud, will that fruit bud turn into a branch? When training your scaffold branches at 60 degree angles, how far out from the tree is...

While pruning today I noticed this disfigurement in an otherwise healthy 4th leaf Winecrisp tree. What is it and what should I do?

I have several asian pears (e.g., Shinko, Olympic (Korean Giant), and Yoinashi...not particularly fireblight prone varieties) that during their second leaf put on 4-5' of 'whip' growth. For example, most are now 9' tall, with small branches at 4' and below and then 5' of central leader with no...

I’d like to plant some wildlife shrubs this Spring and I’d appreciate your comments on my plan. Shrub: cuttings of elderberry, arrow wood, and ninebark from bigrocktrees.com Location: Some sites ‘full’ sun, other sites ‘half day’ sun, planted around the perimeter of our food plots USDA Zone: 7a...

I just got the results back from my soil samples and the ph in my various orchards ranges from 4.6 to 5.4. Ugh. I'll be top dressing with palletized lime ASAP and putting ag lime down in the Spring when we replant the surrounding food plots. I've read that top dressing helps, but only in the...

Foggy's recent post about the 'Red Barn Orchard' got me thinking about all of us visiting various 'apple places' this Fall and how cool it would be if I could come along with you. How about we all take pictures of our trips as the next best thing! I follow the UMass Cold Orchard on Facebook...

Last week I sprayed my apples and did a touch of pruning to ensure my central leaders weren't getting any competition. Two of my 3rd-leaf trees are over 10' tall so getting to the very top with a 6' step ladder is getting to be an uncomfortable stretch. Orchard ladders seem terribly...

I'm looking for some advice on dealing with tent caterpillars. I've got hundreds of nests in dozens of trees (native cherry trees?) that border a couple of my orchards. The challenge is that the nests are too high (25'+) in the trees to be reached with my sprayer. Last weekend my friends and...

Our friends in the Great White North may not be there yet, but Spring is here for some of us: I got this picture today from my buddy who was spraying our trees (not this one, of course) and it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: "For every person who has ever lived there has come, at...

Since I don't think these questions warrant a dedicated thread, I thought I'd put them in a single thread. Even if you can't answer them all, please answer any on which you have some knowledge or an opinion...and thanks in advance! Any idea how much fertilizer is in a 'spike' like this one...

In this otherwise seemingly healthy two-year old Winecrisp apple pictured here: Something is wrong with the trunk. Any thoughts on what the problem might be?

All, I'll be doing some training of my first set of scaffold limbs late next week and I want to get some 'best practices'. These are trees on b.118 roots and for the sake of argument assume they are only for deer. The pictures below are of one of my best second-leaf trees at various levels of...