Recent content by Skinner

It's the fed's job to say inflation is transitory. No one knows what will happen. If inflation continues onward at 4-5+% with no sign of cooling off the fed will be forced to raise rates. That will cause major problems for all debtors considering everything is obviously priced based on what...

Hope it's ok to bump an old thread. I planted a row of butternut along the road a year ago on 20' centers. Deciding to hedge my bets so that the tree line doesn't look god awful in 20 years (in case they succumb to butternut canker). Planning on putting American Persimmon in between. Curious...

Doesn't quite make sense for a potted tree.. but it looks a little like phytophthora root rot.

Awesome. Same here so far, checked all the top layers and no mold anywhere. I bought a roll of 4' x 100' fiberglass window screen. I am cutting them into ~10"x10" and stapling them into cylinders. I will do around 700-800 this way, and then the plan is to put the rest into air pruned beds and...

Jack, for not direct seeding in the fall I mainly am just going off recommendations from Route 9 and Red Fern Farm which are two of the most successful growers in the US. They say direct seeding is an expensive way to feed wildlife. In our area we also will get up to -20F some winters, and...

Update I haven't checked the buckets yet but it looks like every single seed I put in the fridge has sprouted. They were stored in damp peat moss. I was paranoid about the ones that came from the Missouri Agroforestry station via Red Fern farm.. I think subjected to temps down in the 10Fs...

I have planted close to 1000 trees with a dibble. I think I'm over it, it sets the roots back a lot. I have also seen the slit open up in dry weather. Going forward, if I ordered too many bare root trees to plant at once I would pot them up in old milk cartons or the ones from stuewe, then...

I don't think that assessor told you at all what you'll be paying, you're still left to guess. I would pull comparables in your township and be ready for a fight. When we were building our house we reduced our assessment by about 40% by detailing how our neighbors were assessed. At least...

Last year I had chestnut seedlings in 2.5x2.5x10 zipset plant bands - basically cardboard milk jugs with the bottom cut out. They were way healthier than the seedlings in deep pots. If you only need 10 just start saving your cardboard milk or half and half containers. They easily last the...

Well I should have asked my wife for ideas earlier. We have some leftover elastomeric butyl rubber tape. This is used for sealing trim on metal roofing. I wrapped a piece around the conduit where the bottom zip tie overlaps and pulled it tight.

I think I have a couple of those electric fence type posts. I probably think about it too much, but it seemed like in 7 years when I got to pull the stake back out, it might do a lot of damage. I feel like even some kind of rubber that could be wrapped around the conduit and then zip tied over...

Yeah, I might end up having to switch to wood. I just tried some duct tape on a bunch and a couple i tried drilling a hole in the tube and running wire through it. Not that optimistic, a couple paw paws i transplanting the fall were ripped out of the ground by the tube. Some of my bigger 1...

Thanks for the ideas. My trees all either have a square of landscape fabric with mulch on top, or just mulch. So some amount of mulch is piled up around the tube, but it's not enough to hold the tubes in place. I think that of 40-50 tree tubes so far, every single one is either stopped by the...

The most cost effective stake I have found is a 10' 1/2" conduit cut in half. The issue I'm having is that the no matter how tight I pull the zip ties the tubes have a tendency to rotate in the wind, until they either get stuck on the seedling trunk or, if the tree is small enough, will rotate...

Just a quick update, I put another 2lb of "timber hybrid" experimental seeds from route 9 - 83 seeds in the bucket. On top of that another 40 seeds of their "Chinese mix". I am keeping 128 of the Chinese seed to stratify in slightly moist peat moss in the fridge. That will be one source of...