Aspen flats
- Thread starter Fair oak
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Fair oak
5 year old buck +
Yeah, the cages might do more harm than good. The smaller bears might shimmy right up and over the posts. Lol. I know if the bears want an apple there’s really no stopping them so we’ll see. I’ll probably cage my fruit trees a couple different ways just to experiment and see what works best. I’ve planted plenty of trees over the years but this is only my 2nd attempt at fruit trees.
Fair oak
5 year old buck +
What a beautiful day it was Saturday! Can’t believe 36” of snow melted in 5-6 days. Finally was able to get some work done on the property in preparation for my apple trees coming this week. Got a bunch of cages built in advance and then after seeing the eyesores, realized I’m probably only using these monstrosity cages for 1/2 of my trees and will use 5’ fencing and conduit stakes and rebar for the others. Good to experiment with different techniques I suppose.
Question for the guys that plant apple trees in heavy clay. Should I do anything to amend the soil? Or just loosen it up as best as I can and hope for the best? All the spots I picked get pretty much full sun and were fairly dry surprisingly for just losing 3’ of snow.
Question for the guys that plant apple trees in heavy clay. Should I do anything to amend the soil? Or just loosen it up as best as I can and hope for the best? All the spots I picked get pretty much full sun and were fairly dry surprisingly for just losing 3’ of snow.
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Fair oak
5 year old buck +
Well, another beautiful day to work on the property and I got this weeks list knocked out today.
Planted and caged 10 red elderberry, 10 American elderberry, 10 highbush cranberry and 10 arrowwood viburnum. I’m really liking a earth auger with a 3” bit for my heavy clay. 1st, I tried using a flat shovel like a dibble bar (I need a Wolverine spade) and it would bend and just wouldn’t open the soil like I wanted to get all the roots straight down but the auger worked perfectly and broke up the clay into smaller particles that were easier to work with. I feel pretty good about using the auger more often and I’ll probably get different size bits.
Watered all of my new shrubs and also watered 14 apple trees I put in the ground the last few weeks. All 14 trees are showing signs of life! I found out it’s gonna be really nice having 2 ponds within 100-200 yards of the new orchards. Much better than hauling water across the property.
All 4 acres of my food plots look like crap this spring. Lots of clover and weeds but hardly any winter rye from last fall so I’m still trying to decide what to do. I might end up nuking everything or disking everything so I also replaced 6 bent disks today so it’s ready to go.
Planted and caged 10 red elderberry, 10 American elderberry, 10 highbush cranberry and 10 arrowwood viburnum. I’m really liking a earth auger with a 3” bit for my heavy clay. 1st, I tried using a flat shovel like a dibble bar (I need a Wolverine spade) and it would bend and just wouldn’t open the soil like I wanted to get all the roots straight down but the auger worked perfectly and broke up the clay into smaller particles that were easier to work with. I feel pretty good about using the auger more often and I’ll probably get different size bits.
Watered all of my new shrubs and also watered 14 apple trees I put in the ground the last few weeks. All 14 trees are showing signs of life! I found out it’s gonna be really nice having 2 ponds within 100-200 yards of the new orchards. Much better than hauling water across the property.
All 4 acres of my food plots look like crap this spring. Lots of clover and weeds but hardly any winter rye from last fall so I’m still trying to decide what to do. I might end up nuking everything or disking everything so I also replaced 6 bent disks today so it’s ready to go.
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