The Sandbox

[SD51555]

Is that a garden tiller I see in the background?

 

[Freeborn]

Art, you frequently add chicken maure,is ti bagged or fresh. Where do you buy your chicken manure?

 

[sandbur]

Is that a garden tiller I see in the background?

Yup, that is the extent of my tillage equipment.

 

[sandbur]

Art, you frequently add chicken maure,is ti bagged or fresh. Where do you buy your chicken manure?

My renters often have several semi loads that they apply to my rental acres.
They told me I could take as much as I wanted with buckets for my garden and for tiny foodplots.

Jerry, the chicken manure works wonders on our types of soils.

 

[sandbur]

This attempted NWSG seeding is adjacent to the cottonwood thicket that I cut back two winters ago.

View attachment 777

When we had more deer, this cottonwood thicket used to hold a doe and fawn.

Last evening, I started to walk back there and a fawn ducked back into the cottonwood thicket. The rains of the last month

have generated lots of growth.

 

[sandbur]

This reminds me of an aspen clearcut in the north country.

 

[sandbur]

Twenty five or twenty six years ago, I had a small patch of birdsfoot trefoil planted behind what is now the cottonwood thicket. I sprayed this area behind the thicket with roundup 3X in preparation for NWSG broadcasting.

Looks what pops up.


The birdsfoot does not get much use in the farm country where I live. I think it would be great for a low maintenance plot in the northwoods.

 

[sandbur]

Here is a planting of farmstead plum and ginnala maple for a future thicket. The ginnala can become invasive from what I hear, but what I have planted on this farm has never spread to any extent. I need to look a long time to find volunteer ginnala seedlings to transplant.

I raked ginnala seed into a disked area and then added suckers from our farmstead plums.

I hope I do not regret the ginnala maple in the future.

 

[sandbur]

Here is my attempt at a thicket of crab apples and plums. some are growing well, and some are.....not.
View attachment 1143

My second crab apple/plum thicket is adjacent to the ginnala/plum thicket. Neither is quite a thicket, yet.

When should I remove the fence?

 

[sandbur]

The crab apple thicket and the plum/ginnala thicket are in an old field that had to have been plowed at lest once. Red cedars have invaded part of this area.

Years back I planted spruce amongst the red cedar. Perhaps it is time to remove some of the cedar?

 

[sandbur]

I planted 25 to 50 spruce ever year and I like the mixed age of the spruce trees for cover.

 

[sandbur]

That dolgo in the picture is grafted and on antonovka. Across the ditch where we jumped that buck a few years ago. I wish it were closer to the house for easier picking. But I do have another grafted dolgo by the house.

None of my seedling dolgos or purchased dolgo seedlings from the SWCD have produced yet. I imagine it will not be too many more years until they do produce.

Here are the seedling dolgos. They should bare within a year or two.

 

[Freeborn]

Art, I would not remove the fence until the plum is 6-7 feet tall and the the central stem reasonably stout. The deer will browse the secondary branches and the shrub should begin to strongly sucker.

One thing I have noticed from my plums is after 3-4 years there is enough secondary branches that the central leader is left alone.

 

[sandbur]

With the deep snow, something chewed the bark off of this Frostbite apple last winter-above the window screen.

It looks like I will still have a frostbite tree in a few years.

Art, I would not remove the fence until the plum is 6-7 feet tall and the the central stem reasonably stout. The deer will browse the secondary branches and the shrub should begin to strongly sucker.

One thing I have noticed from my plums is after 3-4 years there is enough secondary branches that the central leader is left alone.

Thanks, Jerry. I will probably leave the fence for 3 or 4 more years. A few of the plums are 6 or 7 feet tall, but I have added some more plums to try and thicken it up. The original plums were from a farm plum thicket. I added some root suckers from grafted plum trees this year thinking they were wild plum rootstock.

I don't think the farmstead variety suckers as much as the rootstock plums.

 

[CrazyEd]

I've got 10 or so apples on my Frostbite tree, curious to see when they ripen and drop. not a lot of info on this tree. do you know much about it art? mine is b118 roots, producing in year 3.

 

[SD51555]

Frostbite is one of the UofM creations I believe. They've got a page for it: http://www.apples.umn.edu/Frostbite/Characteristics/index.htm

 

[sandbur]

My Frostbite is not bearing yet and is on Bailey's rootstock. Probably 3rd leaf.

After last winter and a bumper crop last year, many trees are not bearing. Chestnut crabs have a few apples as do dolgo.

 

[CrazyEd]

Frostbite is one of the UofM creations I believe. They've got a page for it: http://www.apples.umn.edu/Frostbite/Characteristics/index.htm

right, I've seen that type of stuff. I guess i'm looking for first hand experience.

 

[sandbur]

Correction - I checked my records and the Frostbite is on second leaf.

 

[sandbur]

I had a quick walk about the trees by my house this morning before work and there are very few apples. Those with apples seem to be mostly crab apples, chestnut, dolgo, some morse bunches,and seedling crabs.