Walking with the silky

[SD51555]

I had to put cam chips out this morning. Knew I had a few branches to cut off trails. So I started walking. Before I knew it, I was cutting down balsam poplar sprouts (probably 100+), liberating dogwoods, finding-marking-releasing juneberry bushes, clearing overhead brush that would eventually end up on the trail, and going over my dig plan for next month.

It got me to thinking, sometimes just walking with the silky can do a ton of good. This was something I’ve worked on for a while. I’ve discovered how to tell good poplar from balsam poplar. Balsam are the big leaves on the right. The quaking aspen that is premium browse is on the left.

I pulled on one for some reason, and the whole thing just ripped out of the ground on an old root.

Bad on the left, good on the right.

This spot looks nothing fancy, but look closer…

There’s gooseberry that could be brought some easy light and into production.

New oak. Likely bur, but it’s also pointy.

And ROD that is poised to produce if it can get the nutrients to finish these berries. I’ve seen lots of dogwood aborts when resources get thin.

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[Bill]

Did you ever get to the cam chips?
That’s where I would have screwed up. I would have went in another direction and forgot what I started out wanting to do.

 

[SD51555]

Did you ever get to the cam chips?
That’s where I would have screwed up. I would have went in another direction and forgot what I started out wanting to do.

I did. I had an easy list this morning, so I just took it slow and decided to regulate the whole way to my cams. I had all of that, planting sweet corn, and getting everything buttoned up before the heat arrived.


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[TreeDaddy]

Amazing what one can do with the silky zubat

I never head into the woods without mine

its a " must have" for me

bill

 

[Electrodigical]

I bought a Pocket Boy last year and it's pretty amazing the size of things I've cut down with something the size of a large folding knife.

Like everything else, the trick is remembering to bring it. I put it in my pack while hunting, but seem to forget to put it in my pocket at other times.

 

[Brian662]

What use do you have for gooseberry? It's what I would consider a "native invasive" here. Going to run fire through my timber in the next year or two to set it back.

 

[weekender21]

Definitely one of my favorite tools!


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[SD51555]

What use do you have for gooseberry? It's what I would consider a "native invasive" here. Going to run fire through my timber in the next year or two to set it back.

I have prickly gooseberry, and it is present to some degree almost everywhere if you really look for it. It doesn't get out of control on my place. I'd venture to guess 99% of it never produces fruit because it's in later stages preparing to die off from closed canopy. I did a little silky work around a gooseberry that's growing on the north side of an oak by my road plot. I took out a few saplings in the grass I wanted gone, and trimmed up the lower oak branches so I could mow around it.

That one bush will give me a few dozen berries each year that are over the target when I'm there. It produces more, but they don't all ripen at the same time. They are excellent, but a lot of farting around to eat. I think they'd be great and worth the work in a steam juicer. A little pectin and it'd make a great pancake syrup.

Ribes cynosbati (Prickly Gooseberry): Minnesota Wildflowers

Photos and information about Minnesota flora - Prickly Gooseberry: thorny shrub to 4 ft tall; spreading to dangling clusters of 1 to 3 flowers 1/3 inch long, 5 short erect pale yellow petals, narrow oblong sepals and a stiffly hairy ovary

www.minnesotawildflowers.info

 

[Brian662]

I have prickly gooseberry, and it is present to some degree almost everywhere if you really look for it. It doesn't get out of control on my place. I'd venture to guess 99% of it never produces fruit because it's in later stages preparing to die off from closed canopy. I did a little silky work around a gooseberry that's growing on the north side of an oak by my road plot. I took out a few saplings in the grass I wanted gone, and trimmed up the lower oak branches so I could mow around it.

That one bush will give me a few dozen berries each year that are over the target when I'm there. It produces more, but they don't all ripen at the same time. They are excellent, but a lot of farting around to eat. I think they'd be great and worth the work in a steam juicer. A little pectin and it'd make a great pancake syrup.

Ribes cynosbati (Prickly Gooseberry): Minnesota Wildflowers

Photos and information about Minnesota flora - Prickly Gooseberry: thorny shrub to 4 ft tall; spreading to dangling clusters of 1 to 3 flowers 1/3 inch long, 5 short erect pale yellow petals, narrow oblong sepals and a stiffly hairy ovary

www.minnesotawildflowers.info

That's the same stuff we have here. Prickly doesn't even begin to describe it.

 

[SD51555]

That's the same stuff we have here. Prickly doesn't even begin to describe it.

I was going to yank some and plant it in my strawberry bed, but never got to it. I was too wrapped up in the mega dogwood biff restoration project, which is going well so far by the way.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Gooseberry thorns are a leading cause of slivers at my house. They can even punch through leather gloves occasionally, which is ridiculous.

I've eaten these wild gooseberry fruit before, but I wasn't too impressed. I'm not sure if the fruit was ripe or not though, so perhaps my timing was off.

 

[Brian662]

Gooseberry thorns are a leading cause of slivers at my house. They can even punch through leather gloves occasionally, which is ridiculous.

I've eaten these wild gooseberry fruit before, but I wasn't too impressed. I'm not sure if the fruit was ripe or not though, so perhaps my timing was off.

Same here on the slivers, they are a pain. In my shrub "nursery" by the house, I grab a heavy pair of winter leather gloves to pull gooseberry and prickly ash out of the ground in the spring. Regular leather gloves don't cut it.

 

[SD51555]

The other project that was on the start list for Sunday was staking down my cages on a couple Siberian crabs that just happened to get planted in bow range. I had bought a new 300’ roll of thicker fabric and it came with a fiber backing, so I wasn’t gonna be able to punch a post thru that. I figured it out.

Six years ago, as I was carving out some plot space, I cut down some 6-8” thick ash trees and chunked the logs down to sizes I could handle by hand and threw them into a habitat feature in the center of this plot. To this day, that haphazardly stacked bunch of logs remains my best ever dogwood protection apparatus, and it was complete luck. I just wanted the logs out of the way.

That bush is a huge producer today. Lots of new seed getting hauled off that sentinel bush.

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[TreeDaddy]

I carry a boxcutter to cut small holes in the fabric and then drive the stakes for the cage

May seem tedious but works well for me

bill