2023 agriculture efforts

[AnalogPackrat]

I built most of an ugly but functional two bin compost enclosure. Used a bunch of old 2x6 fence boards I'd saved when removing some 400' of ugly old 25 year old "decorative" 3-rail fencing. Corner posts are 4x4 offcuts from porch and deck rebuild last fall.

Need to make the center divider, line it with tar paper, and maybe fab a wire gate to keep some of the critters out. It (thankfully and purposefully) is not visible from the house.



Now that most of the salvaged lumber is out of the way I can reassemble my refurbished old disc harrow (two row 18" disc). I'm behind on garden prep again.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Today I managed to spray my pecan trees with dormant oil (neem oil), first time in two years. This is a little late (trees are already pushing out leaves, but no pollen catkins yet).




The 4 wheel cart was much easier to move around the yard than the old wheel barrow. I replaced the corroded battery cable, added a cut off valve (that I didn't need because nothing broke or leaked today).

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

A couple of days ago I innoculated six gum logs with oyster mushroom plugs. Today I did three more with a different strain of shiitake than last year. Will finish three more tomorrow and stack.

Bought a Fuji and a Granny Smith apple. Will plant in the next few days. Had to cover my blueberries (and azaleas) last night and again tonight because of late frosts.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Over the years I have lost two granny smith trees and one peach tree that I planted in the same section of my yard. I should take the hint and leave that area treeless. I am optimistic but not enough to plant more fruit trees. I have several that I planted still alive and growing taller (one peach, two plums, and one Johnathan Apple). I may get my first peaches this year, there were lots of blossoms.
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Last spring a late frost wiped out my fig tree down to its roots, but it bounced back, making way too many upshoots. I got about 5 viable cuttings from all those upshoots. Over the winter I planted three of those cuttings and one is already making leaves this spring. Oddly the parent fig tree is still dormant this spring.
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I tried grafting branches from some of my superior pecan trees located in my far back yard. So far none of the grafts are showing life, but I shotgunned a bunch of them so I remain hopeful that I might get one or two successful grafts.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

AP I have a mushroom question. Recently I have seen a couple mushrooms growing on a still live Pecan tree. At least I think it's alive. While the mushrooms were stuck to some dead looking wood. I ASSume this is a bad sign for the tree's health.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

AP I have a mushroom question. Recently I have seen a couple mushrooms growing on a still live Pecan tree. At least I think it's alive. While the mushrooms were stuck to some dead looking wood. I ASSume this is a bad sign for the tree's health.

JR

Almost certainly bad news. We had several smaller pecan trees near the house growing up (6-10" diameter). About 10-12 years ago one lost a good-sized lower branch that split out at the trunk. Within a year it had gotten fungus and it died a year or two later. If you're seeing mushrooms, it's been colonized for months.

Edit to add...

https://havegarden.com/fungus-pecan-tree/

Got pics of mushrooms?

 

[JohnRoberts]

These trees are pretty old (50years +). They were never properly pruned when young so I cut off some low branches that should have never been there. This years I tried unsuccessfully to graft branches from a different donor tree that makes better pecans. Not one of probably a dozen attempts took hold, but these probably irritated the trees. These trees are well fertilized and recently sprayed with neem oil that is supposed to be anti-fungal (while it does look like the picture from your link).




JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

OK here's a picture of the shroom...

You can see some evidence of my failed grafting attempts. You can also see the several low branches that I pruned off a couple years ago. No dobt the tree trunk is feeling pretty dead around the major pruning insults. Only one of the low prunes grew a callus over the cut stump (lower right side in pix).

This is my #4 tree and not a big producer but it picked up some after the major pruning.

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I had one huge pecan tree fall down in a rain storm several years ago. It turns out that the tree was infested with ants, who had gutted the trunk insides. The year it fell down it was loaded with a massive maybe 2x or 3x crop of unripe pecans. No doubt the weight of all those nuts helped make it fail. If that tree would have survived a few months more it would have been a record crop.


here is a view of how the ants gutted the trunk.



If you look carefully you can see the surviving pecan tree to the left of the dropped tree. This was a bunch of years ago, so well before I pruned off the major lower branches. That big tree when it fell crashed into my survivor and ripped some major branches off it. I was very lucky that big pecan tree fell in the only one direction it could without trashing my phone line, my power line, or the power lines in the street right next to my property. That was fortuitous.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

OK here's a picture of the shroom...View attachment 133227

You can see some evidence of my failed grafting attempts. You can also see the several low branches that I pruned off a couple years ago. No dobt the tree trunk is feeling pretty dead around the major pruning insults. Only one of the low prunes grew a callus over the cut stump (lower right side in pix).

This is my #4 tree and not a big producer but it picked up some after the major pruning.

===

I had one huge pecan tree fall down in a rain storm several years ago. It turns out that the tree was infested with ants, who had gutted the trunk insides. The year it fell down it was loaded with a massive maybe 2x or 3x crop of unripe pecans. No doubt the weight of all those nuts helped make it fail. If that tree would have survived a few months more it would have been a record crop.

View attachment 133228
here is a view of how the ants gutted the trunk.


View attachment 133229
If you look carefully you can see the surviving pecan tree to the left of the dropped tree. This was a bunch of years ago, so well before I pruned off the major lower branches. That big tree when it fell crashed into my survivor and ripped some major branches off it. I was very lucky that big pecan tree fell in the only one direction it could without trashing my phone line, my power line, or the power lines in the street right next to my property. That was fortuitous.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

A couple days ago while preparing to mow my grass, I decided to check out my tree/mushroom. It was gone but in its place I noticed a bunch of ants. This is an even worse sign for tree health than a tree growing mushrooms. Ants can gut the insides of a tree making it too weak to support its own weight. I already shared a picture of the huge pecan tree gutted by ants several years ago. That one was attacked by carpenter (big black) ants and perhaps others. This tree had small red ants, but they can still do lots of damage.

I have some poison that targets carpenter ants and termites, et al, but I was in a hurry to get on my lawnmower before the MS summer sun got too hot. So I sprayed it with some of whatever I had handy in a spray bottle. Tomorrow morning before it gets hot, if I still see any ants, I will mix up a batch of proper ant poison.

The tree is still making lots of pecans, but my old tree that fell was making a record pecan crop despite having a hollowed out trunk.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

The ants were still there so I mixed up a fresh batch of ant poison spray and gave them a good soak.
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I am starting to see some early drops of pecans but this is normal.

JR