Morfydd St. Clair

I put a few plums into my garden a few years ago, mostly Mirabelle on dwarfing rootstock, and so far none of them have fruited.  One grows a thorny thicket every year around the trunk, that I cut back every couple of years, and last weekend I discovered that another was completely overshadowed by a thorny rootstock trunk.  

Both are cut back now.  Will they (continue to) sulk and not fruit?  Will this help?

Would fertilizing them this spring help kickstart them?  Any other suggestions?

Many thanks!

echo minarosa wrote:SCORE! A local bakery deal has me getting all their eggshells. That won't bulk up a bed considerably but will add to the makeup. Not even sure the numbers yet but I know when they rack off one thing it takes 15 dozen eggs. I am still looking for coffee. The search continues...

Starbucks usually (in western Washington, at least) packages up their spent grounds into empty 10-lb? coffee bean bags and puts them in a basket near the counter.  You don't even need to talk to anyone to take them. :)  But it's luck whether there will be any there, and you have to dispose of the plastic bags.

A smaller chain might be willing to hold all their grounds for you, more likely if you give them a container to dump into, and commit to a weekly pickup schedule.

Brian Cady wrote:

Morfydd St. Clair wrote:

Brian Cady wrote:

Ryan M Miller wrote:
The fact that this plant has lower toxins than common vetch and has yields comparable to common vetch suggests this plant has high potential as an alternative food crop. I'll try to acquire some seeds of this plant species by Fall of this year.

I'm trying to import an expensive little packet from France.

What's your source in France?  I'd be interested in looking at it in Germany.

Morfydd, to answer your question directly, as I should have, I ordered from B & T World Seeds.

Brian
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Thank you for the sources, Brian!

Brian Cady wrote:

Ryan M Miller wrote:
The fact that this plant has lower toxins than common vetch and has yields comparable to common vetch suggests this plant has high potential as an alternative food crop. I'll try to acquire some seeds of this plant species by Fall of this year.

I'm trying to import an expensive little packet from France.

What's your source in France?  I'd be interested in looking at it in Germany.

To add on to Anita's excellent post, there's a whole site about this:  http://wintersown.org/

Which used to have a vibrant community at GardenWeb (um, 20 years ago or so).  It looks like they've just refreshed the website, which is awesome.  It's not direct sowing, but it will get you seedlings early with little work.

Michael Cox wrote:We have had a few "zero waste" type shops near me. I would, in theory, love to support them. In practice it was difficult because I'm a busy person and usually squeeze in a quick shop spontaneously when I ended up with a few spare minutes on the way home from work. It was impractical to carry tubs, jars etc... on foot to and from work on the off chance I might get a chance to pop in.

So think carefully about how you will support a spontaneous visitor, and encourage them. I felt fairly unwelcome the few times I tried to turn up without a container of my own.

These businesses also tend to do well if they are partnered with other essential groceries. For example, can you position yourself next to a really good butcher, or farmers market type place? You both benefit from the increases trade that the other draws in.

The "Unverpackt" store near me sells cotton drawstring bags and various sizes of jars if you don't have your own*.  In either case you weigh the empty and mark the weight with a marker or grease pencil.

*at a kind of exorbitant price, but I consider it my "remember the bag next time" tax.  If you have those, plus the option of free donated glass jars, I think that would keep people happy.

Skandi Rogers wrote:

Morfydd St. Clair wrote:

I actually just got around to shelling my first (tiny) harvest of bladdernuts! .  

So what do they taste like? I've never heard of them before but they are available here and apparently crop well so if they taste decent they sound worth planting

i was told that they taste like pistachios.  With that possibly biasing me, I'd say that's correct.  A kind of green taste and a creamy texture.  I did not roast them, so I don't know how that changes them.

I just posted a bit on Korean nut pines here:  https://permies.com/t/153778/Korean-Pine-tree-growing-tips  

I actually just got around to shelling my first (tiny) harvest of bladdernuts!  https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Staphylea+pinnata  I actually picked them off the ground around November.  I've had the plant also about 5 years, and it's quite a pretty little shrub so far.  My understanding is that it's self-fertile but will fruit more heavily with another nearby, so I need to find another place for a second.  

I will say that the shells are VERY hard, and my nutcracker (from the nice guy at Piteba) left me with tiny shards of shell and meat instead of what the pretty picture shows.  So shelling was tedious and not particularly productive.  If anyone has a suggestion for improving the process, please chime in.

Also, um, a bladder is not the first organ I would have identified the protective structure as.  At least it makes finding fallen nuts easy, and the squirrels don't seem to have clued in that there's food inside.  

I may have been mixing the time to nut production with that of the monkey puzzle tree. (An elderly neighbor has just planted one, I assume just for the looks, otherwise he is very optimistic...)  This page http://www.hardyfruittrees.ca/catalog/nut-tree/korean-pine-pinus-koraiensis-a-must-for-cold-climate says 10 years or so.  It also says growth explodes at 5 years.  Which would be inconvenient for me for where they're planted.  Oops.

Hi Donald,

I have 2 from Agroforestry.co.uk in my Hamburg Kleingarten.  They've been in a fairly shady, boggy spot for about 5 years.  When I put them in, they were about a foot tall, and now they're about hip-height.  The spot has killed everything else I've planted there except a couple of Oregon Grape, which are also pretty stunted*, and Korean Pine are supposed to grow slowly, so slow growth isn't a great shock.  I protect all my new trees with chicken wire guards, and the trunks are still thin enough that I keep those on, and I note that any new growth outside gets nibbled back to the wire.  I don't even have deer to worry about, so I'd suggest some healthy protection for several years.

My understanding is that they won't produce nuts for decades, so for me they're just interesting specimens.  What are you looking for from yours?

*and grass.   So much grass.