Apple Tree Grafting

This weekend I was lucky enough to take an apple tree grafting class taught by Patrick Haulman of the Arizona Rare Fruit Growers. At the end of the class I had my own brand new apple tree that I made by cleft grafting a piece of Sundowner scion wood onto a M-111 rootstock. Sundowner is a new apple in Phoenix and is considered to be the only red apple that will grow in Phoenix. Everything is still in the we'll see how it does mode. I also learned from Patrick that you can grow any apple in Phoenix and get varying results and production. That's right you can plant a Granny Smith and you just might get some apples off of it. The ratings of what and where apples will grow are actually set by commercial growers but the home orchardist can still get results just not on a commercial scale. I'm going to have to rewrite my intro.

M-111 rootstock

M-111 rootstock cut in half the red handled knife is a grafting knife and it only has an edge on one side.

The begining of the graft, slice down the middle of the rootstock twice the thickness of the knife.

This is the Sundowner scion wood and I've carved it into a V shape.

Next insert your V cut scion into the rootstock. Here is the important part all your cuts must be touching each other, any gaps and the graft will fail. I had to redo my V cut several times to get the perfect fit.

Now cover the entire graft in parafilm paper, this holds the graft together but allows it to breath.

Finally cover everything in green strechy tape, the tape comes off in a month. We'll see if I did a good graft, the tree should start budding out in a couple of months. When it does I'll transplant to a 2 gallon pot for the summer and once fall arrives I'll plant it out in the yard. If it grows????

WORK WORK WORK

This is by far my favorite time of year, everything is blooming, the weather is perfect, and I'm starting some new garden beds. It all equates to a bunch of work, but it's fun and rewarding. In this post I'll share where I get some of my cheap/free organic materials. I'll show you the elusive Giant Yellow Wood Boring Bee, we'll eat some weeds, and finally my asparagus is coming up.

This is Rovey Dairy it's down the street from my house, for $10 you can hand load a whole trailer full of composted steer manure. That's right that pile in the picture is all bull#$&!. It's a great deal my trailer is 4' wide by 8' long by 3' tall, filled to the top I get 14 wheel barrows of compost. I know there's no way it can be all organic with all the chemicals that are injected into dairy cows, but still it's a great deal.

This is not a commercial for Starbucks, to be honest with you I've never even set foot in a Starbucks. Last week I was talking with my parents about black compost gold (coffee grounds) I was saying that I wish I new someone that worked at a coffee shop, all those coffee grounds would be great for my compost and soil building projects. Low and behold my step dad rides his bike over to Starbucks the next day and asks the manager "what do you do with your coffee grounds?" The manager points over to a large trash can and says "we save all of our coffee grounds for the local gardeners, go ahead and help yourself to as much as you want" WTF corporate America reaching out and helping local gardeners. I've gotta get out more. So thank you Starbucks, thank you Ken, and go have all the vanilla lattes you can drink.

20 pounds of Starbucks coffee grounds.

I mulched around all my blueberry plants with the coffee grounds. Blueberries love acidic soil so it only makes sense to mulch them with acidic coffee grounds. So the plants have a free, organic, acidic fertilizer. 

I put the rest in my 2 compost bins

Ever see this weed before it's called Mallow. It is a close relative to Holly Hock. This time of year it growing everywhere. So grab some out of your yard and wash it off

Fry it up with some bacon fat, garlic chives, and onion.

When it's finished top with grated parmasean,salt and pepper to taste, and boom fried weeds believe it or not it's delicious.

It's about time my first Asparagus spear has sprouted I planted this bed a year and a half ago and this will be the first time I'll be able to harvest it. I get off on eating weeds just think how excited I am to get fresh Asparagus  spears.

Finally I discovered this guy he's a golden carpenter bee. All the carpenter bees I've seen are black this is the first golden one. You can find more info on them here. Do you see his hole in the log table. As a side note that's my wifes table when we sit outside. If she only new what lived inside of it. The golden bees are supposed to be the males of the species. These are very cool solitary bees, and they are great pollinators, they're always welcome around here.

Here he is going into his hole I'll try and get a better pic of him but taking good bee pics is tough.

PICTURE POST

I'm a little tired this morning so I'm just going to show you a bunch of pics of what's going down on the farm.

This guy showed up on the wall above my front yard garden a month ago.


Yesterday I found this.

And here she is almost ready to fly off if you look close you see her drivers side wing isn't unfolded all the way.

Almond tree in full bloom with a chicken grazing.

Baby almond, almonds are just like peaches, when they are growing they look like a peach but you don't eat the flesh, instead the flesh dries out and you eat the pit (an almond).

The one almond my 2 trees produced last year.

Sunshine Blueberry blooms, this blue berry probably has 500 flowers on it, my other 3 Misty Blueberries aren't blooming?????

Remember all my tomato and pepper starts?

Here they are none the peppers did well I'll have to work on that next year but I've got 40 tomato plants.

Burgundy Plum that I cut down to 24 inches is bustin out the Santa Rosa is still dormant.

Anna Apple in bloom.

Potatoes are coming up.

Remember compost pile omega

Here it is compost pile not so omega. That giant pile of organic matter has turned into this little pile of compost. The rule is 1000 pounds of organic matter will turn into 200 pounds of compost.

Southern Belle Necatarine in bloom.

Bonanza Peach in bloom.

FINALLY BE CAREFUL THE CHICKENS ARE WATCHING.

Chicken update, some bustin out,split head, and dog vomit

Well it's been another busy week here, I have a chicken update, some more plants have started bloming here, my cabbage crop is shredded, and I found some neat fungi.

Here's my girl Red 2, she has now made it a week since I had to cut an egg out of her,  she is eating, and foraging, but she still spends most of the day resting, and hanging out by herself. The other girls are all hanging out together and don't even seem to notice her. I'm still optimistic, but her size has diminished considerably, she is now much smaller than the rest of the girls, she used to be alot bigger than all but one of the girls (Red 1) hence the name Red 2.

This is my favorite time of year, Why? More bustin out.

 Sunshine Blue Blueberry bustin out.

 Florida Prince Almond bustin out.

 Desert Gold Peach bustin out.

Dorset Golden Applee bustin out.

Here's my first cabbage head of the year, it's 3 times as big as store bought cabbage and taste 10 times better, but the recent rains made it split(to much water makes cabbage split), splitting is fine except you can't store the heads as long, when they're split, and if you're growing heads for St. Patties Day they won't make it a month in the fridge. My cabbage crop this year only produced 3 good heads out of 6 transplants. No big deal there's still plenty of cabbage for everybody, until today, when I went outside and found another head split, (dammit). So now we have to eat cabbage for another week,(no big deal here comes a cabbage roll recipe) our corned beef and cabbage is starting to look pretty weak with only 1 cabbage head left.

 Finally some Slime Mold

Actually this is called dog vomit, you can see why, this patch of dog vomit showed up in my sheet mulching project. It's a great sign it means of soil decomposers (fungi). They have shown up and are doing there job(decomposing) . Soil building 101, it's amazing. This is soil being built out of newspaper and rabbit poop, all free.

What dog vomit looks like before it turns into dog vomit, AWESOME!!!

A dog gone tragedy, peach in full bloom, and chicken surgery

Well it's been a bad week around here, my dog killed a tree and I had to operate on one of my chickens today. At least the blooming Peach tree is looking great.

Here's my girl, while playing fetch today she ran over one of the newly planted plum trees and it broke off below the graft. 

Dead Jim

The good thing? I looked at the root structure real close when I pulled the broken tree out. Do you see that big root to the right that's the tap root. It had been in the pot so long it hit the bottom of the pot and started growing back up. I new these were trees were crappy trees when I bought them. There's a good chance this tree would never had made it IDK. But I planted 3 more just like it so we'll see.

Here's the replacement a Burgundy Plum that I spent 26 dollars on. It's a nice looking bare root plum I cut it down to 24 inches The stick on the right is the part I cut off and stuck in the ground. I have officially banned the game of fetch in the backyard.

This next part is tough, I'm just going to cut and paste what I posted on a forum for some answers.

Today when I came home from work I started working on my to do list. While I was cleaning out my fish tanks I noticed something hanging off the backside of one of RIR girls, at first I thought it was just a turd, then I looked closer and noticed she had half an egg sticking out of her vent. "WTF" I grabbed her and took her inside and started soaking her in warm water. My wife came out and couldn't believe what she was seeing. The egg was stuck half way out, and the lining of her vent was also coming out. More or less the whole egg was outside her body but half of the egg was still in the lining, I believe the term is she was prolaxed. While soaking our girl the wife and I bounced ideas off each other about what to do, at first we thought to just break the egg but noticed the lining of her vent was actually stuck to the egg shell. Finally after 20 minutes of of trying to massage the egg out I decided something had to be done. I pulled out my pocket knife and as my  wife held our girl I inserted the knife between the lining and the egg and gently worked the knife around the whole egg once this was done the egg popped right out and I pushed the lining back in. I was very careful with my knife and don't believe I cut any of her lining, I also pushed the lining of her vent back in, her vent lining is staying inside of her as of right now. I let her go back with the flock and they didn't even seem to notice, she walked around for about 30 minutes and then jumped into one of the nest boxes and is sleeping in the box as of right now. I don't know if I did the right thing but feel I did the best I could in the moment our girl was in alot of pain when I found her. If things don't work out I know what to do. Has this happened to any of you? And what should I do for her future care? She seems to be resting peacefully for now but I know there's another egg coming and there is know way that can be good for her. In the moment I didn't even think to take a pic but I found one on the internet I'll post in an attachment. Here's a pic of her resting the whole event was emotionally draining for my wife and I and it brought into focus that with chickens(or any animal) anything can happen at anytime.

Red 2

DON'T LOOK AT THE NEXT PIC IF YOU ARE SQUEEMISH

I'm optimistic about her future but I am thankful Deb was here as we worked through this ordeal together. 

Finally some good stuff my Florida Prince Peach is in full bloom and it is amazing the peach crop is looking good this year, so far.