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Yum, chestnuts... youch! Carefully enjoying the harvest.
Nuts change the world: Buy trees & learn about walnuts,
oaks, hickories...
Good year, bad year cycle of bloom and fruit production
Rose pruning: Another installment of shrub- and climber
tips.
Advice for smoother potato skins & cleaner celery
How grubs* count in unexpected ways in fall
Throw out the tree paint!
Flowers: New cuts made, old cuts lauded, and blooms continue
'til frost.
Still staking? Argh, those anemones!
Foiling future pests: Iris borers,** tent caterpillars...
More detailed index...
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*This is a good illustrated summary of grub problems and
solutions. For more, check out the in-depth grub articles in
What's Coming Up 204
**This issue does expand our library of information about iris
borers. If iris borer control is why you're here, these other
issues will also be helpful: Growing Concerns 59
and Growing Concerns 530.
Index for
issue 157:
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acidity in control of potato scab
acorns different on various oak species
acorns prolific some years
alternate year bearer, plant tends to flower and bear fruit well
every other year
Anemone x hybrida, Japanese anemone
annual bearer, plant tends to flower and bear fruit well every
year
appearance and taste of acorns differs
apple crop reduced by spring frost
apple self sterile, two different cultivars needed
for fruit
Asmus, Ken Asmus
basswood tree called whitewood, linden tree Tilia
species
beetles that are beneficial
beneficial nematodes
big betony, Stachys micrantha, fall care
bittersweet berries, female vine needs male
pollinator
blue mist flower, perennial ageratum, Conoclinum coelestinum
Image at right, above: This is from University of California
Davis' excellent bulletin on home nut growing. (We are certain the
writer assumed the person holding this stick is wearing a hard
hat!) Click to read the entire bulletin
or paste this URL in your browser for immediate download
http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8005.pdf
For more, download this issue to read page
2!
burr oak, edible nuts acorns
carpenter knows why trees called whitewood
celery blackheart related to watering
chafers harmful beetles
cherry crop reduced by spring frost
chestnut blight resistance
chestnut tree Castanea mollis
Chocolate Joe Pye, Eupatorium maculatum 'Chocolate', fall
care
cottonwood tree called whitewood, Populus
species
counting grubs to identify potential grub
damage
crop rotation to control potato scab
cross pollination necessary for chestnut
cutting down perennial in fall
dangerous to walk under nut trees
deadheading for repeat bloom
Image, right: Chestnuts come in spine-covered husks. If you
plan to harvest them, be prepared to protect your hands. One tree
in a good year may produce 30 to 80 pounds of nuts. For more,
download this
issue to read page 3!
Index, continued:
dioecious, male tree vs. female tree
English oak, indigestible nuts acorns
fall clean up in iris bed to control borers
fall gardening easier for many reasons
fertilizer in control of potato scab
flowers more numerous on some rose branches
flowers on tree not recognized as flowers
Garden by Janet and Steven to learn pruning, learn to
prune hands on
gentian deadheading for extended bloom, Gentiana late
blooming species
ginkgo fruit, female tree needs male pollinator
grapeholly berries, Mahonia species, female shrub needs male for
pollination
ground beetles beneficial
growth regulators to prevent or limit fruit production
grub control timing
Right: Nut trees do flower, although we don't always recognize
the bloom. Here's an oak twig with spent blooms and foliage just
emerging. If a storm is what brought the twig to ground and it was
rainy all through the week while the flowers were open, much of the
pollen probably went to ground, too. It didn't reach other oak
flowers and so there won't be many acorns that year.
For more, download this issue to read page 3!
Index, continued:
harvesting nuts from chestnut tree
hickory trees bear many nuts some years
holly berries, Ilex species, female plant needs male
pollinator
home orchard, edible nuts
hormones used to limit or prevent nut production
Iris borer moths flying in fall
Iris borer pictured
Images, below: This icky, iris-tuber-chomping caterpillar
moves on to new
mischief as a moth in fall. The iris borer is an unremarkable moth
that flies under our radar. A key to controlling borer damage is
that the moths fly just once a year, for a few weeks in early fall.
Once a moth has done its egg-laying on our irises' leaves, fall
cold ends its run. If we then clip off and destroy the iris leaves,
it makes a huge dent in next year's iris borer population. (Okay,
you can wait and cut the leaves off very early next spring, before
the eggs hatch. But, yuk! Winter-mushed iris leaves are far less
simple to cut and handle than crisp fall foliage.)
For more, download this issue to read pages 15 and
16.
Index, continued:
Japanese anemone staking
Japanese beetles harmful beetles
Lantana, deadhead for extended bloom
life expectancy and nut production years, oak, hickory,
walnut
lilac, tendency to be alternate year bearer
limiting fruit- and nut production on trees
lovage as celery substitute, perennial Levisticum
officinale
male tree vs. female tree, dioecious defined
messy fruit controlled with spring spray, apply growth regulator
hormone
monkshood, deadheading for extended bloom, Aconitum
carmichaelii
nematodes for grub control
no nuts inside husk, chestnut shriveled inside husk
noisy under nut trees in fall
nut production varies with tree age
nut production varies with tree cultivar
nut production, lots of nuts some years
nut with spiny husk, handling painful chestnuts
nuts heavy some years on hickory, reasons
nuts heavy some years on oak, reasons
nuts heavy some years on walnut, reasons
oak tree flower
Image, far right: Are you being bombarded by your nut tree?
Facts from the USDA Crop Tree Field Guide (Forest Service
publication NA-TP-10-01) may make the hard-hat years more bearable.
(We had to buy our copy of this excellent resource, back
when. Now, you can just go to the USDA site and download the pdf
Image, right: We probably all recognize an acorn as from an oak,
but these nuts are also distinct between oak species, in looks and
in taste. This elongated acorn is from a swamp white oak
(Quercus bicolor) and, as acorns go, probably has a rather
sweet flavor. Nuts from burr oaks English oaks may be "nourishing
but indigestible" while burr oak acorns are "one of the most
palatable of all the oaks."
For more, download this issue to read pages 6 and
7.
Index, continued:
obedient plant, variegated Physostegia virginiana
'Variegata'
Oikos Tree Crops
perennial cuts in fall
photography can't capture pruning like being there
pinching for late bloom, perennial ageratum
pine tree called whitewood, Pinus species
Plants for a Future research for alternative food crops
pollenizer, plant suggested to cross-pollinate another
potato scab
prune cherry look for tent caterpillar egg mass
prune out unproductive wood, branches that no longer flower
well
prune roses, timing
pruning rose vines early spring and after bloom
pumpkins in short supply after flood year
rain during pollination can affect nut harvest
rose pruning, prune climbing rose
(Index continues below the following rose pruning
pictures.)
Images above: Janet's been pruning this climbing rose to
contain it on its trellis. Even when it's photographed in fall when
growth has slowed considerably, it seems to do all it can to
obscure its bones with wild, new, every-which-way growth. A number
of "wild hair" shoots formed even at the tail end of summer, since
its last pruning.
We sketched that rose to remove the foliage and assign colors
and numbers to the branches to make explanations more clear. Do you
recognize it as the rose in the photo? If so, download this
issue to read pages 8 thru 12.
Images above: Left: Long new shoots such as those on this
climber (arrows) haven't developed bark yet and are particularly
susceptible to damage in winter wind. You can clip to shorten them,
but perhaps you'll decide "That's a good new piece to train in next
year!" Then you simply tie it in for now to keep it out of harm's
way.
Right: Here's the vine after we shortened some new shoots,
removed others, and tied-in the rest (two of them tied at blue
arrows, left) to reduce the chance that they'll break in the wind,
or under the weight of snow and ice.
Images, above, left: Most roses have some wood that "times
out" each year -- dies or becomes unproductive. Two such canes are
here (arrows).
Above, right: After we removed dead or very weak wood. Because
one can never know what might happen over winter, we left all the
rest, even those canes we think will probably go next year right
after bloom to make way for the newly-sprouted
successors.
More rose pruning if you download issue
#157 to read pages 8 thru 12, and also illustrated articles in
What's
Coming Up 88,
What's
Coming Up 100,
What's
Coming Up 139 and
What's Coming Up 145.
Index, continued:
rove beetles beneficial
Sargent crabapple, tendency to be alternate year bearer
scabby potato, scab fungus of potato tubers
seedless ginkgo, male tree
self-infertile, need two trees to bear fruit
self-sterile, need two trees to bear fruit
soil sulfur in control of potato scab
spruce tree called whitewood, Picea species
spur, fruiting spur relative to pruning
staking even in fall
Stark Brothers fruit trees
swamp white oak, Quercus bicolor edible nuts acorns
tent caterpillar control in fall
toadlily deadheading for extended bloom, Tricyrtis
species
tulip tree called whitewood, Liriodendron
tulipifera
turtlehead deadheading for extended bloom, Chelone
obliqua
vine, pruning rose vine
walnuts prolific some years
Images below: Japanese anemone before and after fall
staking, and a big betony - Chocolate Joe Pye - obedient plant
combination beforeand after some fall cutbacks. For more cutting,
deadheading, pinching and staking in fall, download this
issue to read pages 13 thru 15.
Thanks to Sue Leich!
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