Saturday, September 23, 2006 at Siri-Gian Kaur’s
home.
Tony Valdez, Rio
Arriba County Extension Agent
685-4523, tonvalde@nmsu.edu.
You can contact
him to come analyze your place!
Fruit
and Other Trees &
Winterizing
Your Garden
Oh! My! God!
You can’t believe the wealth of information
that Tony carries around in his head and that he has contact with! I guess after
earning a master’s degree and dealing with these things for a number of years as an Extension Agent, you collect a lot
of knowledge!
To begin with, he brought us hand outs. You can find most of them online through the New Mexico
State University’s site
at http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h, plus anything about gardening in this area that you could possibly want to know! What an amazing variety of information is available just at
the click of a computer key!
And here are the specific handouts that he brought!
http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-321.html
Apple Orchard Management
http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/H-327.pdf
Pruning the Home Orchard
http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-319.html
Fertilization Programs for Apple Orchards
And here are some that he sent by e-mail after
the meeting!
http://extension.usu.edu/htm/publications/publication=6143
About the Codling Moth and controling
it. These are the apple and pear worms.
http://www.sirigian.com//2004HomeOrchardPestManagementGuide.pdf
A 24 page very informative document describing
all the pest your fruit trees may have, and how to get rid of them!
http://www.sirigian.com//Fruit_Tree_Spray_Guide_2005.pdf
A 94 page document from Washington
State University Extension Service that tells you how to protect your commercial fruit trees.
In addition, he introduced us to the online store,
Peaceful Valley in CA that sells everything you need for organic gardening—seeds, nursery stock, weed and pest control,
fertilizers, tools, supplies and materials, and more! They are at http://www.groworganic.com/ default.html
So, here is a synopsis of what he told us:
WINTERIZING YOUR GARDEN:
This is the time to amend your soil to be ready
for the spring. Apply:
- Compost
with microbes to break down the nutrients in your compost pile and then put this organic material in your garden. (Kartar Singh/Gurbani sells microbes at $10 to break down your compost and he will actually give a class
in compost and drip irrigation in March! His number is 753-4516.)
- Amend
your soil now with any organic material or other ingredients that you need. You
may put in alfalfa or cottonseed meal, straw (be sure it doesn’t have weed seeds in it—available at the Country
Farm Supply store in Espanola), and so on. Let it rot over the winter. You may want to put in other nutrients as well such as nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium.
- You
can plant nitrogen fixing legumes that take nitrogen out of the air and put it into the soil, such as winter vetch, hairy
vetch, Austrian winter peas, etc. You can also plant suitable grain grasses such
as tritacale, winter wheat or winter rye. Then in the very early spring, turn
these into the soil and let them decay for a few weeks before you plant your “real” crops of vegetables or flowers. (This is called “green compost” and is used by the farmer across from
Walmart.) You can scatter the seeds on the soil and then rake them in, or use
any method you want to get the seeds in the soil. If you use the grain grasses,
you might want to add a little nitrogen.
WINTER WATERING:
Throughout the winter, keep your garden wet. If it doesn’t rain or snow, be sure to water your garden so that the microbes
in your soil continue to compost your organic material (they go dormant if they are not kept wet). And keep your plants watered so that they don’t become stressed.
This is important to do year round, but don’t forget this in the winter.
Also, be sure to not freeze your drip irrigation
system. Usually you turn your system off in the winter so that the lines do not
break with the water freezing. So, figure out how to turn your system on for
a warm day’s watering in the winter, and then turn it off and clear the lines before it freezes at night.
ANNUALS and PERENNIALS:
Annuals come up from seed, and need to be reseeded
yearly, or buy young plants that a nursery has grown from seeds each year. Annual
flowers are usually the bright colored ones that flower the whole blooming season. Sometimes,
we also refer to perennials that freeze in our particular climate, such as tomatoes as annuals. “Annual” means Yearly.
Perennials either come up from their roots each
year if they have died back in the winter, or they remain whole in the garden year after year.
They usually flower just for a certain amount of time during the growing season.
“Per-ennial” means Through the Years.
WEEDS:
Any disturbed soil gives rise to annual weeds. To keep control them:
- Use
mulch such as bark, landscape cloth, newspaper, cardboard, plastic, etc.
- Crowd
them out by planting perennials.
- Pull
them as soon as they come up, before they make seeds that would re-seed your garden.
- Use
a weed burner (flame thrower) that singes the outer layer so they perish.
- Pull
them by hand or use any kind of hoe.
- Apply
herbicides such as Roundup which are plant hormones in minute amounts. They are
protease inhibitors (enzymes that inhibit breakdown of proteins so the plant can’t get protein for its nutrients). This has to get to the photosynthesis areas of the plant. They do not affect trees, etc.
- Check
out the Peaceful Valley
site for other remedies at http://www.groworganic.com/ default.html.
GRASSHOPPERS:
Grasshoppers thrive in dry years, and so produce
lots of eggs for the year following a drought as well. Moisture in wet years
supports their predators such as fungi, viruses, protozoa, stink bugs, etc. So,
we probably won’t have as many grasshoppers next year!
If you want to control them by treating your soil
or with Nolo Bait, it would be best if your neighbors did this, too because grasshopper migrate. (Satya Kaur’s—Balwant problem.)
There are lots of other ways to deal with them
as well, such as using a weed eater on them, burning with a weed burner, vacuuming them, swatting them with a fly swatter
(Sat Mohine Kaur’s favorite), picking them by hand and squashing them, keep poultry that will eat them (Guru Prem Kaur’s
choice), sweep netting them over an area with a butterfly net and then use them as fishing bait (Tony’s method).
TREES
RECOMMENDATONS FOR TREES TO PLANT:
Shallow Water Table
(Water is available within a few feet under the surface. Occurs near the river)—Willows. Cottonwood:
It is good to prune the dead wood out of Cottonwoods that could fall and damage buildings, and balance them so that
they don’t fall over. Train the trees into a balanced, natural shape when
they are young, and don’t “top” them—take the tops out.
High Water Table
(Water is deep under the surface. You don’t want the roots to rot)—Rocky
Mtn. Juniper, Douglas fir, white fir, Austrian pine.
Both High and Low
Water Tables—Blue spruce.
Stay away from invasive
species such as:
- Chinese
elm—beetles, little seeds and take lots of water.
- Salt
cedar—they put salt on top of the ground so that other plants won’t grow there, they burn easily and then take
fire to the cottonwoods nearby, use huge amounts of water such as hundreds of gallons per day, they multiply quickly. To get rid of Salt cedar, you can dig down about 2’ and then chop the roots
out; cut them down to stumps and then apply or paint on glyphosphate (or other commercial preparation made for this); apply
salt to the stumps, but then you have to leach the salt out of the soil so that other plants can grow there.
TRANSPLANTING AND WATERING:
Remember that the roots of a tree are approximately
as deep as the tree is tall, and as wide as the width of the branches.
You can plant trees and other perennials year
round, when the soil can be worked, not frozen. Fall is a very good time to transplant
trees. But the spring is not as good due to the stress of heat and wind. Be sure to water transplanted trees well for the first year.
When watering:
- Apply
water out to the edge of the tree width were the “feeder roots” mostly are located. Closer in to the trunk are more the larger “transporter roots” that don’t take up the
water from the soil, but transport it to the tree.
- Drip
lines that water constantly are better than letting ground water dry out, but they are hard to gauge.
- Mechanisms
on drip irrigation are precise and you can fine tune them.
- In
a flood plane:
- There
may be enough water in the soil to carry your trees over the winter without watering them.
- Some
fruit trees, such as apples can stand 2 weeks of flooding.
- Most
others, long flooding starves the roots of oxygen, so they die.
PRUNING, especially FRUIT TREES: see the handout http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/H-327.pdf for complete information!
- For
the home decorative trees, prune them into an architecturally pleasing shape. It
doesn’t matter how big or small you prune the tree to. Although there are
very specific instructions on how to train a new fruit tree on the handout. It
advises removing the main vertical leader at a certain height and developing “scaffolding” branches that will
be strong. You want sturdy wood to bear the fruit so that the branches don’t break under the fruit’s weight as
would happen if the fruit grew at the end of thin branches. You can thin the
branches out so that they can produce new fruit bearing wood and allow sunlight into the tree.
- Take
out diseased, dead, touching and crossing branches, also suckers or “watersprouts,” which are quick growing limbs
that grow quite straight up. Take off these suckers and the ones that grow at
ground level all year long.
- Develop
and keep wide “crotches” (the angle of the joint where a smaller limb sprouts off a larger branch) on your tree
because they are sturdier than narrow ones. This is because in a narrow crotch,
the cells bunch against each other like a knot and can weaken the joint. Inside
the “V” of this kind of small joint you will see wrinkly looking bark which is a result of the bunching cells. Prune off smaller—less than 45 degree angled crotches—called “drop
crotch.”
- To
prune, cut a limb close to the branch that it is attached to. You will see a
“collar” or “crunch point” that rings the smaller limb that is at its joint with the larger branch. Cut the smaller limb about ¼” on the far of this collar. If you cut it further out, then that distance of limb from the cut collar to the end of the cut limb will
die off, thus inviting insect and disease infestation.
- Sometimes
you need to change the direction of some leader branches to develop smaller branches into a network or “scaffold”
of stronger branches. To do this, you can cut the larger branch back to the joint,
making the cut at a 45 degree angle so that it would look like the line of the branch rounds up to the smaller limb.
- Best
time to prune is when the trees are dormant, and after a specified number of “chill units”—days of freezing
temperature for each kind of tree. January and February are good months to prune,
before the sap starts to rise. Although light pruning can be done year round. It is also best to prune when the leaves have fallen off the tree so that you can
very easily see what you are doing when you are making the cuts, and to view the whole architectural appearance of the tree.
FRUITING:
- Early
frost here often kills the fruit tree flowers, so they can’t make fruit.
- If
you got lots of fruit in one year, the tree doesn’t put out so many buds for the next year, so you get less fruit.
PESTS:
- You
can pick dropped fruit off the ground because worms from those apples can go into the ground and come up next year. But worms can also hide in the dirt, bark and other places.
- With
just one tree, you can “bag” apples with special bags that you get at the store to keep the Codling moths off
the fruit where they lay their eggs. They then hatch into the larva stage, which
are those worms.
- There
are lots of kinds of organic sprays, several available from Peace
Valley http://www.groworganic.com/ default.html such as Entrust. There are also mating disruption
traps that you can hang in the tree at certain times.
- Granulosus
virus infects fruit trees.
- Soft
bodied insects such as aphids can be controlled with insecticidal soap or even dish soap—either synthetic or organic. It is the surfactant that breaks the surface tension of water that serves to kill
the insects by drying them out. Add 3 T. of soap to one quart of water and spray
the plant. Do this every week until the pests are gone.
FERTILIZER:
· If
your soil is sandy, add potassium. If soil is clay, don’t add potassium.
· Get
your soil tested for what fertilizer you need, and request recommendations for organic fertilizers for your garden.
· You
can use alfalfa pellets that are used for rabbit food for fertilizer.
SOIL TESTING:
Most likely different parts of your property have
different attributes, such as soil types, nutrients, organic material, etc. You
can get your soil tested with recommendations for specific fertilizer application at the SWAT lab for $17.50 per soil sample. Their website is http://swatlab.nmsu.edu.
“SOUTHWEST” INJURY:
This is a gash-like injury to the trunk of a fruit
tree, or perhaps the bark falls entirely off the southwest side of the trunk. This
happens because temperatures in our spring time vary wildly. In the night it
can freeze, while the day time can be quite hot.
So, in the spring when the sap is rising in the
trunk due to the warm weather in the day, the cellular “capillaries” are fully open. But when the sap freezes at night, the icy liquid breaks the cell walls, causing injury and the wound can
appear to “bleed”. This happens on the southwest side of the tree
because when the afternoon sun shines on the trunk from this angle, the trunk becomes quite hot on that side. The problem is the great temperature difference from day to night in this location affects the trunk. This damage can kill the tree.
A remedy is to shield the trunk on the southwest
side of the tree from the heat of the very hot afternoon sun coming from the southwest so that its temperature stays more
uniform—that is cooler, and therefore the trunk doesn’t experience such extreme temperature variations. Several ways to do this are:
- Whitewash
the southwest side of the trunk with a thinned down coat of white latex paint that reflects the sun.
- Wrap
white paper or other reflective material on that side of the tree trunk.
- Put
up some kind of shade on that side—perhaps some structure, or an evergreen bush, or whatever for shade.
AND
HERE ARE THINGS THAT SEVA SIMRAN SIRI SINGH PICKED UP THAT ARE NOT IN MY TEXT ABOVE!
White wash bottom of trees or put something reflective around the bottom of them. Especially on smooth bark trees
which are more susceptible to cold snaps in spring. ie: peach, cherry, pear.... Don't trim that side
of the tree (sw) as the branches will help to protect the trunk.
Siri Gian kaur's little pine trees have "pine tip moth" Keep them (trees) as miniature trees. Will probably
not get big.
Fall is the best time to put manure, compost, etc. on garden. So the bacteria etc. will have time to go into
the ground. Mix with regular dirt.
Winter crops...till into soil in spring.
Plow under one month before planting. We have until Oct.15 to plant? Winter
legumes, rye, hairy vetch
Tomatoes---"curly top virus"---upper leaves turn upside down and turn purple.
Ground juniper stays green year round.
Lady bugs kill aphids
Granulosis---sprayable method (what the hell is this all about)
Can plant trees year-round. Best in early fall...until you can't till soil.
Grass: blue-gamma (pretty) Buffalo grass does well with low water. Fescue very resilient.
