The battle to eliminate Salal begins - tips??
Wayne Reibold
13 years ago
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grrrnthumb
13 years agoaka_strawberrygoat
13 years agoRelated Discussions
Dealing with Water-Retentive Soils
Comments (80)Thank you. My question doesn't relate to avoiding salt buildup in the soil, though. I am asking about ways to facilitate gas exchange at the root zone in soils that lack proper aeration for this to happen passively. Since the act of watering displaces soil gasses, pushing out what is already there and drawing in fresh oxygen behind the water, I was curious if watering on a more frequent schedule than necessary would help mitigate the lack of passive gas exchange. Of course, you would have to manually drain the PWT each watering. There seem to be two benefits of a highly aerated container soil, from what I have read and understood so far, and they are closely related: 1. Reduces or eliminates areas that allow no gas exchange (the dreaded PWT - waterlogged areas with insufficient oxygen available for roots to respire) 2. Reduces or eliminates areas that allow insufficient gas exchange (compacted areas where the available oxygen is quickly used up and the other gasses, byproducts of root respiration, end up trapped instead of being able to diffuse out to allow new oxygen in). Now, 1. can be addressed, in part or completely, by the methods described in this thread. Ways to manually drain the soil's PWT when the soil is too dense for it to drain away passively. Are there similar strategies for dealing with 2. manually when a soil is too dense for reasonable gas exchange to occur passively? Will a more frequent watering schedule act as a manual gas exchange?...See MoreObservations on the OFM lifecycle
Comments (26)Update time.. At this point the number of tip strikes is up in the dozens per day. I am also seeing more fruit damage, still infrequent but I will have many infected late peaches at the current rate. My first peach tree, Gold Dust, ripened and the dratted birds took care of nearly all of them (however, at least in looking at the pecked fruits and the ones left there was little OFM damage). The birds plus my OFM problem has convinced me to pull out some bags for the rest of the season. I have used cotton drawstring "parts bags" to good effect in past years -- I find these bags both block the OFM (the peach doesn't rest against the bag like with the stockings so there is no way the moth can lay an egg through it) and I can tie the peach onto the tree and keep the birds from getting at it. I am soon going to put these bags on a good chunk of the peach crop and compare bagged vs non-bagged from here on out (note I will still get some worms in bagged fruit due to bagging fruit already infected - some fruits lack a visible entry scar due to e.g. stem entry). In terms of controls I think I can declare the mating confusion a total bust for the OFM. Also I had limited the amount of spinosad I was spraying compared to past year and that is not a good thing - spinosad is very important for OFM control. Overall the early peaches came out pretty good without bagging but I expect the late ones will be mostly wormy by the time we get there. For next year, at this point I feel I either need one more thing to get a leg up on the OFM, or I need to bag the peaches early. Adding up the time I have spent spraying and tip pruning, I believe the bagging approach is overall going to be less time. It also produces cleaner fruit since peach scab etc is largely blocked. The only big unknown is whether brown rot will be a problem; last time I used these bags I did not have much brown rot in the orchard. I do have some good news, the squirrels are for the first time in many years completely under control thanks to Kania traps. Usually at this time of year my entire peach crop is getting stolen by them. Also the mating disruption on the apples has completely prevented any damage, and Serenade sprays have thus far kept the fruit completely clean. Scott...See MoreYour Favorite Strategies, Tips & Tools to Deal with WEEDS
Comments (33)Sounds like some form of landscape fabric to me and as others have stated, been there, done that, and wouldn't do it again. In a blackberry plot I might do it because of their growth nature, but in a perennial bed no. There is a belief that landscape fabric will permanently prevent weeds from spreading, but a couple of years ago at my parent's place we removed a whole section - about 30 feet in diameter. It was the most difficult thing a few workers and I had ever done. She had unknowingly planted a suckering shrub which started coming up through the fabric after few years. When we removed the fabric we saw the extent of the root system of this monster under the fabric and needed a backhoe to get it out! In essence, the fabric hid the growing problem underneath for about 10 years... If the fabric had not been there, the problem would have been noted much earlier and would have been dealt with much easier. My practice of mulching with organics to feed the soil which in turns feeds the plants was confirmed as being a good practice. :O) In the gardens, I mulch with mostly a combo of shredded leaves and UCGs - Used Coffee Grounds... For paths, I use sheets of newspaper topped with wood chips from a sawmill up the road. You can see one path behind the raised gardens it in the following photo....See MoreHelp - Growing large trees from seed (and keeping them healthy).
Comments (17)Question 1 - I was really blown away by how deep and big the taproot is growing on these trees. It's like most of the energy is going to create this big root. It's thicker than the trunks in every case, and the roots are easily twice to sometimes 3x as long as the seedling itself. So on on of them, I cut back the taproot a little bit... I took about a half an inch. I had read Al mentioning that slowly cutting back a taproot over time can help spur the tree to grow more roots higher up. I hope I didn't take it out of context. The first day the lowest leaf of that seedling, which has started to go brown on the rim, became pale and collapsed on one side of the leaf. Then yesterday it went dry. Today there has been no further progress of the leaf's collapse and no further signs of stress. The seedling seems strong... Was I wrong to try and trim it back just a little bit? Or did I do alright? Is this seedling out of the woods for now do you think? Young plants are nearly all dynamic mass, and as such, have a very strong "will to live". If your plant is currently doing well, there is no reason it will take a turn unless something cultural forces a change in course. Bonsai practitioners have learned that lifting seedlings as soon as the first set of true leaves emerge and removing the seed radicle immediately below the root to shoot transition zone and treating the top as a cutting eliminated taproot issues entirely in most plants. In stubborn plants with a hard tendency toward vertical roots, you'll need to regularly remove all first order roots (attached to main stem) growing downward from the root to shoot transition zone as well as all second order roots growing up or down off the first order roots. Question 2 - related to question 1, regarding the other seedling I root pruned a little. This one I took a little more off of because of root rot. I know I had to take it off, and I also took off a bit of taproot for this one too. The seedling itself seems fine. The uppermost leaf - which is fairly new and thin yet - went limp the first day, but has become stronger and greener these last two days. I know I had to take off the bad roots, but I was worried I went too far. I'm hoping I'm seeing indications that I didn't? Only way to tell is by putting a waiting period behind you during which the plant retains its turgidity throughout the daylight hours. Stomata close at night and slow water loss, so unhealthy plants have opportunity to recover from low internal water pressure and wilting. No wilt during the day is a good indication to bet on full recovery. Question 3 - When I was done, I investigated the 5 'dead' seedlings. Two of them looked like some of Al's bare-root pictures. The main part of the taproot was healthy, seemed alive, and had small alive roots still growing from it. but the end of the root was truncated in mush, much of which fell off into the soil. I washed them as clean as I could in a mist spray and cut off the mushy end to clean root. Then I potted those in 5:1:1 too. I'm hoping against hope that I might be able to save them. The top id dead back to the twiggy stump... Any thoughts if they might come back? Anything special I might do for them to give them the best shot - for instance a special fertilizer or watering strategy? Withhold fertilizer until the plant recovers. DAMP or MOIST are the operative words. If the fungal infection has gummed up the plumbing such that a vascular connection between roots and shoots isn't in the offing, it's a goner. If the infection isn't systemic, the possibility of retaining viability is still on the table. What kills cuttings is the inability to make that plumbing connection due to rot, or the cutting having an inadequate energy reserve. If the plant/cutting/seedling runs out of reserve energy while it still a net user of energy instead of a net producer of energy, it's over. 4: I have 5 I have not yet repotted. They seem to be okay... though 3 aren't doing much of anything, they're just existing and may have some first sign of browning on lowest leaves, but I might be looking too hard too... One is finishing it's fall flush of leaves, and one is start starting it's fall flush... I'm not sure if I should repot them so close to winter or if I should let them be until spring, since they seem okay right now. I especially am not sure I should mess with the one putting out new leaves. But on the other hand, what if I really am seeing some warning signs and some suddenly start taking a down turn in the next week or month? Wouldn't it be better to do it early, now, rather than later? The only reason I re-potted the ones I did was because I was sure they wouldn't make it through winter... I am not sure on these ones. If they were your plants, what would you do? A dearth of mobile nutrients, over-watering, root congestion, soil compaction, can all lead to loss of lower leaves. I'll ask you to spare me from having to do the research by telling me if these plants would normally enter a predictive dormancy during the fall to winter transition? If yes, then waiot until spring but guard against over-watering. If no, repot only if you suspect strongly that the plants will no longer be viable come late spring (June). 5: Fungus gnats. =( I manage to get rid of them for a while, but they always come back. Of course, I was always using compost mixes, particularly organic ones, and they're usually lousy with them no matter how much a brand claims they pasteurize/sterilize for pests. Do non-mineral soil media mixes have the same ability to attract and support these and other soil-borne pests? If yes, which ones to watch for? If you don't already have a good understanding of what constitutes the comparative degrees of container media (as in unusable, practically unusable, just plain poor, ok, better, and the variations of better from 'sort of better' to 'really a whole lot better'), making that a priority will almost certainly propel your advancement farther/faster than anything else you might apply yourself to in the near term. If you need the info that can tie soils up into a neat little conceptualization, I'll be really glad to help, but I think trying to do it in a thread that covers so many topics isn't the best format. Are you familiar with and understand the concept discussed here? Which brings my follow-up: If it can support pests that spent part or all of their life cycle in soil, then it should be able to support their predators too, right? I prefer to combat pests with their predators, like nematodes, predatory mites, aphid lions, etc. Would this be doable if needed? How about we work toward providing a home for roots that doesn't provide creature comforts? In the immediate, mosquito dunks and a restrained hand on the watering can are potential remedies. 6: For the future of these little babies of mine, what would a good strategy be for keeping them happy growing in a container? You'll find an outline here that will provide a plan for maintaining woody material in containers and in good health indefinitely. I know I need to keep them smaller than if they were in the landscape, and that means eventually removing the taproot. I also understand that taproot removal usually starts after a year. But these trees don't actually seem to have much besides taproot... smaller roots branch off of it, and a few have some smaller roots that come from the trunk matrix but not most from what I've seen. Would the best bet be to gradually prune the tap root back over a few years in an attempt to get the trees to put out more roots higher up? Or should I go for broke and just cut it way back and defoliate? Or is it possible that the poor media I have been growing in so far as not encouraged growth at the higher and mid root range and drove the roots downwards looking for air? I'm sorry I haven't taken any pictures to share to give you a better idea. If I end up re-potting any of the others, I will take some. I think I covered these questions above, but if not, ask again. Al...See MoreEmbothrium
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