Hi Kelogs. Not to worry about your language abilities. You do quite well. Your understanding of cleft grafting is accurate- it is often done on trunks or branches that are almost just stumps. I had imagined a tree more like my apple: quite a few well-established branches that I intend to keep, and a few that I would like to shift over. In my particular case I will have better luck changing over the branches that are higher up in the tree because they will be less affected by hormones which the tips of branches secrete and which drain down the tree to inhibit competition. Since you will remove those higher branches they need not concern you. I did not appreciate how much of the tree you intended to remove. One approach that has worked for me is to work over two or three branches on a fairly young tree and work my way up the tree over a period of a few years to continue converting branches, but not the main trunk, to a variety of fruit. I keep most of the tree unchanged in any given year but change some part of it every year. If I have a variety down below that's appealing I cut scions from it and graft them onto the higher scaffolds. I obviously can't keep that up forever, but it is quite workable now. I simply keep the lower scaffolds if I like their fruit. Hope I didn't make this too confusing.

I have seen some research reporting where ants have been known to kill the root system of some types of otherwise healthy or very young trees and other vegetation, but the most common incidents of this involved the big Fire ant that could be so often seen several decades ago mostly down in "The Valley" region in the southern tip of Texas. Recently there have been reports of the Fire ant's range having already migrated as far north as the semi-dry regions of northwestern Oklahoma and southwestern Kansas. In our region of Northeastern OK, ant populations have also increased greatly. I have not seen any of the Fire ants though, and some of the tiny black ants species I have encountered have pretty painful bites. I first encountered this when I was doing some weed whacking along the fence line of a vacant lot, which during a long rainy period had grown up higher than usual before I got the chance to trim the fence line vegetation on that lot. I did not have the right protective shoes on which would have prevented the ants from biting my feet and legs. Enough of them got on me that by the time I began to feel the pain I could not continue working in that location. I have not done anything to decrease the ants' numbers on that property or on my home's lot, and none of them have killed any of my trees; newly planted or older. Guess I have not done any thing to kill these ants, because I know that ants eat termite larva, and in areas with large ant populations they have seemed to increase, even faster than the termites. This has been seen increasingly, ever since the last 10 years or so when the EPA began to make it a crime to apply the better effect termite repelants that used to work reliably for up to 25 and even 30 years. Most of the termite chemicals sold today list their affective range as being only 3 years or even as little as only 6 months to a year, if the soil where it is applied draines slowly and retains moisture for long periods of time; like seen with clay soil or soils in often water logged, low lying, swamp boardered housing editions, and some swampy forest's housing lot locations. For this reason I have begun to consider most small black ants as very beneficial and too valuable to kill. Of course I put down repellants if I see that any have begun to enter my house and mark the path to my trash can in their quest for food and the small amounts of moisture they need.

dillay dally, I'm not at all sure that there is a direct relationship between your "cause and effect" - concrete should have little to no bearing on whether or not clematis will thrive. Concrete does leach lime but it does so slowly over time and not in huge quantities, so that existing soil pH is only moderately affected. Certainly not enough to dissuade grass or most bulbs (?!) from growing, as these tend towards more alkaline soil conditions anyway. Its effects are most noticeable with acid loving plants like rhodies and azaleas and since clematis are known to tolerate rather alkaline conditions, I doubt this would be an issue in this case as well. And most toxins would have been depleted by now, especially if you removed soil during your previous excavations :-) Salt will indeed "go away".......the actions of the soil and moisture break it down into harmless chemical components just the same as most other herbicides. Water is particularly beneficial in neutralizing the effect of common salts. The possible toxins I would be concerned about would be petrochemical in nature - spilled or dumped diesel or fuel oil, gasoline, oil based paints, etc. These do take rather specialized actions to remediate or the contaminated soil needs to be removed completely. Based on the information provided, I do suspect something else is at issue and it might be as simple as BorS's surmise on the overall vigor of the plants. Or possible root damage from unknown, warm blooded sources :-)

Tomatoes LOVE to grow in the same place every year. If you add new composted soil and ammendments, they will be just fine. Don't need to worry about it unless you get some kind of virus or fungi in the soil. You can rotate what you plant next to them and that will help. Some plants are heavy feeders, like lettuce, and some do best grown in soil where heavy feeders were planted the year before, without any added nutrients, like carrots. Carrots LOVE Tomatoes. Others benefit from the shade they make, like lettuce & spinache. Dill, garlic, beets and bush beans do well near tomatoes, and planted near Asparagus, both tomato and asparagus benefit. You definitely cannot move asparagus every year or you wouldn't have much of a crop. So, just keep building your soil so that it is healthy, and . . .Ammend! Ammend! Ammend! ~ SweetAnnie4u