Trees!

Ison's bare root trees

Over the last couple of weeks a lot of the trees that I ordered in February have been arriving. I've dug many a hole lately. But I enjoy doing it. I used several nurseries that I haven't tried before. The first one was Ison's nursery in Georgia.

I received about eight  2 - 3' bareroot trees and they were all less than twelve dollars apiece. They were mostly plum trees.

It took most of the day to plant the trees and three elderberry bushes. I still have lots of raspberries to plant.

The entire shipment was as follows:

Crandall black currant
Red lake currant
John & Adams elderberry
White Imperial currant
Anne raspberry
Cumberland black raspberry
Dorma red raspberry
Heritage raspberry
Jewel black raspberry
Nantahala raspberry
Polana raspberry
Royalty purple raspberry
Loganberry
Redchief nectarine
Sundollar nectarine
Black ruby plum
Byron Gold plum
Ruby sweet plum
Stanley plum
Orange quince
Smyrna quince

They were out of a couple of things that I ordered and they refunded that portion. They were very easy to work with and the trees seemed very good. Cost $241.

I also ordered some trees from Hidden Springs Nursery in Tennessee. The trees they sent were all really small. I was expecting bigger trees after what Ison's sent. Here's what they sent me:

Apple - Arkansas Black, Black Limbertwig, Hubbardston Nonsuch, Paducah
Cornelian cherry - Bodacious
Gooseberry - Captivator, Sabine
Mayhaw - Big Red, Heavy
Quince - Cooke's Jumbo, Meech's Prolific

$214

Tom Brown Apples

By far the best shipment of trees I got came from Tom Brown of North Carolina. Tom collects old southern apple varieties and preserves them. I sent Tom a message that I wanted some trees and that he could pick them out, the more obscure the better. He got back to me shortly and sent me eight southern varieties that I've never even heard of! They were all about three feet tall and really nice. He didn't even collect any money before he sent them. He told me to just mail him a check after they arrive!

Betsy Deaton, Fleming, Red Kane, Camack Sweet, Winter Banana, Magnum Bonum, Jellyflower and Red June were the ones he sent. I have to study up on them soon. $125

I also like the fact that these trees come from trees that were "rescued" more or less and were on the verge of being lost forever. Apples are not true to type with seeds, so each apple tree is a graft from another tree. Keeping these old southern varieties around is important because they are adapted to our weather whereas most apple trees you see for sale are northern varieties that aren't adapted to the heat we get and the apple quality suffers.

Abundance! (sort of)

Bee balm

Bee balm came back in a planter that is on the front porch. The blossoms are really cool looking. It definitely attracts bees.

As an herb it has a lot of actions like antimicrobial, and diaphoretic. It can be used as a substitute for oregano.

It's a very cool herb and we want to use it more often.

Blackberry

Raspberries are starting to produce a little bit of fruit but we've only got three plants that we just put in this season. One died all the way back to the roots, but it is showing some new growth now.

Strawberries are beginning to make a second round of berries. We harvested a good amount in the first round.

Blackberries are beginning to ripen but they are being hindered because they are in a fairly shaded area, but there are lots of them.

Apricot

The gooseberries are just about to ripen although we don't have very many of them.

Gooseberry

Oddly enough, today I discovered two apricots on the apricot tree, which we never noticed had bloomed at all. They are both nearly ripe as well.

In the backyard just this week I discovered that there is a mulberry tree producing fruit in the yard next door that hangs over our fence. So the majority of it is falling in our yard.

In the front yard, I've just discovered that we have black cherry tree. Black cherry can be used for a number of different things like jams and infusions with liquor.

I believe that it must take a minimum number of chill hours for the mulberry and cherry to set fruit because the last two years they did not bear any fruit. This past winter was very cold for a long time.