March 10, 2020 remembering trees

Note: the server is not allowing me to upload pictures today for some reason, sorry

Hi Gardeners

We had some gorgeous weather this weekend and yesterday, with sun and temperatures in the low sixties. I was able to get out and clean up my little greenhouse and work on the wisteria growing over the roof.  I tell you I don’t think I will ever plant another wisteria. Those vines are just ridiculous to keep in control. We have one out at the edge of the yard too, and it climbs the electric pole. Not only had this one covered the roof of the little greenhouse it had crept under the eaves of the barn and across the roof inside the barn. They were inside the greenhouse along its roof and wound around the sides. This is one seasons growth.

It had spread out along the ground in front of the greenhouse, heading toward the garden bed in front of the barn. I kept tripping over vines. I hacked away at them but in many places, they have gone underground and rooted so I will probably have them growing again as soon as it warms up. Even when I cut through the vines on top the greenhouse, I had a hard time pulling them off because they are wound around each other and the roof beams. Some pieces are still up there. Don’t plant wisteria unless you like a battle!

The snowdrops are all blooming now, and the winter aconite. I see color on the earliest crocus and a few more warm days will have them in bloom. I am sure many of you have crocus and even other bulbs in bloom. According to my records bloom here is about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Even the trees have very swollen buds, the wisteria I was fighting had some color showing at leaf bud tips.

The redwing blackbirds and grackles are back and so are the robins.  The sandhill cranes are back in the cornfields across the road. They are about 2 weeks early too. The warm sunny afternoons this weekend were actually noisy with bird song, a huge flock of the RW blackbirds mixed with some starlings were passing through and the noise they made was something else.  So far, I haven’t heard any frogs.

We had some rain this morning and last night and the temps are actually falling today instead of rising. But the cool down is supposed to be temporary. I am hoping winter is really over.

Time to apply dormant oil sprays in zones 6 and lower

If you have fruit trees, there’s still time to apply dormant oil sprays in planting zones 6 and lower. Crabapples, grapevines and blueberries can also benefit from oil sprays. A dormant oil spray is part of the good pest management program for fruit trees and it’s considered to be an organic control. These sprays are applied when trees are still dormant. If you are in zone 7 and your trees haven’t leafed out or bloomed, you can still apply the oil. It can be applied when the weather is above 40 degrees but below 80 degrees.

Some dormant oil sprays are simply what is known as horticultural oil or Superior oil. The better oil sprays have copper or lime sulfur added and these are also considered to be organic products. These can help with some fungal diseases as well as early insect pests. Few helpful insects like pollinators are out in the very early spring and if the tree doesn’t have flowers, they aren’t going to be attracted to them. So, you won’t be harming helpful insects.

It is often suggested that you rotate sprays of copper and lime sulfur oil a couple weeks apart to control the most diseases and pests. You can spray every other week as long as the tree buds are not showing color. Don’t combine copper and sulfur sprays in the same tank.

You can buy dormant oil spray in garden stores or online.  Do not use other types of oil, like engine oil, cooking oil or like some uninformed places suggest, WD40. Mix the spray as directed on the label. Apply it on a calm day with a pump up or back pack type sprayer. Cover all the tree branches thoroughly. Also cover the trunk of the tree with the spray.

Dormant oil sprays will not help with all kinds of fruit tree diseases and insects. They are just one part of a fruit tree spray schedule. But they are often the only sprays homeowners feel good about applying because they are considered to be organic and are fairly safe.  If you have questions about spraying with dormant oil or when to spray contact your County Extension office.

Save the stems

If you are doing some spring pruning of plants whose stems are hollow save some of them to make a home for solitary mason bees. Bamboo pieces are excellent, if you have bamboo that has suffered winter die back or that needs pruning. The stems need to be about the diameter of a drinking straw or pencil. If you can’t find hollow stems you can actually use drinking straws.

Find a small can or waterproof box and stuff your stems in it, cut stems to fit. (You could paint or decorate the can or box.) Some people spray a little glue inside the can or box so the stems won’t slide out. But if you pack the item tightly with stems that probably won’t be a concern and you avoid adding chemicals in the glue to the stems. If you are worried about stems sliding, use rubber bands around the bundle instead.

You can make a sling around a bundle of stems with a piece of canvas, denim or other heavy fabric instead of using a container. Now hang the sling, can or box in the garden for the bees to use as a home and to raise more bees. They lay their eggs in the hollow stems and fill them with nectar and pollen for the babies to eat. Mason bees are excellent pollinators and we need all the pollinators we can get.

Pretty pots on the cheap

Do you have lots of black plastic nursery pots but want pretty pots?  Simply paint them. There are nice spray paints on the market now that will cover plastic. After you have a good base color you can hand paint or stencil on a design. How about dipping your baby’s feet or your kitties toes into some paint and pressing them on to the pot?

And if you want some glow in the dark pots simply spray glow in the dark paint on them! Textured paints are also available, but you’ll probably need a base coat of plastic paint first. You can also cover pots with burlap or fabric using a good glue. The possibilities are endless.

If you don’t have nursery pots, why not paint plastic laundry bottles, milk jugs or coffee cans? Cut off the tops and make sure they have drainage holes in the bottom. If you heat a screwdriver tip in a fire it will melt right through the plastic to make your holes.

Reminiscing about trees of my childhood

Do you as a person interested in plants remember plants from your childhood? Maybe I’m weird, heck I know I’m weird, but I often think about plants or gardening in my childhood. The other day I started thinking about the trees I knew as a child when something about climbing trees caught my attention.

There was a green ash tree in our back yard, close to the house that had perfect limbs for climbing. My brother and I would climb way up to where the tree would start swaying with our weight. I knew it was a green ash because I identified it when I made my sixth-grade leaf collection. I had the biggest leaf collection of anyone in my class and the teacher asked me where I found all these different types of leaves. I told her mostly in my yard and the yards of my grandparents, who lived on either side of us. 

There was a big maple in our backyard that a “Tarzan” swing hung from. That’s what we called a tire hung on a rope. We would push each other higher and higher up over the garage roof. Once we were pushing my cousin in the swing and the rope broke. She rolled off the garage roof and broke her arm. Our yard was so shady that grass didn’t grow well and the roots of that maple sprawled over the surface of the hard packed dirt. There was a plum tree by the garage that bloomed every year but never seemed to have plums.

On the west side grandparent’s property, right next to the driveway and their front door, was a huge old Queen Anne cherry tree. I knew it was a Queen Anne cherry because when my grandfather talked about the tree, he always said “the Queen Anne cherry tree”. This was a sweet cherry, yellow fruit with a red blush and this tree produced prodigious amounts of huge cherries. We ate them fresh, even though there was often a worm inside, and my grandfather turned the rest into cherry wine in his basement.

Because of the worms my grandfather sprayed the heck out of that tree, although it never seemed to make much difference. And since we rarely washed the cherries before we gobbled them down, after carefully picking out the worm inside, I imagine we ate a lot of DDT and whatever other chemicals he mixed together in his big barrel sprayer. One of the ways he harvested those cherries was to get his pole pruner and whack whole limbs off onto the driveway.

Pa, as we called him, was a big believer in fruit trees and he had every kind of fruit tree there was. There was a big old apple tree in our backyard that he tended, spraying it every week or so until the spray dripped off the tree. When I was in my early teens, I made some money by selling trees from the Stark fruit tree catalog for a commission. That was in the days when kids were able to go around door to door selling all kinds of things on commission.

My grandfather couldn’t read so I would show him the catalog pictures and read him the descriptions and he would give me money to buy the trees he liked. I got to keep a dollar or two for every tree I sold, and he was my biggest customer. I also sold him grape vines from that catalog, and he was soon expanding his wine making capabilities. That came in handy in my later teens when my brother and I would sneak into his basement and siphon off some cherry or grape wine from his big wine crocks.

My grandfather also planted black walnut trees everywhere. There was a huge one in our backyard.  About twenty years after my grandfather died my father had it cut down because my dad wasn’t fond of the messy nuts and all the shade it produced. It cost him $3,000 dollars to have it cut down because it was so huge, it hung over the garage and the power lines and it was hard to maneuver equipment into the yard. I still wonder if the company that cut the tree made money off the wood of that tree.

The grandparents on the east side, my maternal grandparents, also liked plants and trees. There was a spindly orchard of pear and apple trees in the back of their property that never seemed to produce much. But they were more interested in ornamental trees. My grandmother was quite proud of the Russian Olive tree she planted; it was an unusual tree back then. She was also proud of the smoke tree she planted by her side door.

My grandmother had a pretty Japanese maple with leaves that stayed red all year around in one of her flower beds. She also planted a mulberry tree and told me all about silkworms and how they ate the leaves to produce strands of silk. She also had a catalpa tree she called the fishing worm tree, with its long green bean seed pods.  In the south where she was from the beans often had worms used as fish bait.

There was a huge weeping willow in their yard and several tall arborvitae on the east side of their house on the fence line. Also on that side was a spruce with branches that swept down all around it and made a good place to hide. There were some old gnarly maple trees in their backyard that I remember my grandparents arguing about cutting down. One was cut down eventually so my grandfather could build a brick fireplace in its place.

When I bought my first house it was surrounded by ancient box elder trees, which made nice shade but if you know anything about box elders you know how prone they are to wind damage. I loved the gnarly look of those old trees but slowly one by one they had to be cut down. One crashed into the front of my house during an ice storm, doing lots of damage. Another constantly dropped large limbs into the road, and the city demanded it be removed. One in the back kept getting lopped off by the electric company until it wasn’t worth saving.

There were also some mulberry trees on that property. My neighbor wanted them cut down because the birds ate the berries and then bombed the cars and clothes on clothes lines with purple poop. I resisted though and they were still there when I sold the house.

When we moved into this house 28 years ago there were several nice trees. A huge blue spruce was in front of the barn and the back of the house had a trio of a white pine, red pine and a spruce. There were huge ancient cedars on the west side of the house and a large burr oak near the driveway.

A catalpa sat in the middle of the front yard, by the road. The front of the west pasture along the road was lined with black walnut alternating with catalpa. There was a silver maple in the center of the east pasture and some poplars along the back of that side. Two large scotch pines were also on the east side. A newly planted blue spruce was at the SE corner of the property. (It’s quite large now and there’s been a discussion as to whether it needs to be removed because it blocks the sight line of the road.) A sugar maple was newly planted in the west pasture, its large now.

And we had a strip of woods on the far north end of the property. It is low swampy ground back there and black ash, birch and poplar dominated that area. There was one large elm tree still there, which shocked me, since most elms had long since died from Dutch elm disease. That tree was still there until about 10 years ago, when it finally died.

Some of those trees are long gone, killed by disease like the large blue spruce or insects like the ash. The silver maple had to be removed because it’s roots were getting into the septic field. We cut down some of the black walnuts because they were just too messy for the front yard, although there are still black walnuts on the property. But since the first year we moved in we also embarked on planting a variety of trees. I was trying to count how many species of trees are now on the property and I came to at least 28 species.

We now have a variety of pines, spruce, junipers and firs, many types of fruit trees and ornamental trees that we planted. I planted sycamore, red maples, hybrid chestnut, magnolia and redbud among other things. Some trees planted themselves, like black willow, aspen and box elders and a mulberry tree by the garden. Red and white pines have colonized a large area of the old pasture and are getting quite large now. The wooded area has dried up a bit and I see black walnut, maples and oaks have started growing in there.

This year though I will plant at least one new species of tree, as I have done every year. I want to plant a sassafras tree, I think. And I no longer have a peach tree so maybe I’ll plant another one. I hope you have the space and time to plant a new tree this year and make it part of your memories.

If you have memories of trees from your childhood, why not share them in the comments?

No herbal remedy or supplement will prevent or cure Covid 19 virus

Whenever there is a public health emergency the hustles, folklore, and misinformed advice gets cranked up.  So it is with the Covid19 epidemic. All kinds of “fake” information is being shared. Chinese herbs, elderberries, garlic, oregano oil, lemons, Vitamin C, zinc, colloidal silver, MMS (industrial bleach),cocaine, eating the crap of special holy cows or drinking cow urine, and drinking hot water will not keep you from getting the virus or cure you if you have it.

Eating meat does not increase your chances of getting Covid 19. Vegans are not immune. Eating ice cream or other dairy does not make you susceptible. Being black (African) does not keep you from getting Covid 19. Being Chinese does not make you more likely to get the virus. Chinese food does not spread the virus unless prepared by an infected person.

If you see a cure or prevention for the virus being offered, you can be sure its fake. Read up on viruses, what they are and how they work, and you will better understand why these things don’t work. Don’t be fooled by evidence that the “cure” kills viruses in a lab. First, lab results don’t always work in “field” or actual situations. Only a few medicines pass that bar. Second this virus has not been around long enough for any scientific studies to be done on it and you cannot exchange one virus for another in deciding what “cures” will work. 

Because a natural health site or herbalist makes claims these work does not make it true. Only trust recognized scientific studies, reviewed and replicated by peers. There has not been time yet for those studies to be done on Covid 19. Do not trust your life on these so-called natural cures. While most won’t harm you some of the so-called cures can do serious harm.

There is no current vaccine for the virus and vaccines will probably not be available for a year or more. Vaccines for other viruses will not work. No known commercial medicines will prevent or cure the virus. Antibiotics do not cure it; antibiotics kill bacteria not viruses. If you get pneumonia from the virus you may get antibiotics to stop secondary bacterial infections.

By the way those small inexpensive masks everyone is hoarding will not keep you from getting the virus. If you have the virus or suspect you have it, wear a mask to keep from spreading the virus through coughs and sneezes. If you are caring for a person with the virus and cannot get a better airtight mask they may help you somewhat, especially by preventing you from touching your face.

Wearing gloves or condoms on your fingers is also silly and ineffective. Most people do not understand how to get those off correctly without contaminating their hands anyway. If you are caring for someone who is sick use sterile gloves and learn how to properly remove and dispose of them.

Pets cannot get Covid 19 and spread to you directly. Only one dog in China tested weakly positive for the virus and no other pets that were tested had the virus. At this time scientists believe it’s highly unlikely pets will get the virus, much less spread it.

If someone with the virus handles a pet and then a healthy person handles the pet soon after, it’s possible although not likely, that the virus particles may be on the pets coat and then get on the healthy persons hands and infect them. It’s no different from handling a phone, doorknob, or book someone with the virus has touched, except you are less likely to get the virus from an animal’s coat or skin.

If someone in a home with pets has the virus then everyone should wash their hands very well after handling the pet. You should do this anyway. Infected people may want to avoid handling pets. Pets should not be kissed or rubbed on peoples faces. There is no reason to get rid of pets.

What can you do to avoid getting Covid 19?

You have to have heard the experts advice by now but here goes. Try to avoid crowds. Wash your hands often and do it well. Use soap and wash for 20 seconds, back, front and under nails. Keep your hands off your face. Clean surfaces people touch a lot, phones, doorknobs, toilet levers, railings and so on, frequently. Skip medical office and hospital visits unless you are ill. Don’t shake hands or hug and kiss others. Definitely do not go on a cruise ship.

Keep your immune system healthy by eating a good diet and getting enough sleep. Take all your medicines as prescribed to keep things like blood sugar and blood pressure well controlled. Getting to bed early so you get 8 hours of sleep may do you better than wearing a mask around.

If you have a fever and respiratory symptoms call a doctor, tell them your symptoms, and follow their directions. Unless it’s an emergency do not just show up at a doctor’s office or ER room. Call first. And stay home from work if you feel ill and don’t go out in public.

If you see someone spreading fake information online please flag or report that information so it can be taken off. The social media platforms are all pledging to remove fake information on the virus.

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."

― Nelson Henderson

Kim Willis

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And So On….

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