Welcome to DG..Kazooguy, Kalamazoo, Mi

Jerome, MI(Zone 5b)

Welcome to DG...and this is the Michigan forum...Hope you enjoy your stay here...and share your knowledge and learn alot about most everything...again welcome..

smiles..Diana... ps tell us about your garden..and what you are into...questions..just ask..someone will help you out..

Thumbnail by WantabeGardener
Sanford, MI(Zone 5a)

welcome welcome Hope you have a great day and Happy Easter
loria

AuGres, MI(Zone 5b)

Welcome. Welcome! So glad you joined. Tell us about your garden.

Brenda

Au Gres, MI(Zone 5a)

Welcome to the Michigan Forum KazooGuy......

We would all love to hear about your garden and what you grow

Deann

Kalamazoo, MI(Zone 5b)

Hello There
Thanks for the welcomes. Zone five people. Now that's home! As it happens, I just took some pictures of my garden, and where I'm making room for some fruit trees. BUT, the new lady pastor just got here for Easter diner; so, I'll get back soon. I promise. MAN it smells good in here!

Kalamazoo, MI(Zone 5b)

Hello Again
Here is the picture I promised. Sorry about the delay, but diner, and the company, were great. I used to have a nice garden when I lived in Laingsburg, MI. But, I moved to Kalamazoo 20 years ago and havn't had enough sun for a vegetable garden. Last year I bought part of an adjacent meadow. Now the gardening bug is biting me again. The greenest part of my garden is under lights in my garden, however, if you don't count the landscaping. Last year I started growing herbs for the first time. Wow! Can you ever brew some nice teas with them. This year I'm experimenting with apple, pear and peach trees. Actually, I'm just clearing some trees from the best site for fruit. Anybody know of a good place to order fruit trees? I have seen a website for one between Bloomingdale and Grand Rapids but can't seem to find it again. Anyone ever have experience with "Grandpa's Orchard" in Coloma? Is there a forum for new fruit growers? I'm REALLY enjoying our Michigan spring this year. Hope you are too.
Mike

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Thumbnail by Kazooguy
AuGres, MI(Zone 5b)

Hi Mike,

I have been buying fruit trees each year for the last 4 or more years from our local Arenac Conservation Dept. Each year they have a tree sale. The fruit trees are healthy and run about $12-14 a piece I think. I bought 5 more Honeycrisp apple trees this year and got all 5 for $65. I pick them up on April 17th. They also sell things like asparagus, blueberries, strawberries, ornamental trees and natural landscaping trees. Every single tree I've bought from them have thirved and done well. We now have over 30 trees. We have apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry and for pollinating we have crabapple. It keeps us busy pruning and spraying along with fertilizing. There were about 7 mature apple trees on this farm when we moved in and we've just added to it.

We are relative newbies to growing fruit so have spent a lot of time reading and asking for help so we get good results. We invested in a commercial sprayer to make it easy on ourselves. We pull it behind a lawn tractor and the sprayer will shoot about 20 feet in the air. Forget those little pump sprayers. They are junk and break easy. You can't get the tops of the more mature trees with them either. This year we'll experiement with fake apples with Tanglefood smeared on them.

We do have to fight the wildlife so we invested a lot of money in steel fencing we made big cages around the trees. I also spray them with Liquid Fence to deter the deer and rabbits. I think that is the biggest challenge. The animals like fruit as much as we do. :) We had one raccoon scale our apple tree and over so many nights it ate every single apple off the tree. We finally caught it during the day waddling up there and sent it to racoon heaven.

Good luck with your new orchard. You may want to have your soil analized to see if you need any ammendments. The man across the road had problems with his apple trees and found he was lacking sulfur and after adding some the trees perked right up.

Brenda

Fenton, MI(Zone 5b)

Hello Kazooguy
Welcome to Daves and Michigan gardening!!
Have Fun here. Nice to meet you!
Julie

Plainwell, MI(Zone 5b)

Hello Kazooguy! I grew up in Kalamazoo!!! But sounds like you are on the outskirts? Glad to see your nice post. Sorry do not know anything about trees. We have enough around here also. Shade is what we have. Hostas? That I know about! Ronna

Kalamazoo, MI(Zone 5b)

Hello There
Loon. Now there's an absolutely beautiful name. You see, my other great passion, besides gardening and cooking, is camping. Always near water, and preferably where I can get to with my canoe. So my memories of experiences with loons are very pleasurable ones. It sounds like you have already made decisions that I am currently wrestling with. Can I pick your brain a little? I am a very good customer of a nice guy with an apple orchard on the west side of Kalamazoo. We always can 2-3 dozen quarts of Cortland applesause. We could use twice that many. Also about that many peaches and lately pears (they're sure cheaper than Redhavens). Bartlets are sure tastey when there is snow on the ground. I'm more that a little unsure of not only variety, but tree size. Does it make sense to buy semi-dwarf, 10-12 ft, trees for the varieties you have enjoyed so much in the past (Cortland, Redhaven, and Bartlett), and full dwarf for the other varieties you know or think you would like (Jonagold, Northern Spy, Cox's Orange Pipen, etc.)? I wish I could afford to protect all the varieties I actually have room to grow. I too have a critter problem and have sent a few to groundhog heaven. The deer, so far, have actually stayed behind my garden fence. But, Portage Creek, with a sizable green belt 5 miles long, is only 150 yards away.That fence is a sizable expense, as I'm sure you know. Decisions, decisions. I guess it's better than not being able to make any. How do you keep apples and pears? What varieties and for how long? I've enjoyed Northern Spies before, but there is a Nova Spy variety that is more resistant to funguses and insects. Any experience with any of those? I hope I'm not asking too many questions, but I really do envy your experience.
Hope the picture brings a smile. I have to confess to being REALLY THRILLED by this season of the year. Only other gardeners could actually understand the feeling. Thanks.
Mike

Thumbnail by Kazooguy
AuGres, MI(Zone 5b)

Hi Mike,
I had to smile on youyr comments on my user name of Loon. Would you still think it's beautiful if I told you it is short for my real last name of Looney? ha ha ha I always tell people I wasn't born Looney. I only got that way after I got married.

Seven of our apple trees were large mature trees when we bought the farm. The one apple tree behind the house is about 100 years old according to the old man we bought the place from. It was here when his parents brought him here by horse and buggy as an infant from Bay City. There is another like it in the woods no doubt started by some deer who pooped a seed or a bird maybe. It has to be a hearty tree to have lived so long. It bares tons of apples every other year. This is the year it won't make many apples. They are smallish apples and the deer love to gather under it and eat at night which drives my two little dogs nuts. :) I don't know the name of the other varieties of apples. One is a yellow apple so I'm guessing it's a golden delicious or something along that line. I wish I could offer more information to you on those.

I do know the name of the ones we have bought and planted. We have 5 Honeycrisp, 5 Melrose, 10 Zeestar, 5 Liberty and we've bought 5 more Honecrisp we're picking up on the 17th. They are young and not producing much yet. I've learned to prune off the lower branches and they will bare sooner. We expeimented with one Honeycrisp doing that and it was the only one who made apples. It only made about 5. This winter we pruned the lower branches off all the rest of them so I'm eager to see how they do this year. The Liberty apple trees made fruit the first year we planted them which was last year. I was shocked they'd make apples so soon. From what I've read they are a good eating apple that keeps well and is disease resistant to things like fire blight.

We haven't done anything in the way of preserving the apples yet. We have used them to feed the deer and the chickens and for eating ourselves and giving away. Last year I did experiment with dehydrating the apples and they came out OK. It took a long time for them to dry out. I'd like to try doing them in the oven next time to see if it goes faster.

We have Bartlett pear trees (2) and they have only put out enough pears for us to eat. They're young. Same for the cherry trees. We have two plum trees. I forget the variety now. The plums are small and sort of oval shaped. I can tell they are going to be bug magnets and disease prone. We have to get on a more ridig spray program for them. The peach trees (2) made really good peaches last year. Enough for a few peach cobblers. :)

I would like to learn more about canning but I have a very nice ceramic top stove that I don't want to crack under the weight of a heavy canner. I've thought about getting an old stove and plug it in at the pole barn just for canning but haven't done anything about it yet.

I've planted so many trees for a few reasons. One is that it makes the property more valuable IMHO. It also provides food for the wildlife and attracts the deer for hunting. My husband doesn't hunt but my son does and we've tossed around the idea of maybe renting out our land for hunting to help pay the taxes if the economy gets much worse. It's an option. We keep thinking of ways to make more money if things get tight. We hope to someday be able to sell some of the excess fruit. Oh, we also planted 4 hazlenut trees. They are very slow growing so far. I tried planting Walnut but it's too wet here and they died. I think that's what killed them anyway. We're right by the lake.

You do want good pollination for your fruit trees so you might want to plant a few crabapple trees. They are good pollinators. Some fruit trees are self pollinating and some need another tree to make fruit. They will all attract the bees which is good for the flowers and vegetables. :)

I found a Michigan State extension service link (but lost it in a computer crash). I need to find it again. It has a ton of good information on the care of the fruit trees.

Brenda

Tucson, AZ(Zone 9b)

Thank you for posting the picture of the daffodils Kazooguy. I spent my early childhood in Kalamazoo and have great memories of a little clump of daffodils that used to come up by our back fence when I was a child. I guess some previous owner had planted them. They were a real gift I looked forward to seeing each Spring. I miss Kalamazoo!

Linda

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