I moved into my little farm in Social Circle last July. I am excited about getting some gardens going. First I have some thorn/bush vines on my fence that had berries last year. They first look like raspberries then turn black-does anyone know what they are? Some type of wild blackberry? Pretty white blooms with a pink blush to them...
Can I make jam with them? My 5 acre fence is at least half covered in them.....
Then there is a very sad peach tree in the pasture....The wilted leaves are very bad for the horses, but I could get out the blower, and my horses are well fed. So if there's any hope of saving it.....any ideas?
When I moved in there was one single fruit on it. We pruned the dead branches off and thought it would be dead by this summer....but it looks better! (Believe it or not!) Here's the fruit:
Oops, bad picture, lemme try again:
Pic of the lichens, etc growing on it. I've never had a fruit tree.....what do I do for it? It's on the edge of the pasture, close to a stand of pines so it maybe gets full sun half the day. Should I cut it down and just purchase a new one and plant it where I want my mini orchard (out of the pasture)? I'd like a peach or two and a few apple trees, maybe a few others....
Does anyone know what this is? I'm still pulling those thorny, blackberry type vines off it, but I noticed it's got little hard red fruit...
A branch:
Sorry it's not very clear, but here's the fruit, smaller than a marble with a blossom end on it:
So sorry that first pic is sideways! Here's another. The flowers are so cute, but I hate getting punctured by the thorns when I'm on the tractor! I itch and swell up.
Well Hello Jenks, We are not too far away from each other! I'm In Eatonton,so I know about the "Briar Patch". Ever read the stories by Joel Chandler Harris, about Brer Rabbit and his friends? He always managed to get into trouble and out of it by hiding in the Briar Patch. These stories were written here in Eatonton about your sticky plants. Yep they are Blackberries!! Good to eat and make jelly with. But I you dont get them under control they will take over and will be very hard to eradicate.
Your tree looks like a Flowering Crab Apple, They do produce fruits like that!
Hi! Where's Eatonton? I'm starting to get to know my way! I only moved from Loganville, but only knew how to get downtown Atl or to Athens and anything between on hwy78.
OK! Thanks!
I've been pulling those briars out of everything! I think I may have a name for the farm, something with Briar in it! LOL They already have taken over!
I'll have to go look up the crab apples-they're so tiny! I just need to make sure the horses won't eat them. It sure was pretty in the spring with the flowers.
Good morning Jenks!
I live right next door, over the hill... I'm in Lawrenceville. Welcome! Your place sounds nice, horses, blackberries... reminds me of home when I was little.
Holler if you need anything!
Susan
Thank you Raggedyann and Good Morning! I drive through Lawrenceville everyday on the way to work! LOL I'm having a Deja-vu!
This message was edited May 10, 2006 10:36 AM
Hi Jenks, sorry, I posted to you last week but apparently it didnt go through! Eatonton is right on 441, or you could head down 11 to 142 then east on 16!
I'm new here, but I am Lawrenceville, too! I've been gardening for 7 years, but took off 3 years in the middle with only a window box while we lived in an apartment. We bought our house last November, so I am busy identifying what is here, and planting all the stuff I want....I've got 3/4 of an acre with mostly lawn, so I'm going to have to fix that, aren't I?
Jessica
Hi Jessica and welcome! Isn't our little town growing? I don't hardly leave the house during the week and when I do, I am shocked! I feel like I'm lost!
I know what you mean about having mostly lawn. We have a fenced in area by the deck where the pool was. Beyond that is grass and 2 small trees. I haven't done anything to that area yet because of the rabbits, crows and fear that I might bite off more than I can chew! It would be less grass to mow, but I can hardly keep other things done. This time of year, I live outside. So what if the entry needs painting and the carpet needs cleaning. If anyone needs me, they come around to the back yard HAHA!! Spring/summer time is for grilling and being outdoors! I tell hubby not to complain, at least I'm happy LOL!!!!
It's good to have you here. If you need anything, just yell. If you want to start anything from seeds, I have a little of everything!
Susan
I'm trying to tame my lot in Powder Springs. It has blackberries, grape vines, and honeysuckles everywhere with some sporadic poison ivy thrown in there to keep me alert. Then there are slews of poplar, sweet gum, and pine saplings. I have most of the saplings cut down with a lopper and a pruning saw. I have been scraping some areas with a hoe and fireman's axe and tilling other areas with a Troy-Bilt Pony. The rest of the areas are being managed by every two week weed whacking until I can get to it with a hoe or tiller to get the roots out.
I am saving most of the beeches, sourwood trees, dogwoods, willows, willow oaks, and some maples. The bigger sweet gums and poplars will be taken down when I can get to them with a chainsaw but the BIG trees I am saving for shade or a tree service to take down.
I want to take my time clearing the land so I can see if there are any worthwhile plants growing on it rather than hiring a bulldozer to get rid of everything.
Jessica,
With mostly lawn, a shovel or sod cutting machine (rent at a hardware store) will get rid of the turf you want to transform into planting beds, etc. A tiller is very beneficial which you can rent or buy.
My daughter and I went in together on a tiller last year and she is becoming quite a gardener in her own right. Her husband used to do all the digging and tilling but now she is doing a lot of it herself.
Hi!
Outraj- I had to take off last year as we moved mid summer. Now I don't have much, but ready to go by my old house and ask if I can thin any of MY plants for them! LOL
I want to get organized and not just throw a ton of stuff out, You know, fly -by- the -seat -of -my-pants-type gardening? That was my old house. Although it looks fantastic all grown in now..... Congrats on your new house!
Most of my farm will be fenced off for horses, if not already pasture, so I've got a few select areas for gardens and one for veggies. Someone gave me a champagne grape vine the other day....I am having trouble deciding where to build it's trellis.....and do it practical with posts and wire, or get some fancy shmancy trellis and make it a part of a garden despite my wanting to actually harvest them for rasins????
What kind of grapes?
We cannot have Red Maples (waah!) because of the horses, nor the sickly peach tree that survived and the ones we cut keep sprouting new growth. Going to have to get them up or get something to really kill them (wah again!) But I cannot wait to cut down our sweetgums. Everything else stays, the pecans and the few pines ( a few pines may have to go) and one flowering crabapple?
This message was edited May 16, 2006 10:58 AM
Thanks for the welcome! I have been busy trying to recover two fairly large island beds that had been let go. I have been pulling up as much juniper as I dare without the hill threatening to come down....I just hate how it collects dead leaves and pine straw. The first island is under two mature oaks, so pretty heavy shade. I have planted an elegans hosta, 3 blue cadet hosta, a silver mound artemisia and two creeping fig that I recovered from my apartment window box, lamium and lily of the valley from cuttings from my new neighbor, pulmonaria, japanese painted fern, japanese toad lily, sweet woodruff, peach blossom astilbe and asmethyst astilbe, and leadwort, (If you recognize this stuff, it is mostly from one of the BHG free garden plans for shade) Lastly, it asked for golden corydalis, which I can't get locally and is pricey through the mail, so I am trying to start it from seed, but it's a complicated process. I have put two variegated sedges, also from my window box, in my other island, which is really still a mess. I have also put a fernleaf bleeding heart and a gaura in there, but mostly for "storage" until I can recover the bed as a whole. It is under very tall pines, so is part sun and part shade. I got a beautiful pink peony from a neighborhood plant swap, and built 3 raised beds for veggies using the square foot gardening technique. We have been eating spinach for a few weeks, and have grape tomatoes, peas, cabbage, and beans that have begun but are not ready for picking.... We also have cabbage, onion, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, brandwine tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, an assortment of herbs, and eggplant that isn't ready yet.
On another note, we have a purple plum that I thought was ornamental, but the fruits are nearly as big as ping pong balls already, and falling fast. Anybody know if there is a chance they might be edible, and if so, how I can save them? I also have a cherry tree in the front that I thought was ornamental. It is covered with fruit, starting to ripen to a black/red color, only about 1/2" in diameter. When I squeeze the fruit between my fingers though, it smells bitter. I sure wish it was fruit we could cook with or something. Anyone know about this tree?
Last, I have a corner of my yard that is absolutely overrun with poison ivy. I remember having poison ivy as a child (in Maine) and a little calamine would clear it up. In Georgia, however, at my last house, I got some poison something that I had to get treated with steroids to get rid of, not once, but three times. Now I am scared to touch any of it. Any ideas if maybe another strain (oak, sumac?) might be stronger, so that I could tackle the ivy here? If so, what is the best way to eradicate.
Novel done. Thanks all! Jessica
Jessica,
The plum may be edible but you will have to determine that. The cherries are probably wild choke cherries which could be used for jellies and pies but are usually too small for the effort. It would probably take lots of sugar to make it worthwhile. Get some big sweet cherries from the stores.
For poison ivy/oak you could spray with Brush Killer but it may come back. If it is running up a tree, cut it with a hatchet, axe, or saw since you can't spray up into a high tree. On the ground use a hoe to dig out the roots. Wear gloves, hat, long sleeve shirts, long pants, etc for maximum protection and wash your clothes in hot water afterwards to remove the oils. The best thing to do is hire someone who has lower sensitivity to it to get rid of it for you. I think my wife just looks at it and it jumps across the air space to get to her. She had to see an infectious disease doctor last year because it looked so bad.
Hey Y'all, Jessica , yourplums are edible,but if they are falling off the tree already but have turned red,that means they are wormy!
The Cherry trees are Wild Cherry, and I make Jelly and syrup, with them, It does take sugar but as with all jellies! I add an apple to the cherries when I go to boil them down to make juice, this adds a natural Pectin. I then sieve out the seeds and squeeze the pulp in a cheese cloth, the rest is your recipe or mine, PM me for more details if you like! Its the old fashioned, wild cherry ,Yes the one you use the bark for cough medicine!
hcmcdole - your lot taming story sounds identical to mine. It is a reassuring to know that I am not alone in my attempt to "tame" my back lot . I have sprayed brush killer three times after cutting down the sweet gums, cutting back the vines, tiny saplings and all other noxious weeds. After clearig away, we discovered a nicely growing wild dogwood which should finally grow tall and strong now that the junk around it has been cleared away. Even with all this effort, the vines are growing back and new growth is sprouting from the stumps left in the ground. Bringing in a back hoe is not an option. Any other way to kill stumps? They are small in diameter.
A stump grinder is the best way but they need room to get the equipment in.
To remove the trunk entirely manually takes a lot of energy but can be done if you have the patience. A good size grubbing hoe (I have the fireman's axe which is a heavy duty hoe on one end and a single bit axe on the other) can quickly dispatch small trunks and sever roots of larger trunks. On the larger trunks it is best to leave a few feet above ground when cutting the tree so you have a lever to push/pull against. After cutting most of the big roots, it is a matter of getting the trunk to budge (some trees have large tap roots, some have none). If it is a pine, then it usually has a large tap root and you have to cut below ground level and let the tap root rot. Most other trees will start budging after cutting the major feeder roots which will allow you to cut roots below the trunk.
The other way to get rid of the stump is to continue cutting the suckers that come up from the trunks. This will eventually use all the energy left in the roots, but this could take a couple of years or more.
hcm, Whew! I'm getting tired just thinking about it but it must get done. DH and I have plans to add azaleas around the remaining pines and hope to begin this project in the fall.
Thanks.
Liz
So that's what I need to do to my red maple stumps? I want to plant japanese plums there, so the stumps are going to have to go anyway I guess....It does sound tiring...
One way to get rid of stumps is a biological pruduct call Stump Remover. What you do is take a power drill. drill 1 inch holes 6-8 inches into the top of the stup. Pour the powder into the holes and wait one year. The product is bacteria and helps nature do what normaly happens in ten years in just one year. You can buy this product in most hardware stores.
