60 trees and bushes later................................

KDM

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I'm tired!! Planted 25 Juneberry bushes, 25 American plum trees, 4 Black Cherry trees, 4 raspberry bushes, 2 pear trees, and I mowed the lawn. I think that is enough for one day. LOL!! Hope I can get 50% to survive 2 years. ON TO WATERING!!!! HaHaHaHa!!!!
 


KDM

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My neighbors relatives had green thumbs way way bigger than their shoveling and/or digging skills so we got these free, except for the raspberries and pears. We got the raspberries at Fleet Farm and the pear trees at our local Cenex. Couldn't let good fruit trees and bushes just die in a bucket. Besides, it just wouldn't be Spring unless I dug enough holes to feel like a gopher. LOL!!! All of these were the small conservation sized trees except for the pears. Those were 10 ft tall with 1 1/2 inch trunks.
 
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Ericb

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Way to go! Theres nothing like picking fresh fruit. We have one Raspberry bush that is trying to take over the neighborhood with sucker plants.
 

PrairieGhost

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KDM I have a Luscious Pear that produces a couple of hundred pounds each year. I am never able to use everything that comes off that tree. I have two other pears also. One year a buck completely girdled them rubbing. I capped the end with wax so they would not dry out. Next spring when they sprouted along the trunk I cut off everything below the graft line that you could see. It worked on one, but the other it must not have. One produces good pears early, and the other produces inedible fruit by the gallons. It's a nice tree so I hate to cut it down, but something else could be growing there.
 


KDM

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We have parker, luscious, and early gold pears. Haven't had one pear yet. I keep hopin' though. Glad to hear somebody gets pears up this way, so at least I'm still in the game.
 

Vollmer

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Way to go KDM. I have a couple hundred to plant as well. Busy summer.

New place, so need some fast growing us evergreens and a good hardy tree. Ash? Then fruit trees later. Fun times!
 

Srputz

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I planted 20 juneberries, 20 chokecherry 2 grape, 10 maples and linden trees, 6 pear and 5 apricot trees a couple weeks ago all from the nrcs
 

Ristorapper

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The pear trees I've seen around bismarck are beautiful (one on Rosser, one on N 32nd St). One has a perfectly round shape to it. not sure on the breeds or if they bear edible fruit.
 

PrairieGhost

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Vollmer if your planting evergreens it normally takes four years for them to take off. That's because they need to drop enough needles to acidify the soil. You can pay a mint for a nursery to acidify your soil with muriatic acid, or buy expensive muriatic acid, but a chemist told me muriatic is simply a 14th century term for good old modern hydrochloric acid. You can get that for less than $10 a gallon. Use one once per gallon and spray a four foot diameter around the tree lightly. Don't over do it. Also, buy a cheap plastic sprayer because it will eat up copper, I learned the hard way. It should give your trees a couple of year jump on growth.
 


Yoby

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I had never heard of the muratic acid before so I started some research. Below is a link to a Horticulturist at NDSU. Having planted some 25 colorado spruce, 25 junipers, 100 black hills spruce, 100 arborvitae, 25 lilac, 10 little leaf lindens, and another 100+ others in the last 2 years, I am looking for anything to get them to grow faster. I am also leery of doing anything to make me re-plant them now. He doesn't say it works, but he doesn't say it does either.

Q: Some of my evergreen’s leaves have turned brown and are falling off. My neighbor suggested I use muriatic acid because the plants are being infected by insects. Would muriatic acid work? (E-mail reference)

A: I don't know where people ever got the idea that hydrochloric acid is good for evergreens. I have never seen any research to support this claim. It is a little early for evergreens to be infested by insects. Even if they are, muriatic acid is not an insecticide. I don't mean to sound like I am picking on you - I'm not, but I am writing this for you as well as others who may be thinking of asking the same question. There are lots of maladies that can mimic the symptoms you describe. I’m guessing from your e-mail address that you are in Ontario, Canada. I would suggest that you contact the horticulture department at the university in Guleph. Send them a sample or have someone in extension come out and check the tree to accurately determine what the cause could be. The problem could be winter desiccation, drought response from last summer, needle cast, canker or (hopefully not!) more than one of these maladies.

http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/hortiscope/tree/evrgreen.htm
 

johnr

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I planted 20 juneberries, 20 chokecherry 2 grape, 10 maples and linden trees, 6 pear and 5 apricot trees a couple weeks ago all from the nrcs

In western ND, Dickinson specifically, Maple trees don't last more than one or two seasons. I tried personally twice with the Blaze Maples.

I see dead Maple trees all over town. Not sure why the local nurseries still stock and sell them. Beautiful trees wish they worked out here.
 

Allen

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If the tree gets to be old enough and you still aren't seeing much fruit, try wounding it in the late fall by trimming the heck out of it. This seems to work on pear and apple trees. In particular, the pear tree I have now (well, one of a few) was known to kind of having stopped producing fruit a few years before I bought the place. I put the harm to it and the past couple years it has produced a few hundred pounds of pears each year.

On a side note, anyone else lose some trees to the cold snap late this spring? Stupidly enough, I think my peach trees are dead as are two older green ash trees. The damage to the ash is what really surprises me, they lost all their leaves on roughly the bottom 20-25 ft of the tree, on one that's the whole tree, on the other it only left the leaves intact on the upper 5 ft. Hoping some of the secondary buds kick off here soon but am not sure it's going to happen this time around.
 


SupressYourself

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The whole "acid" thing only applies if your soil PH is too high.
It's true that evergreens (and a lot of other plants) prefer a soil ph on the acidic side (lower than 7.0). However, you should probably have your soil tested before you do anything. Here in the RRV, the clay is generally 7.0 to 8.0 (alkaline), so it's a good bet it's higher than evergreens prefer, but you don't really know for sure unless you test it. You may already be at the ideal soil ph.

Other less dramatic ways to lower soil ph (make it more acidic) include:
Peat Moss
Pine Needles
Oak leaves
Bag of Sulfur fertilizer stuff (fleet farm)

- - - Updated - - -

New place, so need some fast growing us evergreens and a good hardy tree. Ash? Then fruit trees later. Fun times!

Black Hills Spruce are probably the best for this area. Norway Spruce look similar and are supposed to grow faster.
I'd be careful about planting Cedar or Juniper tress (anything in the Juniperus genus) if you're also going to have apple trees. That could be inviting Cedar Apple Rust: http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden...s/cedar-apple-rust-and-gymnosporangium-rusts/
 

PrairieGhost

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I had never heard of the muratic acid before so I started some research. Below is a link to a Horticulturist at NDSU. Having planted some 25 colorado spruce, 25 junipers, 100 black hills spruce, 100 arborvitae, 25 lilac, 10 little leaf lindens, and another 100+ others in the last 2 years, I am looking for anything to get them to grow faster. I am also leery of doing anything to make me re-plant them now. He doesn't say it works, but he doesn't say it does either.

Q: Some of my evergreen’s leaves have turned brown and are falling off. My neighbor suggested I use muriatic acid because the plants are being infected by insects. Would muriatic acid work? (E-mail reference)
A: I don't know where people ever got the idea that hydrochloric acid is good for evergreens. I have never seen any research to support this claim. It is a little early for evergreens to be infested by insects. Even if they are, muriatic acid is not an insecticide. I don't mean to sound like I am picking on you - I'm not, but I am writing this for you as well as others who may be thinking of asking the same question. There are lots of maladies that can mimic the symptoms you describe. I’m guessing from your e-mail address that you are in Ontario, Canada. I would suggest that you contact the horticulture department at the university in Guleph. Send them a sample or have someone in extension come out and check the tree to accurately determine what the cause could be. The problem could be winter desiccation, drought response from last summer, needle cast, canker or (hopefully not!) more than one of these maladies.

http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/hortiscope/tree/evrgreen.htm


If you have brown leaves at this time of year I would guess you have needle blight. Same as needle cast I think. Look for dark brown spots on the needles. You will need at least 10X to do that. Bravo may save your trees, but wear goggles when applying it because it's a bad eye irritant. Trees close by that don't have it yet you should trim up so they don't touch the ground. High humidity adds to the chances of it spreading and trimming the bottom branches allows ventilation up through the branches.
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/cpr/forestry/needle-cast-diseases-of-spruce-diagnosis-and-treatment
 
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Ristorapper

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I have the most beautiful awesome Amur Maple in my front yard. Killed the first one we planted in '99. Lesson learned was not watering late into the fall and not watering as soon as the frost is gone in the spring. Water, water, water!!! And I fertilize all me trees (Maple, ash, Linden, evergreens) in the spring, never in the fall when they want to go dormant.

Maple will give you an idea if they are getting enough water. Look at the very top of the tree. No leaves at the top of the tree always gives us the indication to water more often.
 
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The Mantis

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This is spot on. Water, water, water, water! Watering young trees as much as you water your lawn is simply not enough. Soak the living daylights out of them. Especially non-native trees found in wetter environments.


I have the most beautiful awesome Amur Maple in my front yard. Killed the first one we planted in '99. Lesson learned was not watering late into the fall and not watering as soon as the frost is gone in the spring. Water, water, water!!! And I fertilize all me trees (Maple, ash, Linden, evergreens) in the spring, never in the fall when they want to go dormant.

Maple will give you an idea if they are getting enough water. Look at the very top of the tree. No leaves at the top of the tree always gives us the indication to water more often.
 

raider

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holy crap... we planted over 125 trees this spring, way better than the birds do, and hoped they would grow... you guys are a real buzz kill...

now i'm hoping we didn't just waste our time and money... :mad:
 


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