[Homestead] Mangoes,fruit of gods
Toni Hawryluk
tonihawr at msn.com
Fri Nov 12 10:09:38 EST 2004
Gene asked :
> >Must be time for that two-story "glass" addition
> >to the south side of the house, radiant heat floor,
> >and holes in the floor for the trees. Each *hole*
> >has to have a concrete "floor" three feet down in.
> Did the hole have concrete sides also?
No. Apparently the root "pruning" *depth*
was sufficient along with the then-"cheap"
labor of the gardeners in branch-pruning
was enough to keep the trees manageable -
and the gardeners had to be trained to
understand the difference between leaf
buds and fruit buds as well as which fruit
bloomed on old wood or 'new wood' ...
> And did the concrete floor in the hole employ radiant heat piping?
No. And I apologize for not keeping this data
clearly separate from non-BBC PBS.
The radiant flooring was from another 'glass'
house article (not Victorian, although even
the Romans had those floors, in a way). The
flooring was for 'fooling' the trees into thinking
the soil was warm enough for them - since
there would be no really cold 'weather' where
they 'lived' inside but what's underfoot for
humans would still be too cold for the trees.
With what I've read and learned on my own
about fruiting, the additional light is necessary
to also 'fool' the trees into thinking they are
closer to the equator (and twelve-hour or
whatever daily daylight *they* need to make
up their daily/seasonal heat-light requirement).
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