North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Richard MURPHY" <murphman108@msn.com>]

Hello Gang;

 

This is Richard Murphy.

 

The 1000 Saskatoons on zone 4 Maine are not doing really well. The first part of the year I sparyed them for Entomosporium, and they looked OK. A few weeds crept in............ Some of the plants just plain died. Quite a few, actually. So I yanked a few dead ones, and a few not-so-healthy live ones.

 

    The dead ones really had no evidence about them. The live ones did. These plants arrived at my house in 2005 with fairly long roots; especially a tap root. When I pulled out 3 live ones, I noticed that there were no root hairs at all except for way down at the end of the root. Not too healthy looking! No Wooly Aphids around, no other creature evidence.

    It should be noted that some of these plants are doing very well. I haven't been able to figure out why. One thing that is very encouraging about all this is the suckering. Some of the plants are miserable, suffering looking sticks with 2 leave on them, but a nice big fat sucker branch with big healthy leaves has burst from the crown area !! YAY ! So... they have escaped the lawn mower fro one more year. Next week I'm going back to Maine to move some not-so-healthy live ones onto the vacancies now available.

    Finally, I am also semi-convinced that the clayish soil is just too darn wet for these guys. So, I'm going to buy 50 or so Northlines from Paul Hamer. His plants are smaller, but look to have very healthy root systems to them. THese will be planted on a modest berm next Spring.

 

Richard