North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Justin West <cjustinwest@gmail.com>]

 First off, Fuwafool, Shame on you, what rubbish.  (And please do tell your Sasquatchian friend that I don't keep animals at present, certainly not any donkey's, so he'll have to find someone else's to slap around:)  That is what you meant right?  Gee golly words can be so confusing sometimes...

To whomever posted those you tube clips yesterday, thanks very much, I haven't had time to look at them all yet, but I am intrigued at the way he is making his arguments.  I am always open to listen to what others have to say if they do so with respect (or at least a decent sense of humor)

To the call for more conversation around resilience planting...YES!  I agree lets focus on understanding how we can be a force for regeneration rather than degeneration.  I think for the backyard orchardist the key is simply diversity.  Hedge your bets in every direction you can without stretching yourself too thin.  For those practicing monoculture, well, I think it will be pretty tough any which way you go.  Learning to listen to what the land says takes time, I don't profess to be an expert but I enjoy the challenge and look forward to learning more each day.  I do know a fellow in England who has been trialing some small scale commercial crops for climate change.  He has put in things such as peaches and olives in Somerset.  It seems to me likely that with climate destabilization we won't just see a gradual warming trend, but rather more erratic, less predictable, weather all around.  On a regional level that may mean increased frequency of late frosts, early droughts, warmer winters, wetter summers...who knows?  One thing that does seem certain is the increasing cost of petroleum so anything you can do to make the system less dependent on that so much the better.

I would be interested to know if anyone is experimenting with char as a soil amendment to reduce irrigation need, ameliorate pH conditions, improve soil microbiology, etc

Re deer fences.  I think much depends on the pressure you are getting from them.  Here in central New Jersey we have bucks that bash there way through 7 foot fences just to rake a tree in the fall.  One way I have found around the issue for my pears is to graft onto the wild, feral, and weedy callery pear that has sprung up all over the place over the past twenty years.  I have been top working them high enough to keep the scion out of reach the first year.  they also put off a good amount of very thorny new growth on the trunk which the deer won't touch.  After a year the graft is perhaps 4-15 feet tall and well out of their reach.  These callery pears seem very drought tolerant and forgiving of the heavier acidic clay here.  I have grafted pear, asian pear, medlar, hawthorn, sorbopyrus and even apple onto the callery pear.  (the medlar I think is aborting, and I would expect the apple to do the same, but they surprisingly lived through the first year)  

If anyone else has experience utilizing feral callery pear as a rootstock I would be very interested to know about your experiences thus far

Happily
Justin
z7 NJ