North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[William McNam <billmcnam@yahoo.com>]

Thanks for sharing this.
Trees have not received too much nitrogen...
but soil ph may be too high ( thereby making boron unavailable)
Have to check.


------------------------------
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 8:18 AM PDT Kieran &/or Donna wrote:

>William,  I agree with the too much N problem, which supposedly causes 
>figs to drop fruit.  But I wonder what the chances are that you have a 
>boron deficiency?  It sure will cause citrus to drop!  Southern red and 
>yellow clays are generally B deficient, and if you bring up pH and 
>organic matter, the B that is there becomes less available.  You could 
>do a CEC soil test, or try planting beets and turnips under your trees 
>to see if they grow well.   Beets just won't grow at all with low Boron, 
>and turnips will have hollow black hearts.  I've been using borax on the 
>soil, sprinkling it like fairy dust.  But what I OUGHT to be doing is 
>spraying with Solubor.  I just don't like the price, and have thought 
>I'd never use up a 30 lb bag, but just found a friend bought the stuff 
>to use on their soil.  They used theirs all up and would like more, so 
>maybe we'll split a bag.  I didn't know I could just buy it at the 
>Farmers Coop, thought I had to mail order it or go to McMinnville to the 
>big nursery suppliers.
>     When I got my husband to take some borax around and talk to my 
>trees, he said the apples really wanted it, the persimmons didn't care, 
>and the walnut positively cringed.  With the walnut he got an image of 
>sap running and oozing.  I never tell him what I know already when I ask 
>him to talk to plants for me, so he didn't know that apples love boron 
>and walnuts hate it.  Walnuts are very sappy trees, almost impossible to 
>graft because the sap pressure will push the cuts ends apart.  The 
>persimmon he talked to is in soil that hasn't had a lot of change from 
>the original clay. That's probably why it hardly crops, not like the 
>tree I grafted it from, which was right where a farmer parks his round 
>bales of hay every year.  Were I to up pH and organic matter there, it 
>might want boron too.  He's told me since that there's something it 
>wants, but he couldn't figure out what it was.     Donna
>__________________
>nafex mailing list 
>nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>aubscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
>message archives
>https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/nafex 
>Google message archive search:
>site: lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/nafex [searchstring] 
>nafex list mirror sites:
>http://nafexlist.blogspot.com/
>http://groups.google.com/group/nafexlist
>https://sites.google.com/site/nafexmailinglist
>Avant Geared  http://www.avantgeared.com