Thursday, September 8, 2011
Nut season
Not the time for harvesting nuts, but for sprouting them. The spring up-thrust has begun and pits, stones, seeds and nuts are sprouting in the soil and sending up their various shoots. The sweet chestnuts I collected from Ngatimoti in the autumn are well up now, as are the apricots. My black boy peach pits are holding back a little, like the nectarines I got from the tree at Blackmount. The Whiteheart hazels are mostly above the ground already but this one worked its way to the surface during the winter and probably won't sprout. Looks good though.
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5 comments:
Are you using the stonefruit as rootstock for grafting or for growing trees from seed?
Growing the full tree. Black boys grow true, I'm told and nectarines seem to become good producers with tasty fruit - that's good enough or me. I've quinces though, that will have medlar grafted onto them next year. If push came to shove, I'd grow my own apple rootstock, but not from seed - too prickly. I'm coppicing a recognised rootstock-gone-wild to produce off-shoots that I'll encourage by piling up soil over the crown (didn't want to say 'stump', my least favourite word).
Its all a "bit nutty" really, but heaps of fun, and occasionally most rewarding.
I've got a couple of avocados well up and about 100 scattered about potentially heading toward tree-dom.
Good to know about the stone fruit, I am encouraged :-)
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