On Feb 16, 8:53�pm, "Gregory Morrow"
wrote:
Sheldon wrote:
On Feb 16, 9:57?am, "James" wrote:
On Feb 16, 9:19 am, George Shirley wrote:

James wrote:
Produce is high these days. ?Cheapest for me for 5 daily store bought
fruit & vege servings a banana, cabbage, dry beans, carrot, squash.

Home grown is even more expensive because animals and birds eat my
fruits before they ripe. ?I do however get a few odd veges and a good
crop of tomatoes and garlic each year.

Try using bird netting to cover your fruit trees, I use it with great
success to keep the grackles and squirrels out of the several fruit
trees I have. A good cat or small dog will keep them out of your garden
area. My rat terrier does a fine job of running squirrels and birds out
of the veggie garden, doesn't even try to kill them, just enjoys running
them off.

Biggest bang for your buck is growing your own. We canned 42 pints of
green beans last year from a 24 foot row of Bush Blue Lake green beans.
Plenty of broccoli, cauliflower, green peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes,
and various greens too. More than enough to feed the wife and I plus
extras for the dog, who enjoys veggies.

George

It's pretty hard to net a 30' high tree.

Once a bird was under the grape netting. ?It found a way in but
couldn't find a way out. ?Trouble with fruits is if you're the only
one growing them every bird and animal in the neighborhood stops by
for a snack.

What type of tree... orchard/grove trees are typically no more than
15' tall... sounds like yours need serious pruning.... how are you
harvesting fruit 30' up? *If your trees are kept tall primarily for
shade/specimen planting then there's nothing much to be done about
marauders.

I was gonna say, are there many three - story tall fruit trees...???
What's the tallest, say, an apple or cherry tree or whatever can
grow...???

The poster refuses to say which type of tree but the typical full size
orchard/grove trees grows no more than 15 feet, and are kept pruned to
about ten feet.... dwarf and semi-dwarf grow to much lesser heights,
six and ten feet respectively, and those are typically also pruned a
couple of feet lower. There are some fruit trees that grow much
taller, like avocado and date trees. Trees like apple, pear, plum,
cherry, and citrus don't bear fruit more than about 20 years, some
less like peach/nectarine only bear about ten years, so they may show
a spurt in tree growth once they begin to stop fruiting... and they
typically don't live very long, crop fruit trees rarely reach 100
years, most half that and less. And there are ornamental varieties
and varieties grown for lumber that do grow more than 30 feet but
those don't bear fruit crops... for example a Bradford Pear may attain
forty, even fifty feet, but 35 feet is more the norm, and it's a
specimen tree grown primarilly for it's showy blossoms, its fruits are
about the size of a pea, but the birds eat them.

Perhaps the poster exaggerates, or can't judge height very well, but
any fruit tree thirty feet tall is a very impressive sight indeed.

Sheldon