Ted,

Apparently we are not just in any old zone 8's in Oregon, but both in
Portland. But you sound like you could be a native, whereas I am a
transplant. I think I've been here long enough now though that my root
system has recovered. ;-)


"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:
Thanks! I hadn't considered that the root system might be the issue. I
watched the tree being dug up and there were several 5m roots that were
cut to get it up out of the ground. The guy I got it from assured me that
trees in Oregon grow like weeds and it wouldn't hurt it.

They do grow like weeds, but even a weed will be set back by having that
much of its root system removed. The older the tree, the higher a percentage
of its roots are lost during transplant. It might take a few years to
recover 100%, as it will probably take several years to grow roots out five
meters again.

None of my fruit trees have produced more than a few token fruits in their
first year after transplant, even though they all did flower that first
year. Since you got some apples in the first year, hopefully you are getting
good pollination from somewhere, and next year you will get more fruit. Not
all varieties can pollinate each other though, and sometimes pollination is
only unidirectional (variety A can pollinate B, but B cannot pollinate A).


When I was about 14 years old (quite a long time ago) a neighbor who
was really into roses helped me to grow and prune the 8 roses in my
parents front yard. That yard was basically barkdust and roses. I ended
up entering some of them in the Portland Rose Show that year and the
following year and ended up winning some ribbons.

Congratulations!


I remember Black
Spot as well as some of the other rose diseases. Roses are the type of
plant that you either spend a lot of time working on them or you just
ignore
them and hope that occassionally you get a nice flower. But they don't
look good unless you give them constant attention. And they also don't
look good unless your constantly at them with the fungucide and the
pesticides.

Occasionally I find someone who has rose plants that are healthy without
chemical intervention, but this seems pretty rare. I've always thought they
have beautiful flowers but the plants themselves are just butt ugly. (They
are also closely related to blackberries, which are even butt uglier
plants.) The prior owner of our house was a nut for roses, so there were
about a dozen and a half of them in the yard. He used to chemicalize them to
fight the fungus, but we do not. Generally they look great in the spring,
then lose pretty close to 100% of their leaves to black spot during the
course of the summer, then get more leaves in the fall. During all this time
amazingly they still produce blooms -- sometimes quite a lot of them -- but
there is is really nothing worse looking, IMO, than a past-its-peak rose
blossom on the end of a dead-looking stalk with nothing else on it but
thorns.

This year one of the three remaining rose bushes we have not removed is
actually holding most of its leaves with very little disease, even now in
deepest August. Perhaps its immune system has finally caught up with the
program. Or perhaps it's just luck. Or the cool summer. Take your pick. My
impression is that roses have been bred so heavily for huge spectacular
blooms that pretty much everything else -- like a halfway decent immune
system -- has been stripped out of them through in-breeding.


Well in my case I'm really limited in what I can do with the yards. The
first
problem is both are small - the back is about 12 feet wide by 20 feet
long,
and is on the north side of the house.

I learned from a book on the "home orchard" that one can put up to four
semi-dwarf fruit trees in a single hole, in a square only 18" on a side. I
didn't try four, but I did put two plums in one hole and two apples in
another hole, where each pair was selected to be mutually cross-pollinating.
To be on the safe side, I also picked all varieties that are self-fruitful,
however supposedly such trees will produce more and better fruit if they are
cross-pollinated. This is a great way to pack in the multiple trees needed
for cross-pollination when you don't have a lot of space (and my yard is
similar in size to yours, although I am more blessed with sun). Another way
is to get those trees with branches of multiple different varieties all
grafted onto the same trunk, but then you are at risk of losing a variety if
a branch dies, and also as the tree grows further any new branches are going
to be whatever variety the trunk is, which may not be a desired one. So this
approach seems more limited to me, and the trees cost more as well.

Utopia in Decay
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site

Kevin Cherkauer