Category Archives: Trees

Aug 01 0 comments
fruit, Trees

Blacktwig Heirloom Apple

dsc05115My son love apples.  So in 2005 we got him an apple tree for his birthday. I know that it may seem like an odd gift to give an eleven year old boy, but it was actually very fun.

It can take up to five years for an apple tree to start bearing and we now have our first four apples on our tree.  With all the rain we have been having lately, it looks like one of the apples may be splitting.  Hopefully we can hold on to the others.

Now, if you live in the south, its not as easy as just sticking a tree in the ground and growing apples.  When you think of apples, the first thing that comes to mind is Washington state or up state New York.  That’s a long way from Texas.  Here is the problem – most apples trees put fruit on through the summer to be harvested in early fall.  Well, in Texas the temperatures can still be in the hundreds all the way deep into September.  Unless an apple produces extremely early or late, it will cook on the tree and you will produce a lot of mushy and not necessarily flavorful apples.

So, when we went looking for an apple tree, we knew we had to be careful.  We also wanted an heirloom type apple.  It was a long search, but we finally decided on an Blacktwig from Century Farm Orchards.

We have apples!

We have apples!

Here is the description of the Blacktwig from their catalog:

Blacktwig (Mammoth Blacktwig): The muddy history of this apple places its origin in Virginia, Tennessee, or Arkansas during the 1800’s. This apple tends to be tart and of unparalleled fresh eating quality. It can also be used for cider or cooking, and is known to keep well. The tree is resistant to several apple diseases including fireblight and cedar apple rust. The tree tends to be productive, even on poor quality soils. The apple is above medium to large,  skin green with a deep red and several red stripes. Its flesh is white, almost yellow, firm, juicy, and mildly subacid. Ripens late September through October. (My favorite all-purpose apple)

Cats can be pests.

Cats can be pests.

Even though this tree is disease resistant, it has suffered some damage from the cats using it as a scratching post.  I need to wrap the trunk with chicken wire to get the cats to leave it alone and use the sick tree treatment on it, but I think we can get past the damage.

There is a small family orchard that has been for sale in John’s hometown of Hannibal, MO.  We always pass by it with longing in our hearts every time we go back to visit.  We dont’ have room here for an orchard and we may or may not be able to get much from  this tree before we end up having to leave it, but hopefully Travis will be able to have a few apples from his tree before he leaves for college in four years!

-- Weather When Posted --

  • Temperature: 82°F;
  • Humidity: 69%;
  • Heat Index: 86°F;
  • Wind Chill: 82°F;
  • Pressure: 30.05 in.;

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Jun 22 0 comments
Trees

Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo Biloba

The Ginkgo biloba is originally from China and is an ancient species that may date back as far as the late Permian period of the Paleozoic Era.  That’s about 260 to 251 million years ago – the age of the dinosaurs.  That is before the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.  This tree must be doing something right!

The Ginkgo is a gymnosperm, meaning that it has a seed that is not inside a fruit but is protected by a cone or fleshy seed coat.  Most gymnosperms are monoecious plants meaning that they have both the male and female parts on the same tree, but the Ginkgo is a dioecious tree and has both male and female forms on separate trees.

The tree is very slow growing with open branching.  Mine was planted about 5 years ago and is still only about 7 feet tall.  The Ginkgo will eventually reach 50 feet, though.  It prefers deep, moist organic soils which may be slowing mine down even further.  I have it planted by the pond where I tend to water a little extra, but it would probably still like a little more but it also doesn’t like wet feet.

The green in the spring is so bright that it almost hurts and in the fall the leaves turn to a gorgeous yellow.

Ginkgo also supposedly has health benefits of improving memory and brain function.  I don’t know, but I do like to add a leaf or two to herbal teas.

-- Weather When Posted --

  • Temperature: 85°F;
  • Humidity: 57%;
  • Heat Index: 87°F;
  • Wind Chill: 85°F;
  • Pressure: 29.83 in.;

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May 29 0 comments
Trees

Crape Myrtle

Sam's Purple Crape Myrtle

Sam's Purple Crape Myrtle

Crape Myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica) are slow growing flowering trees or shrubs native to China.  They come in all colors… pink, red, white, purple.  OK, so there is not yellow, orange or blue there, but that is still an impressive array of colors, don’t you think?  And they bloom all summer and on into the fall – even in our Texas heat and drought conditions.  They like to be in full sun and some varieties can get quite tall – 25 feet.  There are also dwarf varieties, but don’t get a tall one and try to make it stay small.

Crape Myrtles have gorgeous trunks.  As they age, the bark peels off to reveal beautiful smooth skin that really shows up when they are bare in the winter.

The only problem with these trees is that they do succumb to mildew.  Spring is hard on them for that reason, but they respond very well to foliar feeding and baking soda spray.  Well, and then there is the problem of suckers coming up around them, but that is easy to deal with.  You just have to prune the suckers out.

There is an old wives tale that says you should whack the tar out of the poor tree in the winter to get it to produce more flowers in the summer.  Don’t do it.  It doesn’t work, it looks stupid and it’s hard on your tree.  Anyway, the birds love the seed pods and they are pretty through the winter.

This particular crape myrtle is Samantha’s.  We stated a really bad habit when she was little.  Anytime we went to a plant nursery, we let her pick out a flower.  When she was about 3 years old, she saw this tree at Calloways (in a 1 gallon pot) and carried the silly thing through the entire store saying “I can do it!”  It was more than we usually let her spend, but how could we say no to that?

-- Weather When Posted --

  • Temperature: 80°F;
  • Humidity: 40%;
  • Heat Index: 80°F;
  • Wind Chill: 80°F;
  • Pressure: 30.08 in.;

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May 18 0 comments
fruit, Trees

Pomegranate

Pomegranate blossom

Pomegranate blossom

I remember when I was little going to my Great Aunt Cora’s house in Commerce, TX  and eating pomegranates from her trees.  She had two or three lining one of those old driveways that was just two concrete strips with a strip of grass in between.  Anyway, I fell in love with pomegranates way back then.

But, not only are pomegranates good to eat – all the craze these days, in fact, but they are absolutely gorgeous plants!  The are very heat and drought tolerant, but they can be winter tender.  They actually love alkaline soils.  Mine is already blooming like crazy and will have the big red fruit in the fall.  It’s kind of bushy, and some of the stems are a bit spiky… not actual thorns, but close enough to call a thorn. Pomegranates can handle seasonal rains, but they like dry feet and will develop root rot if they stay wet for too long.

Pomegranate Fruiting

Pomegranate Fruiting

The pomegranate is not a Texas native.  It comes from Europe and Asia, especially the Mediterranean areas, dating back to about 1000BC.  It is not invasive, however.  It was introduced to the Carribean and Latin America by Spanish Colonist and has been in North America at least since 1762.

“Don’t use the pomegranate inhospitably, a stranger that has come so far to pay his respects to thee,” the English QuakerPeter Collinson wrote to the botanizing John Bartram in Philadelphia, 1762.

Thomas Jefferson even had pomegranates at Montcello.

My pomegranate come form a cutting from a friend about 4 years ago and it is now starting to really bear fruit well.  It looks like it will be loaded this year.

-- Weather When Posted --

  • Temperature: 65°F;
  • Humidity: 52%;
  • Heat Index: 64°F;
  • Wind Chill: 65°F;
  • Pressure: 30.21 in.;

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May 12 0 comments
Trees

Bald Cypress

Bald Cypress

Bald Cypress

I love this tree.  Do I say that about everything?  I mean it about the Bald Cypress.  I think it is gorgeous.  It has the shape of an evergreen with lacy leaves, but it’s not.  It turns a beautiful reddish-brown color in the fall before losing all it’s leaves for the winter.  It is always such a thrill to see the bright green new growth in the spring.

The entire reason we planted the bald cypress was to try to drain a very swampy area of our backyard.  The bald cypress is the same tree that you will find in the swamps of Louisiana.  It is the tree that will develop what are called “knees” (roots that come up above the soil surface) if it is growing in high water areas.  It is, however, surprisingly drought tolerant once it’s established.  We rarely actually water this area of the yard even in the height of the summer. It does have a susceptibility to bag worms, but we pick off the ones we can reach and dunk them in soapy water and the others we leave to attract beneficial wasps, birds and other predatory insects.

An added bonus is that the Bald Cypress is a Texas native.  Ours is about 5 years old now and began as a 2 foot whip.  It is now approximately 30 feet tall!  we actually have two Bald Cypress… just after we planted one, Travis came home from school with one that he started from seed.  That one is now about 6 feet tall.  Both of these are still small for a cypress though.  They will grow to about 80 feet tall.

-- Weather When Posted --

  • Temperature: 71°F;
  • Humidity: 83%;
  • Heat Index: 71°F;
  • Wind Chill: 71°F;
  • Pressure: 29.98 in.;

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May 03 0 comments
Trees, Trowel and Error

Lake Fierke

Its back…

I think I spoke too soon the other day when I said we no longer have our swampy lake problem.  The difference is that the two bald cypress, Texas star hybiscus, Gulf Coast Penstemon, Louisiana Iris and Elderberry will all make quick work of draining it.  The only one that may not be terribly happy is the rose.  Sorry poor rose.

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Apr 17 0 comments
Trees

Weeping Peach Trees

Weeping Peach Trees

Weeping Peach Trees

Peach Blossom

Peach Blossom

Peach trees are originally from China and thought to have made their way to the Mediterranean by way of the Silk Road.  Who knows how they got to Texas.

This is a pair of weeping peach trees that I got from a friend that had to leave all of her plants behind when she moved.  The pair is twisted together and they make a beautiful showing in the spring.

These are some pictures taken a couple of weeks ago.  The blooms have already faded and the friut is starting to set.

The trees are only about four (five?) years old and we have yet to have edible peaches from them.  That may be our fault though.  Our two week trip in the summer tends to mess with things in our garden when it gets no water except what falls from the sky.  Maybe this year there will be peaches.

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Apr 10 0 comments
Trees, Trowel and Error

Garden Bones – A Story of Trees

It was a little overwhelming moving from a house with a lot of structure in the yard to a completely blank canvas.

Well, OK.  It wasn’t completely blank.  In the back yard, there was a raised area inside of landscaping timbers but it was all grass.  There were also two Live Oak trees, but they were not healthy.  In fact one of them was very sick.  We found out later that there had been a series of three pairs of Live Oak trees attempted there.  When the spring rains came and we had “Lake Fierke” in our back yard, I started to take a closer look.

When you plant a tree, you need to make sure that you don’t plant it too deep and cover the ‘root flair’.   Picture, in your mind, the pencil drawing of a ‘tree’ and you can see at the bottom how it flairs back out a little bit.  That is the way a tree is supposed to look.  If it is a straight line all the way to the ground, it was planted too deep and the tree will suffer.  So, I could tell that our tree was planted too deep and now with all the water I knew it was in real trouble, so I decided to take up my shield and sword and save the fair tree.

Sick Live Oak Tree

Sick Live Oak Tree

OK, so it was a shovel and not a sword.  It is hard to tell from this picture just how sick the tree was, but it really was not good.  I began digging (and digging) to expose the root flare and I found that the burlap and wire had never been removed when the tree was planted – for either of our trees!  The other Live Oak wasn’t planted as deeply and so it was doing a little better, but this poor tree seemed like a goner.  I dug as deeply as I could and, using wire cutters, cut out as much of the wire as I could, but it was still debatable as to whether the tree would make it.

Mud Pit

Mud Pit

The ground in that area was awful too.  I had to buy a pump that year to pump out our “Lake Fierke” because the ground was so hard and packed.  The water stood for over a week.  The smell had gotten so bad from the stagnant water that you could have sworn we were in a Louisiana swamp.  Watch out for the gators!  I pumped hundreds of gallons of water out of that back yard.

Anyway… back to the tree.

Tree-strangling wire

Tree-strangling wire

I dug out as much as I could, but I was still worried about the tree, and as you can see, it was not a little tree.  I sent emails with pictures (these pictures) to Howard Garrett and he was so kind as to help me.  I told him what all I had done and he advised me to have the tree removed – it was past help.  Removal just seemed so drastic (and expensive) to me, so I promptly ignored his advice and used his sick tree treatment on it instead.  Thank you so much for your help and advice, Mr. Garrett, but I’m glad I didn’t take it this time.  The tree is much happier and healthier now and the soil around it has greatly improved.

We have now added many trees to the back yard.  We added a Bald Cypress to help soak up some of the water (they are also drought tolerant – what a tree!) and then our son, Travis, brought home another one from a class project so now we have a pair.  We have also planted a ‘Forest Pansy’ Redbud, a Vitex, a Ginkgo, a couple of Crepe Myrtles, a Lace Bark Elm, a Cedar Elm, a Pomegranate, an Eastern Red Cedar, several Althea, a Weeping Peach (two, actually, twisted together), and an Arkansas Blacktwig apple (an heirloom).  In the front yard, we have removed a very badly placed Bradford Pear that blew over in a wind (they are very weak trees!) and replaced it with a much better positioned ‘Moorpark’ Apricot.  We now have structure in our yard and healthy trees!

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