This coming winter season new varieties of oak, persimmon, plums and all other named selections of plants will be available from my repository for the first time ever. It will not be necessary to order seeds with the scions. To do this in a more timely fashion, a tree service will be helping me in the harvest of the scions as the limits of my commercial pole pruners have been surpassed. The lower limbs of many hardwood trees do not offer high quality cuttings often needed for grafting. All of the selections are named and tagged and refrigerated. These are unique varieties all developed at Oikos Tree Crops and nowhere else.
To do this in a way that is both safe and economical I am planning on making cuttings available after the harvest sometime from January onward depending on the weather. When I offered scions before, it was a huge hit but quite time consuming on some trees because of their height or ability to produce straight and vigorous cuttings. On some of the trees, I could never reach even the lowest limbs with the tallest of pole pruners. (28 feet was not enough.) On many selections I included the price of the seeds with the scions.
You have to go high. Very high. Like on a tight rope high not safe for climbing as I knew it. Otherwise the cuttings are often weak and become difficult to graft. The cuttings need refrigeration with lightly moist paper towels but not too much which can cause mold. You have to manage them in refrigeration as well.
Chestnut trees are a good example of where climbing and putting your weight on scaffold branches is a problem. They often crack and naturally split when you are climbing them. Splits create weak branches and can even leave you dangling. It also leaves low yielding branches in your wake for the future. Never mind falling. How is the tree going to do? !!!! A lift is needed or at minimum a professional climber with the right equipment. People who do this for a living are way better at this than me. Plus they have very good insurance, a safety record and are often certified in pruning through different certifying agencies in the United States. Having had a big storm go through my home property last year, I soon learned a lot about tree services and what they offer and what they cannot do. On the plus side, I’m working out a plan to bring some logs into the mill at the same time. Some of the trees are best handled by those who know not only how to drop a tree but also preserve the wood in the process.
I forgot to mention my father’s advice, “Ken you are no spring chicken anymore.” Meaning don’t be stupid and try it yourself. Get help. Good advice. I will take that. A step in the right direction.
“One more nail and soon that barn will be ours.” This black and white image is my father waiving at his postal friend who went into business growing Christmas trees together. This barn was taken down board by board and then moved to our farm about 10 miles away and then reassembled. They even saved some of the square nails to reuse them.
Enjoy. Ken Asmus
One of many of the seedling oak trees I planted using both controlled pollination and open pollination to create oaks with heavy acorn production.
