I hope to have another 35 good years left in me. I can still plant fruit and nut seeds and have a reasonable expectation of seeing them bear fruit or nuts.
The plans for plums were a bust. I tasted countless wild plums and the local talent pool is pretty darned shallow.
I had two hazelnut bushes all staked out. One is a wild hazelnut. The other is in Mr Roger Miller's orchard. Roger had over 165 hazelnut bushes and the blight leveled all but six or seven of them. Sadly, the blue jays and squirrels were more on the ball than I was. Both bushes were picked clean.
I also had grand plans to plant some blackberry seeds. I have some bushes of Illini Hardy (thorny) blackberry planted next to some bushes of Triple Crown (thornless). Illini Hardy has a thornless parent so there are pretty good odds that any crosses between the two will be thornless. Alas, I ate the blackberries and never put some aside for planting.
I was successful in planting apples and pears. Time will tell how many seedlings I get out of the venture.
One surprise success was air-layering mulberries. I have a few trees of Illinois Everbearing Mulberry. IEM is the gold standard for mulberries. It produces large numbers of BIG, good tasting mulberries over a long season. It is not perfect, but it is the best I have.
The winning protocol was to scrape the bark down to wood on opposite sides of the new growth. The wounded area ended up being about two inches long. I did that in mid-June when the shoots were between a quarter inch and three-eights inch diameter. Soak some cotton balls in 4000 ppm Indole Butyric Acid (aka, IBA, not to be confused with IPA, India Pale Ale) and drench the scraped surfaces. Put a handful of damp potting soil in an eight inch square of aluminum foil and wrap around the wound. Tie off the downhill side of the doobie with some twine to keep it from spilling out.
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| Mother tree. Topped out due to power line. Note that lower branches hang downward like weeping willow. |
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| Note that aluminum foil burrito is tied at the bottom. Enough moisture seems to run down the stem to keep the potting soil moist...at least moist enough |
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| This is one of the better ones |
Pictures will be uploaded sometime in the near future.
Academic Papers
I am looking for an electronic copy of the following academic paper:
Bazerman, M.H. and Neale, M.A. (1983), Heuristics in negotiation: Limitations to effective dispute resolution
As a working guy, I had access to many journals and academic papers through the company I worked for. I no longer have that and I miss it.
My hope is that somebody in my vast reader audience can point me in the right direction.
You may wish to try google scholar. link
ReplyDeletebtw - I enjoy reading you blog very much.
Thank-you for the tip.
DeleteI was not able to find it on Google Scholar. It looks like it might be a chapter in a book. I ordered it from Alibris for about $9 delivered.
Thank-you for the kind words. Writing this blog is not an exercise in meeting the needs of a single-dimensional audience. It is an exercise in putting it "out there", the elegant, the plain and the ugly.
I am thrilled when readers find enough nuggets amongst the gravel to make it worth their while to read.
Again, thanks for the comment.
You are most welcome. Please keep writing. Your blog is on my list to read every day.
DeleteI heard about your blog from the beloved chick magnet Mike Niks and have been reading it since the beginning.
I like Mike. He is truly one of the great men of the century.
DeleteIt should be noted that the century is still young and I may revise my opinion later.
I have no opinion or first hand knowledge regarding his chick magnetism.
My wife told me that I probably have a magnetic personality based on the fact that my head is filled with iron (her opinion).