Quince, Potatoes and Eastern Bottlebrush Grass

Lucky Pittman, one of my fruit growing friends who lives in Western Kentucky (originally from LA), sent me a huge bundle of quince cuttings.  He said it was from seeds supplied by Lon Rombough.  Lucky said that these cuttings would root from hardwood cuttings and were bullet-proof in his humid, mid-South location.  He was right about them rooting from cuttings.

A couple of cuttings with roots.

One of the better cuttings.  Not all cuttings pushed roots.  The ones that did best were larger diameter and may have been in the shaded portion of the mother bush.

I planted most of them two-to-a-hole.  If both survive I will move the smaller one and use it elsewhere.

I used these cuttings to fill spots in my young orchard where the trees I planted did not survive.  I have a lot of failures but I keep banging away until something sticks.

The shape of these fruit is voluptuous.  The Kardashians have nothing on Shams Quince.

The rest of the backstory is that the maternal tree was an elite variety from the middle-East that was pleasant to eat out of hand.  Lon was a good friend of the folks at Corvallis and I suspect that he was given scionwood from The Curator's Choice collection.  Unless you consider Turkey to be part of the middle-East, then Shams (from Iran) is the best candidate for Lon's super-duper quince. 

Since they are seedlings, the fruit will be different than the maternal tree.  I wait with bated breath to see what kind of fruit they produce.  The worst that can happen is that I graft them to something else.

Potatoes

Time to clean out the root cellar.  The potatoes are still in pretty good shape.  A little bit wrinkled but sound.   Guess what we are eating tonight.

Salamander's woods is filled with this grass, Elymus hystrix.  Also known as Eastern Bottlebrush Grass.

It is shade tolerant and "leafy", which suggests that it would be a good forage grass if it can tolerate grazing or cutting.

I would not be surprised if some of this seed followed me home some day.