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| One of the challenges in Guerilla Gardening is low fertility. This crab-apple twig is thinner than a man's pinky finger and I count eight, annual growth rings. |
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| The community garden is in the upper, right corner of the image. |
In the morning, I zipped over to a park near her house. The west side of the park borders a railway spur. The park also hosts a community garden. I thought the gardeners might enjoy my upgrading some of the trees near their garden.
Birds planted crab-apple seedlings and Calleryana Pear seedlings. I decided to do a little bit of grafting.
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| These are in the southwest corner of the park behind one of the ball diamonds. All told, I grafted about ten trees. |
I remember thinking as I grafted these pears "This is really stupid. Why should I care more than the people who live next to this park?"
I grafted them anyway.
The event that triggered that thought was Cuomo demanding that the Federal Government...meaning people like you and me and our grandchildren...bail out New York State's finances.
Like most "Blue" states, New York piled up un-funded pension obligations and now they want us to step beneath the falling piano.
They did not care enough to fund those obligations. Why should I care more than they did?
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| Before |
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| After |
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| Close-up of grafted side branch. Note that I used masking tape to pull it into a more upright position. |
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| I did not mark this one with surveyor's tape. |
In a different location
Looking at your graft I'm not sure what I see. As you are obviously much better at this than I, I would appreciate a short lesson in your technique. I'm sure others would also. Thanks--ken
ReplyDeleteI will work on it. Right now my focus is getting trees into the ground or grafted. I will take photos as I go and hopefully not leave anything out.
DeleteLow fertility is why you throw a hand full of black eyed peas or crowder peas out here and there. Personally, I am being free with my clover seed since it is so cool this spring. My other way of dealing with crappy soil is sheets of cardboard covered with wood chips. Worms love to eat wet cardboard. It is not uncommon to have the nastiest red clay around your commercial building.
ReplyDeleteI have limited options since this is a public park.
DeleteThere is much to be said for suppressing the grass and weed growth beneath the trees. Grass is hyper-competitive for soil nutrients.
That said, the Pyrus calleryana appears to fare much better than the crab-apple seedlings.
Throwing some red clover seed around would seem to be the answer.
ReplyDelete