Cattle, hay and pears

Life got better yesterday at 5:30 PM.

I let the round-bales run out. Then it rained a few days. Then Sprite was working her day-gig and caring for her mother in the evening.

Normally, I just call up Sprite, run over and use her tractor to move some of her old round-bales to my pasture. She no longer keeps cattle and wants the side of the hill cleared of bales.

Sprite has not had the best luck with people. A distressing number of them take advantage of her when she is generous. Consequently, I am very, very careful to never borrow her equipment without her knowing about it and her explicit permission to do so.

I opened up all my paddocks to give the cattle the illusion of having something to eat. They were not impressed and let me know it every time I popped my head outdoors.

At 5:30, Sprite gave me a call. "I have a bale on the spear. Where do you want me to deliver it?"

What a deal! Free hay with free delivery thrown in.

She dropped off three bales and the critters are tearing into it.

Weather

Plants need warmth to heal injuries.

Grafting injures plants. For a tree to heal across the cut surfaces, it needs to experience temperatures that are high enough for the cambium (the layer between the wood and the outer-bark) to start growing vigorously. In grafting-speak, the bark is slipping. That is, the cells of the cambium are young, tender, juicy and the tissue has not become woody or "lignified".

Some species of trees get busy in the mid-fifties (Fahrenheit) while other species need mid-seventies to get going. Not surprisingly, trees that have been domesticated for a longer period of time are easier to graft. That may have been something to do why they were domesticated or it may be a result of genetic shift while they were domesticated.

Apples, pears and plums are considered easy-to-graft largely due to their cambium being active at this time of year.

The trees are almost impossible to see due to the woodchips I used for mulch.

Still hard to see. I bind the graft with rubber bands and then cover the rubber band with masking tape to protect it from UV degradation. I also gave each graft a "hat" made of masking tape to reduce the water loss through the top.

Looking ahead at the temperatures for the weekend, I got the jump on the grafting season. I was moving some pear seedlings in the old nursery and decided to graft them as I moved them rather than coming back later. My track record of "coming back later" is not 100%. Consequently, I now have 10 seedlings grafted to Chojuro* in my new, more compact nursery.

Then I top-worked a few pears in the orchard. I originally planted a lot of Shenandoah pear but am now moving away from it. The limbs get large lesions of sun-scald damage in my orchard, has never seemed very productive and I like later ripening fruit. I flipped three Shenandoah and one Yoinashi pear to three Sheldon and one Highland. Sheldon becomes a great big brute of a tree and the trees I grafted were on the most northern row of the orchard where the shade they cast will not bother other trees.

Bonus Images

Violets.

A tray that is 1/3 Sweet Aperitif cherry tomatoes and 2/3 Happy Rich cut-and-come-again broccoli.

*Chojuro (PI 97347).--Orig. in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan in 1895 by Chojuro Toma. Chance seedling of P. pyrifolia (Burm.)Nak. Introduced to U.S. in 1930 by U.S.D.A. Evaluated at University of California, Davis beginning in 1955. Fruit: medium, about 66 mm diam. 55 mm long; oblate, thick russeted skin green to orange-brown; flesh white, mildly sweet and bland, firm and coarse, crisp with distinctive aroma; ripe mid August in Oregon; stores 20 weeks. Tree: medium, vigorous and spreading. Resistance to an outbreak of scab (Venturia nashicola Tanaka et Yamamoto) in 1897, high sugar content, high productivity, and resistance to black spot (Alternaria kikuchiana Tanaka) helped Chojuro to become an important cultivar in Japan. Poor quality fruit when grown in a dry climate.