TOPIC: The upcoming year

Hey Guys,
Some seasonal thoughts as we pass from the old year of 2012 onto 2013. As most of you noticed, we had a very dry and hot Summer this past year and it really affected the production of seed and to some extent the digging of seng. I was fortunate enough to have a water source to help with the dry situation at home and the mountains did not suffer so badly. However, the dry weather held on here in the Valley for a long time this Fall and I had to water at least twice after planting, well into early Winter. That's not much fun when the temperatures are getting down to freezing at night. For the last few weeks we have been making up for lost rains and now the ground is getting about saturated. In a few hours more rain and snow is on the way. One of the reasons that I mentioned this is because of what I read a few minutes ago on the opening page of MSN. There are still many parts of the middle of the country that are still suffering from the drought and don't expect to make it up from snowfall this winter. This could have an impact on seed producers this new year and possibly on the general ginseng harvest. I'm thankful that we are at least getting the ground back in shape here and I wish all of you good luck this coming season. My birthday is tomorrow and in about 115 days we hope to see a lot of new babies.
Hugh

Happy Birthday Hugh!!!! Yes it wont be long till those ginseng babies start coming up too.
Good luck.
Latt

P.S. Did watering your plants give you anymore berries than if you wouldn't have watered?
Just wondering if you had something to compare the watered areas to. I have always wondered about irrigation opportunities in dry weather.
Latt

Happy birthday Hugh!

I too am really looking forward to spring. I really believe, having your own seed crop is the way to go for a hardier planting.

rootman

Thanks Guys,
Even though I don't like the idea of getting older,it has to happen if I am going to get a lot of mature plants. I can't wait until this new season arrives:cheer:

Latt, I absolutely believe that if I had not been able to water my woodlots that almost every plant that I have would have withered and died. It would have been worse than a smaller berry count. They would have been toast with temperatures getting all the way up to 109 degrees a couple of times and days and days of temperatures at 105 and 106.

Rootman, I am looking forward to seeing how your production turns out this coming summer. You're sort of pioneering some new growing techniques and it will benefit us all to see which methods work well for you. Good luck.

Hugh

Thanks for the feedback Hugh. Those temps are certainly enough to fry an egg let alone ginseng babies. Good thing you have access to water.
Thanks for sharing.
Latt

Happy B-Day Hugh! I can't wait to see what happened to my plantings too. If I don't get a lot better soon I don't think I'll be doin to much sengin this year. My back is pretty bad still.

We were pretty lucky in the NE. We did have a hot/ dry spell. I did notice many of the drier spots did not have berries or maybe dropped them early. Man we've been getting a lot of snow the past couple weeks. Just in two back to back storms we got over two feet. What has everyone got for snow?

Maya,
I sure hate to hear that the recovery is slow, but thank goodness you still with us. When I read about your mishap a short time back it reminded me of a friend quite a few years ago that had a similar accident. He fell out of a tree stand and an arrow went through his side. He recovered, but it was a very narrow escape from death. Maybe it's just a season to rest and learn more about running your orchards and growing seng. Here's to a complete recovery.

I was in the mountains yesterday and it had snowed from about the 3500 level and above. All of our snows here in the Valley have just been light skiffs, but they have been getting a little accumulation about once per week higher up.

Hugh

Thanks Hugh, that's scary what happened to your friend. I hope I get back to normal soon. I'm back to work but by the end of the day I'm pretty sore. When I get up in the morning is bad too, but once I get up and get moving around it's better. Of course my stupid ribs hurt still when I cough or sneeze!

I forget, what state are you in? We've got a boatload of snow in the mountains. One spot I dig has over 4'. It's been so cold the snow is real soft and is settling quickly though. It looks like there is only 15-18\" now in my orchard.

Maya,
I live in East Tennessee and other than the woodlots at my house all of my seng is up close to the North Carolina border. When we get up at some altitude the climate becomes very similar to what your climate is. Ginseng does much better where it is cooler and the rainfall is higher. The very rich soil just makes things almost like what you see in Vermont and New York.

If you lost most of your Apple Crop this past season you are probably going to be looking at a real heavy fruit set this Spring and you better make plans for a good spraying to thin it down or a lot of personal hand thinning is ahead. The Red and Golden Delicious are the two varieties that I always had to deal with. Sevin did a good job on the Reds but it caused heavy russetting on Goldens. I tried to use NAA on them. I'm sure products for this have progressed since I last grew commercially. What is recommended now?
Hugh

Same thing now. Naa and Sevin xlr at 10mm. Yes they are showing some good bud growth and it looks like I will be doing some spraying. I'm used to it as I grow a lot of Honey Crisp and they are inherently biennial bearing, so I thin them to keep them somewhat annual.

This will be my first good crop with my tall spindle orchard. I really needed to fruit them last year but no luck, so I had to do a ton of training. I do have some Honey Gold's and Grimes Golden, we'll see how the sevin does on them. Out of 55 Honey Gold trees I only had 3 apples last year! I was going to thin them to 10 or less per tree as it was their 2nd leaf. I've got a good variety, so hopefully we will have some better luck this year. I'm growing some Asian pears too and they are a later bloom, so we should get some there too, but again they are only 3rd leaf trees.

Where did you grow apples, Tenn? What varieties did you grow? Thought you just grew peaches. I do have a couple Reliance. The big change between growing now as apposed to growing say 15+ years ago is training and size. As you've probably noticed, everyone is going over to smaller semi-dwarf or dwarf trees and packing them in close together on some sort of trellis system. That's what I did starting this tall spindle orchard. It's much easier all the way around, and you put out a lot more apples per acre. I'm going to be looking at 1000-1200 bu per acre. There is a lot more start up cost but you start getting apples on their 2nd leaf! That is, if you don't get a bad frost!