Hobby OrchardPecans, Fruit Trees, and Other Stuff

Eric bringing fertilizer down to the orchard.

Our pecan orchard is located in north Texas about an hour north of Dallas.

From all appearances, the trees are just sitting there.  This past weekend we had some temperatures in the upper 20’s and about 3 inches of snow.  It has been a relatively cold and wet winter here.  It has snowed 5 or 6 times along with enough rain to saturate the soil.

Below ground I’m pretty sure the roots are becoming active.  There is some minor bud swell on the trees but bud break does not appear to be imminent. The cool season grasses are growing rapidly.  I think orchards look the best for the next few weeks.  There is short green grass and the entire orchard looks like a park.

Graftwood was collected back near Christmas.  I had a hard time finding good graft wood this season.  My trees are getting a little older now and growth has slowed down a little(most of my trees are 5 years old now).  There were a lot of shoots and most of them grew 12 to 18 inches but they have a diameter smaller than a pencil. The best graft wood usually comes from young rapidly growing trees.  I’ve became more impressed with two of the varieties planted in my orchard.  The two varieties are Prilop and Jenkins.  These are considered low input varieties.  These two varieties were just about the only trees that produced any nuts last year.  As much graft wood as possible was collected from these trees.  My other varieties are Pawnee, Choctaw, Desirable, Caddo, and Oconee.

One of the biggest problems for 2009 was the weather.  We had a very late April hard freeze.  Most of the trees had broken bud and were growing rapidly.  All the growth on the trees was killed or severely damaged.  The few trees that hadn’t broken bud yet went on to produce a small crop.  The trees that were freeze damaged produced very little.  Then we had the month of almost daily rains starting from the middle of June through the middle of July.  Most of the trees that managed to set a crop scabbed up something terrible.  I’m planning to graft all of my Pawnee to Jenkins or Prilop due to this.  My Pawnee have had severe scab for the last two years.   I expected my Desirable to get scab in wet years but not Pawnee.  It looks like my creek bottom has poor air circulation and I may need to change over to very scab resistant varieties.   There was no scab on Prilop or Jenkins at our orchard.  Scab on other varieties varied by how far they were from the lowest part of the creek bottom.  Most of the natives on my place also lost most of the nuts to scab the last two years.  We do have one massive native that produced a small crop of very small nuts.

Now is a good time for picking up the limbs that always seem to fall from pecan trees.  They are always dropping something it seems but the bigger limbs can cause some damage to mowers.  I usually put them in piles and burn them.  This wood is normally too old to use in a fireplace or a smoker but occasionally you may find a big limb that is worth cutting up.  If you wait another month or so the grass can become tall enough to make it hard to see the fallen limbs.

Now is also a good time to fertilize.  Finding inexpensive fertilizer these days can be a real challenge.  I ended up using a mixture of cotton seed meal, Gardenville soil food,
And some “winterizer” (21-0-4).  The winterizer was on sale at Lowes for $8 per 50 lb. bag.  About 1400 pounds was put around the trees starting at the drip line outward for several feet.  I put out extra fertilizer under and around a couple of my big native trees.  These two trees have produced nuts every year but they are too small to be worth picking up or shelling.  I’m going to see if the size of the nuts can be increase a little with some good fertilization.

I’ve tried several methods to get the fertilizer to the trees including using a 5 gallon bucket, a wheel barrow, pulling a garden cart, hauling the fertilizer to each tree in the back of my truck, and using the front end loader of my tractor.  The fastest and easiest method that I’ve found is to use a garden cart pulled by my riding mower.  My 10 year old son gets a kick out of driving the lawnmower (but for some reason doesn’t want to mow?).  He just now has grown tall enough to reach the clutch on the riding mower (He can’t reach the clutch on the tractor yet) I walk beside the cart and throw out the fertilizer as we slowly pass by or stop at each tree.  The truck and tractor method work okay but you spend a lot of time getting in and out of the truck or climbing up and down the tractor.  I can get on and off a riding mower much easier than getting in and out of a truck or climbing the tractor when fertilizing alone as well.

Last year the spring freeze not only damaged our pecan trees but also froze our garden to the ground and severely damaged the production of walnuts, grapes, blackberries, peaches, and apples.  We have high hopes for some good growth and production this year and we are ready for some warm sunny weather!

Our cat brought this little guy up to the back porch for us to admire.

Nearly two inches long and found across the eastern U.S. as far west as Texas, this gray and black and white insect is one of the largest members of the Click Beetle Family (Elateridae); the huge eyespots on its pronotum make it one of the most easily identified. These are “false eyes,” of course–likely an adaptation to scare off potential predators. The true eyes of the Eyed Click Beetle are much smaller and located at the bases of its heavily sawtoothed antennae (below left).

Despite their differences in appearance, all Click Beetles have a startling behavior that demonstrates how they got their primary name–as well as the alternate names of “snapping beetle,” “skipjack,” and “spring beetle.” When placed on its back–or when grabbed by an insectivore–a Click Beetle bends its head and prothorax backward and then straightens out suddenly with a snapping motion, which results in an audible click and launches the beetle several inches into the air. This stunt is facilitated by a spine on the underside of the prosternum that fits into a groove in the mesosternum (below).

Occasionally, a Click Beetle will take flight during its midair maneuver, but more often it simply falls back to earth. If it lands on its back, the beetle may “click” again, or it may tightly tuck its legs and antennae and “play possum” until the predator loses interest. Eventually, it will wander off, perhaps looking for food (flower nectar or leaf sap) or a mate.

Click Beetles–like bees, ants, butterflies, and some other insect orders–undergo a four-stage (complete) metamorphosis that includes the egg, larva (AKA “grub”), pupa, and adult. Although adults are harmless, Click Beetle larvae cause significant agricultural and horticultural damage. Click Beetle grubs–also known as “wireworms” because of their elongated shape and hard exoskeletons (above right)–live in soil or dead wood for two to ten years, depending on the species. During that time, they chow down on roots and stems– including those attached to corn, potatoes, tobacco, turf grasses, garden ornamentals, and a variety of legumes.

I got the idea for building a mini greenhouse from listening to Jack Spirko on TheSurvialPodcast.com. I haven’t really had good results with starting plants inside under grow lights or from placing them in a sunny window sill. The plants come up fine but end up lanky and weak. The look terrible compared to the big (expensive) plants you find at the garden centers.

I’ve always wanted a green house to start my plants in. The problem is the cost . You can drop several thousand dollars for a small one. The mini greenhouse can be built for less than $50 and an hour of your labor.

I built mine out of some left over 2 x 4’s. The greenhouse is 4 x 6 feet and 2 feet tall. It took 7 2 x 4’s . The reason for the 6 foot length was to reduce the number of 2 by’s and to not bee too heavy. The 2 foot leftovers are used in the construction as well.

Steps to building the mini greenhouse.

1. Cut two 2” x 4’ x 8’s in half to give you a a quantity of 4 pieces of 2” x 4” x 4’
2. Cut 2 feet off of 5 2”x 4” x 8’ to yield 5 pieces of 2” x 4” x 6’ and 5 2” x 4” x 2’.
3. Screw or nail together two separate rectangles of 4 by 6 feet.
4. Connect the rectangles together using the 2 foot sections of 2 by’s
5. Use some scrap pieces of lumber to add a little height to the middle of the top.
6. Connect the final 2” x 4” x 6’ to form a taller ridge in the middle (connected to the two scrap pieces in step 5)
7. Cover the frame with 6 mil clear or milky plastic. I used some scrap lumber to hold the plastic to the frame along the long sides.
8. Recommended: strengthen the corners or any sharp edges with shipping tape. The rubbing and flexing of the plastic on the corners will eventually cause some tears in the plastic without some reinforcement.

Using a Mini-Green house:

Put your plants in the mini green house and prop up one edge with a brick or scrap piece of lumber. If you don’t prop it up the plants can easily overheat.

Keep the plants watered and bring them inside when there is a danger of freeze or a frost. The green house does offer some protection from frosts (I left my plants in the green house during one night that had an non-forecasted frost and they survived) but it may not be worth the risks.

The mini greenhouse offers a lot of the advantages of a full size green house including increasing late winter and early spring temperatures enough for germination and good growth and increases the humidity. You can’t beat real sunlight to get plants off to a good start. It also prevents strong winds from stressing the plants.

The mini-green house is light enough to be able to open it (I roll it over on it’s side to water or move the plants) but still heavy enough to not blow over in strong winds. It does not have built in temperature control or heat but appears to work quite well in North Texas to help get your plants off to a good start. And best of all, it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars. After the danger of frost is over, it will go in the barn to be used again next spring.

Our pecan orchard is located in north Texas about and hour north of Dallas.

Shuck split began at the first of the month on some of the native pecans.  This usually happens on the smaller nuts first but not always.  The Pawnee and Caddo varieties split earlier than some of the natives.

Since most of out native are too small to be worth picking up, me and the kids went to a local park that has some native trees.  We picked several 5 gallon buckets of pecans right off the trees shucks and all.  We found out this may not be the best harvesting method as you have to peel the shucks and dispose of them.  We also discovered you need to wear gloves as the juice of the shucks will permanently stain your fingers and nails.  A 5 gallon bucket of pecans in the shuck yields about a gallon of pecans.

On another “pecaning” trip we used a 10 foot piece of 1 inch PVC water pipe to thrash another couple of buckets of nuts to the ground.  We’ve had so much rain in north Texas in October the normal spring type tools used to pick up pecans would only push the nuts in to the ground without picking them up.

Due to a late freeze this year only a few of the improved variety trees at our place have any nuts on them.  So far only Pawnee and Caddo have shuck split on them.  The Choctaw and Oconee have not split shuck yet.  The few Desirable and Choctaw that did produce were pretty much stripped by the squirrels well before they were ripe (at least ripe enough for humans).  There were a lot of nuts on the ground with one end bitten out of them.

We do have one large native pecan tree on our place about 4 feet in diameter that we have been harvesting nuts from.  It produces a very small tear drop shaped nut with a very thick shell.  I have been experimenting with fertilizing it to see of the nuts get any bigger.  The leaves are very small on the massive tree with only a couple of inches of new growth every year.

The first year the nuts were a little bigger but still too small to be worth picking up.  This year they are a little bigger yet and the leaves and shoots are starting to get a little bigger.  This makes me wonder what my other natives would do if they were fertilized?  I may try a healthy does of fertilizer and zinc to this one and a couple of others next year.

About half of the natives on my place lose all their nuts to scab and powdery mildew every year.  2/3rds of our orchard is in a creek bottom that stays humid and hosts every pecan pest and disease known to pecans.

This year the web worms and twig girdlers have been particularly bad.  We have several 5 year old improved trees that have lost over 10 percent of shoots to twig girdlers.   This is caused by a large black beetle looking bug that chews a complete circle around the shoots and lays her eggs in the chewed ends.  Many times the shoots don’t break or fall until there are some winds.  Scab and powdery mildew were bad this year on the trees in the bottom.   The higher in the tree and the areas with  better air circulation had much less problems with these leaf and nut diseases.

There may also be some problems with the pecan weevil in my orchard.  I think some of these were brought in by the free mulch I got from a recycling center.  Being in a creek bottom with lots of native didn’t help either.  I have found a few adult weevils on some of my trees.  There is also the tale tale damage on some of the shucks.  It looks like a bulls eye where the weevil stuck it’s snout through the shuck and walked around in circles to literally drill a hole in the shell of the nut and lay eggs in the developing pecan.

I’m going to try to remove every nut from every one of my young trees in an attempt to break the reproductive cycle of this pest.  I haven’t cracked enough nuts yet to see how bad a problem they are going to be but I fear the worst.  So far I haven’t seen any of the small exit holes in the nuts where the “red head”

It seems like pecan trees are always dropping something all year.  In the spring it is the male flowers.  Then later it is small nuts normally called June drop.

During the summer the urine and mold from aphids can coat the leaves and anything under the tree in honeydew.  The nuts that abort, have disease or pest problems continue to turn black and fall of the tree through the fall.  Twig girdlers damage and shading can cause small and large branches alike to fall during storms or strong winds.

Of course in the fall the nuts, shucks and leaves fall.  The nuts can continue to fall all winter.  Winter ice storms can cause light damage to total destruction of pecan trees in our area of the country.