Growing fruit trees, berries, and vines

I was thrilled to see a couple of tiny lemons on my tree this morning!! They are about the size of a small pea, so I hope they don't shrivel and fall off!!

I saw an ant crawling around on the trunk of the tree so I'm going to put some kind of natural ant killer/repellant around the pot. Does anyone know of anything I can use?
 
Beth Gallagher said:
I was thrilled to see a couple of tiny lemons on my tree this morning!! They are about the size of a small pea, so I hope they don't shrivel and fall off!!

I saw an ant crawling around on the trunk of the tree so I'm going to put some kind of natural ant killer/repellant around the pot. Does anyone know of anything I can use?
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Put roofing tar on the trunk. Not natural but discourages ants and other vermin, and does no harm to the tree, fruit, pets, or humans that I know of.
 
Faye Fox said:
Put roofing tar on the trunk. Not natural but discourages ants and other vermin, and does no harm to the tree, fruit, pets, or humans that I know of.
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I haven't ever heard of that, thanks for the info. I was thinking more of something I could sprinkle around the little tree, like food grade diatomaceous earth. The trunk is only about 1.5" or so in diameter.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
Starks is having a sale on fruit trees and berries with no shipping cost this weekend, so I ordered 6 more raspberry plants. The ones that we transplanted last summer just didn’t make it, probably because it was the heat of summer and just a bad time to transplant anything. I see one start coming up from where it got the other ones from, and i am going to look and see if i can find more.
Then, we will cultivate that area again, and plant the raspberries there, and this time they should grow and there is room for them to spread in coming years.

I also got 25 pack of strawberries, which are called “day-neutral” berries. They mostly produce in spring, and then more in small amounts during the summer and into fall. I think it said my raspberries will have a small fall crop , too. I have to look and see for sure.
Bobby made me a bed for the asparagus and one for strawberries right outside of the back door.
I was going to move some of the berries we already have into the new bed, but now, I am going to put the new strawberries there instead, and then fill in any empty spots from the old strawberry bed.
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Glad you alerted us. I got another hazelnut tree from Starks, free shipping.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
I haven't ever heard of that, thanks for the info. I was thinking more of something I could sprinkle around the little tree, like food grade diatomaceous earth. The trunk is only about 1.5" or so in diameter.
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The problem with DE is that whenever it gets wet, it needs to be redone as wet DE is ineffective. Mothballs/crystals would work as well, but they are definitely not organic;) The outdoor Terro stakes may work too. They are basically sugar and boron, but they are contained so they wouldn't affect the tree inself.
 
Don Alaska said:
The problem with DE is that whenever it gets wet, it needs to be redone as wet DE is ineffective. Mothballs/crystals would work as well, but they are definitely not organic;) The outdoor Terro stakes may work too. They are basically sugar and boron, but they are contained so they wouldn't affect the tree inself.
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A google search says to use a sticky trap or petroleum jelly as a barrier on the trunk. That will be easy but I also want to make sure the ants aren't building a colony in the pot. Ugh.

We have DE for the pool filter, but it's probably not food grade. Not sure how important that really is, though.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
A google search says to use a sticky trap or petroleum jelly as a barrier on the trunk. That will be easy but I also want to make sure the ants aren't building a colony in the pot. Ugh.

We have DE for the pool filter, but it's probably not food grade. Not sure how important that really is, though.
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I would spray Ortho ant killer on and around the lower half of the pot. If done carefully it won't be any problem other than to insects trying to climb the pot. I hate using chemicals, but sometimes it is the only way.

You can try putting petroleum jelly around the upper outside of the pot. That might work. Maybe a 2" band or so. Also maybe double sided carpet tape around the top outside of the pot. That would be non toxic and easy to remove.
 
Tuesday mu Starks order arrived, and instead of raspberries, they sent me two seedless concord grape plants, along with my strawberries. I wrote and told them that they shipped the wrong thing, but have not heard back from them as of yet.

The two bush cherries that I ordered last fall, one never recovered this spring at all, and the lady from EBay said she would send me a replacement. That arrived today, except she got my order mixed up with someone else’s order, so this time I got a Negroni Fig start and 2 more seedless grapes, called Mars grape, which is apparently also like a seedless concord.

Bobby has been clearing out the area where the bamboo was growing, and that part of the yard gets good sunshine, and is along the front fence, so we will plant the grapes along the fence line, and put the black fig out in the back yard where our other fig tree is at.
For right now, all of the grapes starts are going into a large container planter until Bobby has the area completely cleared of the bamboo and ready to plant the grapes along the fence line.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
A google search says to use a sticky trap or petroleum jelly as a barrier on the trunk. That will be easy but I also want to make sure the ants aren't building a colony in the pot. Ugh.

We have DE for the pool filter, but it's probably not food grade. Not sure how important that really is, though.
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I think "pool-grade" DE would be fine as an insecticide/deterrent.
 
Today , we re-homed some strawberries ! Last year, my strawberries had zillions of runners, and I didn’t get all of them moved, and some went over the side of the strawberry bed, so I was going to move some of them to the little front yard pool garden later. We have lots of strawberries right now, so I asked Bobby to take a container over to our neighbor across the street.

He was really happy to have them, and his grandson (who is probaby around the same age as my grandson) asked Bobby if we were going to have any extra strawberry plants because he would like to grow some.

So, we invited them over, and got a nice basket of the escapee strawberries for him to take home and plant. This summer he should have runners, and I will have more runners if he wants more plants.
I an happy to have some of the strawberries go to a new happy home, and hopefully, he will have more berries from them in a few weeks.
 
The lemon tree is a puzzle to me. It's in a giant pot with good drainage and good soil, but it just doesn't look happy. I noticed that the new growth gets wilted, so off to Google I go. "Advice" is all over the place... too much water, not enough water, too hot in the sun, fertilizer issues, blah, blah. I am not dragging that pot around anymore so if it's too hot and sunny then too bad. My venture into citrus may be short-lived.

It does have several tiny lemons so it may surprise me, but it will likely be kindling in a month or so.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
The lemon tree is a puzzle to me. It's in a giant pot with good drainage and good soil, but it just doesn't look happy. I noticed that the new growth gets wilted, so off to Google I go. "Advice" is all over the place... too much water, not enough water, too hot in the sun, fertilizer issues, blah, blah. I am not dragging that pot around anymore so if it's too hot and sunny then too bad. My venture into citrus may be short-lived.

It does have several tiny lemons so it may surprise me, but it will likely be kindling in a month or so.
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I had a similar issue with a tomato plant in a container. I believe the problem was root growth was constricted by virtue of being in a container. My in ground tomatoes roots end up spread far and wide. Another issue may be root temperature in a container becoming the air temperature. It's cooler under ground.
 
Ed Wilson said:
I had a similar issue with a tomato plant in a container. I believe the problem was root growth was constricted by virtue of being in a container. My in ground tomatoes roots end up spread far and wide. Another issue may be root temperature in a container becoming the air temperature. It's cooler under ground.
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I'm pretty sure it's not root bound since I moved it from a small nursery container into a waist-high pot about a month ago. It has rock in the bottom couple of inches for drainage and fresh potting soil, then topped with more decorative rock to keep the dang squirrels out. I have fertilized with a citrus leaf spray stuff that was recommended.

I'm not much on "high maintenance" stuff so if it dies, it dies. :ROFLMAO: 🍋🌳
 
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