Slowing down runaway pear leaves
My movie-star neighbor kept
his grafted pears over the winter in pots in an unheated
basement. However, the bit of heat from the house was enough to
prompt them to break open their buds before I brought my
two home.
Afraid that nippy spring
weather would hurt the tender buds, I put them in the mostly-unheated
end of the trailer, but a week later the buds were yet more
unfurled. I figured there was no stopping the plants' awakening,
so I might as well put them in the ground where cool temperatures would
at least slow them down.
Since our main pears
have also started to break their buds open (although not in as extreme
a fashion), I figured our new pears would probably survive
outdoors. And, sure enough, I don't see any frost-burn even after
a frigid night (and a day of flurries).
I plan to keep our
little pearlets in our new nursery row for a year, then plant them into
the pasture prepared by hog snouts this summer. Pears are slow to
bear, but the taste of my neighbor's fruit is enough to carry me
through dreaming about the harvest of 2019.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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