December 2022 - 30

NOTES FROM THE FARM
Pecan trees and a happy surprise in the barn
JERRY MILLS
Mills Apple Farm
jerry@millsapplefarm.com
Changes in this column. Instead of
reporting local crop conditions, which
I suspect few care about, I am going to
report on things I am trying that might be
" unusual. " For instance, we are going to
plant next year's pumpkin crop in single
rows separated by 8-foot spaces; I want to
fill in missing trees in our pecan orchard
to supplement fruit production; and build
a walk-in cooler from scratch, etc. So, here
we go.
New red barn gets a do-it-yourself walkin
cooler. Finances prevented finishing
the interior of the new barn until this year.
Now, with the prospects of a bumper crop,
my son Keith, with help from his brother
Lowell, took it upon himself to build us a
walk-in cooler - large enough to hold the
part of the crop that we used to refrigerate
before our old barn burned.
I discover this when I opened the red
barn door one day in September and there
was framing for the back wall already
up and a pile of lumber on the floor.
Construction on weekends was slow but
now my sons have almost finished it.
Keith has a full-time job. He is also our
chief mechanic, fixing things that (I mostly),
break - almost another full-time job.
It is November 2 as I write this,
and there are two trucks at the barn with
men busily installing the refrigeration unit.
Just in time, I hope, to store the last of
the Granny crop to process for next year's
pie fillings.
Planting pecans. I ordered 20 pecan
trees to fill blank spaces in our parking-lotturned-pecan-orchard.
The new trees came
in April, in 3-gallon containers and fully
leafed out. I had never planted container
plants before.
At the time it was too wet to plant the
pecans, but this would not be a problem
since they were in pots.
One thing led to another, and we are now
finally planting them.
To start, I removed 64 square-feet of sod
from the planting site with
the soil conditioner machine. (It looks like
a rototiller whose mom used Thalidomide).
Therefore, it takes away competition for
new pecan feeder roots.
We dumped the pot, removed soil from
around the trunk until we reached the
root line, and looked for roots that were
growing the wrong direction and cut or
Jerry Mills of Mills Apple Farm, Marine
Illinois, plants potted pecan trees.
Photo: Jerry Mills
redirected them away from the trunk.
Because we did that, pecan trees wouldn't
need a large hole for planting. Place the tree
firmly in the hole with all roots pointed
away from the trunk, fill the hole with
potting soil from the container and tamp it,
stake it, water it, and it should grow twice as
fast as a potted tree simply set in the ground.
Older folks should not plant pecans trees
hoping to see much of a crop. However, the
next generations can, if they take care of
them, expect to have a source of income for
the next three hundred years. Twenty-seven
trees per acre times 100 pounds per tree,
times dollars per pound sales, comes out to
a pretty good sum for not too much work.
How is that for building a legacy?
Potted trees need special care when
planting. My potted pecans arrived in
three-gallon plastic pots. I looked at them,
decided what size auger would be right to
put on the track loader so the unpotted root
ball would fit and thought this job would be
easy. Luckily, I went onto YouTube to see
what real arborists had to say. I learned a lot.
First, potted trees often have too much
potting medium packed into the top of
the pot. I suppose they do this to hold the
moisture in. So, when we dumped the trees,
we found at least 4 inches of extra cover
over the roots. Had we planted them that
way the roots would already be too deep,
and by the time the tree was tamped in and
the soil settled, it would be even deeper.
Next, the trees had been in the pots
long enough that roots up to 1/2 inches
in diameter had already hit the sides and
turned back to the center. By the time the
tree was in the ground, 10 years from now
those roots would be cutting off the flow
from roots to leaves and there would be
one sick tree.
Pecans do not seem to have a taproot
so there is no point in digging a deep or
overly wide depression for them. My trees
will have about 4 inches of topsoil over
the spread-out surface roots on top of a
small root ball.
Obviously, young trees with so many
surface roots are going to need watering
during early-year dry spells to keep them
growing. VGN
MODEL 912 MULCH
TRANSPLANTER
* Sets plants through plastic mulch
* Water system available
* For cells or plugs up to 2-1/2 " in diameter
* No more setting plants in wet, cold mud by hand
* Twin row available for row spacing as close as 12 "
* Plant spacing starts at 10 " in the row
1150 CENTRAL AVENUE, HOLLAND, MI 49423
Phone: 800-757-5268 or Fax: 616-396-3619
website: www.mechanicaltransplanter.com
e-mail: mtc@mechanicaltransplanter.com
30 | VegetableGrowersNews.com
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December 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2022
