Orchard Project update

More than three months after I started my family orchard and it looks promising.

My only casualty appears to be one peach tree.

The strongest growing trees that I planted were the asian pear trees.

The one tree which has been a disapointment, aside from the one casualty, was the potted Home Depot tree. I may have made a mistake in not pruning back the branch growth after planting it. I read that this can produce a stronger tree because when the tree is planted and the roots adjust to their new home, pruning the branch growth back results in a stronger tree as it adjusts to its new permanant home. In either case this reaffirmed my decision to purchse root stock for the majority of my trees.

The japanese beetles were having a field day with my trees.

Home Depot did not have beetle bags and I was going to try Lowes but in the process of re-organizing my basement I found three new beetle bag setups. It has been two years since I used beetle bags to control japanese beetles from destroying my garden. It only now occured to me that part of my lawn grub problem is probably related to japanese beetles. I came across a youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY9vuFVc3FU) which demonstrates how to increase the trap capacity of the bag trap through the use of a trash bag. This may be worth a try, saving my trees, saving my lawn from grub damage and save some money eliminating the need to use grub control on the lawn.