Thread: Fruit, Nut, and Vine Grafting, Tree Propagation, Tree Care

Here 14 miles from the Gulf of America the sun gets hot. Really hot on young fruit tree trunks. Add some storms to blow them on a terrible angle to the sun to boot and you get sun scalded tree trunks. You can keep them alive but production will always be low.

Today on top of all the other tasks was painting the tree trunks of the young and damaged fruit tree trunks. I use a cheap white latex cut 50% with water.



All the small fruit tree trunks on the place here was painted well up to the limbs.



So in the first picture this tree is very old, 7-8 years. It's trunk was damaged from the sun when a hurricane blew all the trees over a bit. You can see the tree's core is exposed. It is a Elberta Queen Peach and this year I'm propagating it using Air Layering. Wonderful Peaches but you can't grow many. Time to fix that. The second tree is a Zaigler Katy Apricot. I have killed numerous Apricot trees trying to find one that can stand up to the heat & humidity at the same time. As you can see in the picture I didn't paint the trunk, sprayed the tree with Dormant Oil Spray and the sun scalded it during winter. This is another I'm Air Layering to get a undamaged tree or 2 for planting elsewhere. You have to protect even Citrus trees here, I have one I grafted or Topworked would be a better description. The exposed bark will be exposed for a while so it was painted today too.