Nice little surprize in the woods

[Tiempo]

As I mentioned in another thread, I've been trying to make something of our wooded area, the majority of the trees are cottonwood, box elder and borer killed ash with plenty of invasive shrubs like buckthorn....not a choice selection to say the least.

Most of the biomass out there seems to be wild grape

Yesterday I was hacking away at a particularly tangled mess of an area, when I found hidden away and choked with grape a single, forlorn little apple tree

It is now standing alone, free of grape with a lovely clean area around it.

Who knows if it will ever produce a single tasty apple, but at least now it has a chance

[AngieM2]

On behalf of the little apple tree,,,,, THANK YOU.

[Common Tator]

Keep the area around it clean, and get it a friend. Plant a variety of apples that do well in your area and that you love. It will keep your existing tree happy and provide cross polination! If you don't like the apples from the tree, you can graft something you do like onto it and remove the branches of the variety you don't like. Sounds like your tree has a hardy root stock!

[Phantomfyre]

I had a nice surprise like that last fall. Amongst the Japanese honeysuckle, box elder, etc. at the back of our property, I found a little white swamp oak. Just one. Don't know where he came from, don't care! Like you, I cleared away all the other stuff and even caged it last winter to protect it from the deer. Every time I go back there, I say hello to it, check to make sure nothing's encroaching on its space, and cheer it on.

Aren't these little surprises nice rays of hope when you've got a giant mess of invasives and junk to clean up?

[TnTnTn]

Great. I was cleaning up a rough island of alanthus and honeysuckle this summer and saved 3 little skinny black walnut saplings. I had to put up a supporting stake after cleaning the worthless scrub away but they have a chance to make it now. TnTnTn

[Tiempo]

Originally Posted by Common Tator

Keep the area around it clean, and get it a friend. Plant a variety of apples that do well in your area and that you love. It will keep your existing tree happy and provide cross polination! If you don't like the apples from the tree, you can graft something you do like onto it and remove the branches of the variety you don't like. Sounds like your tree has a hardy root stock!

Good to know CT, thanks!

[Tiempo]

Originally Posted by Phantomfyre

I had a nice surprise like that last fall. Amongst the Japanese honeysuckle, box elder, etc. at the back of our property, I found a little white swamp oak. Just one. Don't know where he came from, don't care! Like you, I cleared away all the other stuff and even caged it last winter to protect it from the deer. Every time I go back there, I say hello to it, check to make sure nothing's encroaching on its space, and cheer it on.

Aren't these little surprises nice rays of hope when you've got a giant mess of invasives and junk to clean up?

There is one little oak here too, I don't know what kind it is though.

[Phantomfyre]

I used the Virginia Tech Dendrology website's leaf key to ID mine. I've used it for other things, too - very handy site!

I'm pretty sure I've been over our 10 acres pretty thoroughly now that we've been here a little while, and that swamp oak is the ONLY oak tree on the place, not counting the 4 tiny white oak seedlings I rescued from a friend's flower beds this spring and a red oak another friend brought me, because I was crying that we didn't have any "quality" trees here. Wisely, I brought some seedlings of other things from our last place, too, so now have a tulip tree, 4 shagbark hickories, a couple sugar maples, a white pine, and a sickly little beech (they're really hard to move) that I hope survives. Plus I keep picking up acorns and seeds off of other native plants in the hopes of turning the little wooded area here into a healthy ecosystem. Slowly but surely...

[Bernadette]

The trick to chosing your pollinator is to get something that blossoms at the same time as yours - which can be tricky when you don't know what kind you've got. A safe bet is to get something like a crab apple or any other long bloomer that has a better chance to overlap when yours is blooming.

[bekab]

NICE surprise!

[Ravenlost]

Don't hack down all the wild grapes. They make really good jelly.

[Rick]

The following is a dramatization........

Tiempo: May I please have some apples, Mrs apple tree?

Mrs Apple Tree: Will you please bring me some fertilizer, and some more in 3 months? Oh, could you prune thoses obviously useless branches?