Growing fruits and vegetables - NAFEX and SSE

Oct 20 22:03 UTC 1998

For discussions of growing food for people - vegetables, grains, fruits and
nuts.  Also to be used as a test site for the North American Fruit Explorers
and Seed Savers' Exchange, to see if anyone is interesting in a conference
on fruits or vegetables.

response 2 of 21:

Jan 20 02:07 UTC 1999

A fruit grower just called to say his winter Pomona (NAFEX publication)
arrived with my invitation to fruit growers to join grex.  Welcome to any of
you who find your way here, and let me know what subjects you would like to
talk about in case we start our own conference (discussion area).  The friend
who called will give my email address to horticulturalists in the south Island
of the Phillipines, which he is planning to visit soon, and he promised us
some more dried jackfruit and mangosteen.  Yum!

response 4 of 21:

Jan 21 02:01 UTC 1999

It is wonderful to have such a quick response to the new Pomona!  Where in
zone 3 are you located?  The grex computer is in zone 5, and I live a few
blocks north of it (same zone, essentially) and have tried growing wild
strawberries (tasty but small), juneberries (too much shade, we pick lots from
the ornamental plantings around the university and the parking structures
downtown), elderberry (it died, too near a black walnut?), Hansen bush cherry
(it seems to be far too humid here, all the fruits turned brown and fell off
so I removed them), and red currants (died apparently of too much water,
having done well during a few droughts).  We also have clove currant and
buffallo currant, gooseberry, and three pawpaws trees that do not notice the
cold (at least -22 did not bother them).  And two persimmons that die to the
ground every cold winter (cold being below -10) or during droughts.
We have two Siberian apricots (took out a third in between when it got some
bacterial disease) that fruited well last year, but the lower fruits rotted
so we removed the lower branches.  Removed some beach plums and dune cherries,
we have heavy clay soil.  And a plum that has never fruited, and a Seckel pear
that had its first good crop this year.
        Congratulations on figuring out immediately how to use this bbs.  If
we get a few more people writing in I will attempt to start a separate
conference for fruit growing, with separate discussion items for each fruit
group, for bees, or for anything else people want.  (Anyone can start a new
discussion).

response 6 of 21:

Jan 22 03:04 UTC 1999

   In zone three, I live in MN.(German Heritage(:-))  Thief River Falls 
(rural) to be more exact.  I describe it as when you watch the weather 
channel and they predict bitterly subzero weather in the northcentral 
US-- we live in the middle of that dip that comes down from Canada.
        I had a real learning experience with the wild strawberries ( 
My wife, when she first tasted them said, "This is the fare of Kings).  
I started with two plants from the zone 2 area in MN. After a couple 
years of spreading I moved the two sets to their common area and 
waited. No berries.  The internet failed me.  I had to go to a book to 
discover that wild strawberry plants can come with male, female or 
hermaphadidic sp(perfect) flowers. So I discovered I had started with 
plants with female flowers. Since then I have started plants from seed 
and added plants with male organs. Last year we got many servings 
rather that the dozen or so berries the previous year.  The Apline 
strawberries we grew would not help pollinate cause of the difference 
in "ploids".
        You haven't seen Juneberries until you have seen some of the 
Canadian cultivars. We went up to Carmen, Man to a pickyourown.  The 
plants from seeds from that picking are in their second year of 
bearing.  Almost equal amount leaf and berry.
More Later.

response 8 of 21:

Jan 23 06:32 UTC 1999

Howdy! Another NAFEXian checking in here.  Located in southern 
west-central KY, about an hour NW of Nashville, TN (USDA zone 6).

My passion is northern nut trees - particularly pecans & hickories.
I'm also working with several NNGA members on identifying 
and propagating 'sweet'(low-tannin) acorn producing oaks - most 
identified to date have been bur oak (Q.macrocarpa) or bur oak hybrids.

Our home orchard is currently composed of 60+ varieties of apples & 
pears, also blueberries, juneberries, pawpaws, persimmons, mulberries, 
figs, gooseberries, hardy kiwis - and constantly expanding!

Looking forward to sharing tips & materials with other fruit & nut 
affectionados.

response 10 of 21:

Jan 24 16:09 UTC 1999

Scott, I was hoping to start a separate fruit-growers' conference if at least
five people showed an interest.  So far three of us.  So it would help to keep
this all in one item until then.  It could be a few more days until everyone
gets their latest issue with the instructions on how to join grex.
Nutman and berryman, congratulations on figuring it out so quickly.
Coyote and scott are old grex members with an interest in gardening, and I
hope they will stick around, too.
But there is also the option of including the fruit-growing discussions in
the garden conference, which at present seems to be primarily about
ornamentals, if that is what most people prefer.  Let me know.

response 12 of 21:

Jan 24 17:46 UTC 1999

        The wild grapes that my wife and I have picked and raise, which 
to the best of my knowledge are Riverbank Grapes (vitus riparia).
These do not get sweeter but less sour after a freeze.  We do freeze 
them after picking upon the recommendation of a wine maker.
The grapes produce a pretty decent wine, very good jelly and gourmet 
juice. 

response 14 of 21:

Jan 24 21:06 UTC 1999

I just reread this item and realized that berryman has 'expurgated' his first
response.  This makes it unreadable to the rest of us unless we know how to
read it (I keep forgetting).  Was there some reason you expurgated it?  If
not, can someone explain how to unexpurgate a response that you expurgated?
To got back to read a previous response, if you telnetted, when it asks if
you want to respond or pass type in the number of the response and then enter,
or if you can't remember, type -10 or -20 to see the previous 10 or 20
responses over again.  How would you do this with backtalk (from the website)?
The expurgated response was primarily a list of things that berryman was
growing (mainly berries).

response 16 of 21:

Jan 26 22:21 UTC 1999

Seemed to work on blueberries, too.  Richard, do you know how to restore the
thing that you expurgated so that new people can read about you?  You should
not have to be scrolling through old responses.  If you are telnetting to
grex, every time just type r 36 n.  Can someone familiar with backtalk explain
how to read only new items using backtalk?
        Today we treated a lunch guest to frozen persimmons, they are like
candy.  Not quite as good once they thaw.
        And we broke open a jar of passion fruit juice and added honey, it is
pretty sour otherwise.

response 18 of 21:

Mar 11 00:34 UTC 1999

I will be placing my vegetable seed order soon.  The list is in my home
directory under seeds.  It is about 13 pages long, quite a lot of peppers,
and many things I never heard of before.    Lots of brassicas - cress (9),
mustard greens (10)   Ehtiopian cabbage,  yellpurple Brazilian serrano pepper,
luffas, over a page of eggplants, five tomatillos, Chinese spinach, tomatoes.

response 20 of 21:

Mar 28 01:39 UTC 1999

From: john van hazinga <vanhaz@gsinet.net>
To: sindi keesan <keesan@grex.org>
Subject: changed format

Back from a week remodeling in vermontand changed format as you explained.
I will try it and see if other mail recipients object.  but now I get a
message saying I did every time I turn on and have to ignore.  As a new
computer user I am boggled by the seemingly infinite complexity of it all
but don't want to be involved except to do the few things I want to do.
(Just because I could run an office for 100 I have no intention or need to)
In Vermont I'm part of a farm which is close to the warmest spot in Vermont
being in the Champlain Valley on the SE side of a hill with a square mile of
open farm land  and the lake to the south.  Except the coldest few nights of
the year are colder than here in NH.  Last spring I put in a lot of
expensive exotics from One Green World Nursery and others less exotic for
the owner and only lost a few. The heat and long season should help
nuts ripen that are margiinal  here.


Are you on NAFEX email discussion list [nafex@cet.com} ?  Ongoing questions
with a lot of response.
John van Hazinga