by George Collins » Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:05 am
636 + 19 = 655 sets
Of the seeds planted today, 18 came from those most recently taken from artificial cold stratification and only one came from those pots that over-wintered outside. The first seeds to germinate in the pots that overwintered outside did so about the last week of February and here, in the last week of April, they seem to have all but quit. This year's germination window seems fairly consistent with the previous year's experience.
In addition to planting those nineteen seeds today, we also watered and I was shocked at how may are showing signs of desiccation/blackening of the leaves. There is definitely a pattern but I'm not sure it makes sense from a water perspective. A better explanation might be the recent high winds we have been experiencing.
In doing a spot of research on the same phenomenon concerning pear leaves, I learned that strong winds are one potential cause. Right about the time we started receiving our recent several days of strong wind, there were relatively few trees that were showing signs of leaf blackening. Prior to that, the large rain events we experienced suggested that too much water seemed the most likely culprit. However, since those crazy-large rain events subsided, we have gone into a very uncharacteristic-for-this-time-of-year drought during which time we have had several really windy days. As the number of windy days have culminated, the percentage of trees showing signs of leaf desiccation seems to have risen dramatically.
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