Re: [gardeners] In the garden - Wednesday
margaret lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:06:40 -0600
>>
>> George, have you tried root pruning this malcontent? Margaret
>
>Well, a mayhaw is a uniquely southern tree to the best of my knowledge.
>Bears a reddish orange fruit about the size of quarter, maximum, in,
>guess what, May. Folks down here make a nice jelly and sometimes wine
>out of them. They're a bit astringent for eating out of hand. Far as I
>know, and I haven't looked this up, they're a member of the haw family.
>Guess I could do a web search and would probably find that Texas A & M
>has information on them. They grow wild here and a number of people now
>plant them in orchards and cultivate them for the fruit. There's a
>company in Many, LA that makes the jelly and ships it around East Texas
>and most of Louisiana. Starks, LA has a mayhaw festival every year with
>jelly making contests, etc.
>
>Nope, haven't tried root pruning them. Guess I could do that with the
>machete rather than trying to whup 'em into bearing. How far out do you
>go from the trunk for root pruning a fruit tree, anyone have any idea?
>Would like for them to bear as I do like my mayhaw jelly but don't like
>paying 3 to 5 bux for a pint jar.
>
>George, home from getting the flu shot
>
Use your spade instead of a machete. Drip line sounds good to me. I asked
Lon Rombough, the fruit expert on OGL, and he said he had not done that to
stimulate fruiting, but he had root pruned to control vegetative vigor by
spading vertically halfway between the trunk and the dripline, in a
complete circle. He said if you did that with a Hawthorne tree (that may be
a kissin' cousin of a Mayhaw), you'd get suckers growing up all around the
tree. Margaret