November 2022 - 35

NOTES FROM THE FARM
Pecan trees and a happy surprise in the barn
JERRY MILLS
Mills Apple Farm
jerry@millsapplefarm.com
We dumped the pot, removed
soil from around the trunk until we
reached the root line, and looked for
roots that were growing the wrong
direction and cut or redirected them
away from the trunk.
Changes in this column. Instead of
reporting local crop conditions, which
I suspect few care about, I am going
to report on things I am trying that
might be " unusual. " For instance, we
are going to plant next year's pumpkin
crop in single rows separated by 8-foot
spaces; I want to fill in missing trees in
our pecan orchard to supplement fruit
production; and build a walk-in cooler
from scratch, etc. So, here we go.
New red barn gets a do-it-yourself
walk-in cooler. Finances prevented
finishing the interior of the new barn
until this year. Now, with the prospects
of a bumper crop, my son Keith, with
help from his brother Lowell, took
it upon himself to build us a walk-in
cooler - large enough to hold the part
of the crop that we used to refrigerate
before our old barn burned.
I discover this when I opened the
red barn door one day in September
and there was framing for the back
wall already up and a pile of lumber on
the floor. Construction on weekends
was slow but now my sons have almost
finished it.
Keith has a full-time job. He is also
our chief mechanic, fixing things that
(I mostly), break - almost another
full-time job.
It is November 2 as I write this,
and there are two trucks at the barn
with men busily installing the
refrigeration unit.
Just in time, I hope, to store the last
of the Granny crop to process for next
year's pie fillings.
Planting pecans. I ordered 20
pecan trees to fill blank spaces in our
parking-lot-turned-pecan-orchard.
The new trees came in April, in
3-gallon containers and fully leafed
out. I had never planted container
plants before.
At the time it was too wet to plant
the pecans, but this would not be a
problem since they were in pots.
One thing led to another, and we are
now finally planting them.
To start, I removed 64 square-feet
of sod from the planting site with
the soil conditioner machine. (It
looks like a rototiller whose mom
used Thalidomide). Therefore, it
takes away competition for new pecan
feeder roots.
Because we did that, pecan trees
wouldn't need a large hole for
planting. Place the tree firmly in the
hole with all roots pointed away from
the trunk, fill the hole with potting soil
from the container and tamp it, stake
it, water it, and it should grow twice
as fast as a potted tree simply set in
the ground.
Older folks should not plant pecans
trees hoping to see much of a crop.
However, the next generations can, if
they take care of them, expect to have
a source of income for the next three
hundred years. Twenty-seven trees
per acre times 100 pounds per tree,
times dollars per pound sales, comes
out to a pretty good sum for not too
much work.
How is that for building a legacy?
Potted trees need special care when
planting. My potted pecans arrived in
three-gallon plastic pots. I looked at
them, decided what size auger would
be right to put on the track loader
so the unpotted root ball would fit
and thought this job would be easy.
Luckily, I went onto YouTube to
see what real arborists had to say. I
learned a lot.
First, potted trees often have too
much potting medium packed into
the top of the pot. I suppose they do
this to hold the moisture in. So, when
we dumped the trees, we found at
least 4 inches of extra cover over the
roots. Had we planted them that way
the roots would already be too deep,
and by the time the tree was tamped
in and the soil settled, it would be
even deeper.
Next, the trees had been in the
pots long enough that roots up to
1/2 inches in diameter had already
hit the sides and turned back to the
center. By the time the tree was in
the ground, 10 years from now those
roots would be cutting off the flow
from roots to leaves and there would
be one sick tree.
Pecans do not seem to have a taproot
so there is no point in digging a deep
or overly wide depression for them. My
trees will have about 4 inches of topsoil
over the spread-out surface roots on
top of a small root ball.
Obviously, young trees with so
many surface roots are going to need
watering during early-year dry spells
to keep them growing. FGN
Jerry Mills of Mills Apple Farm, Marine Illinois, plants potted pecan trees.
Photo: Jerry Mills
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FGN | NOVEMBER 2022 | 35
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November 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2022
