Cedar Apple Rust

This is a gall, an abnormal growth on a juniper branch which is part of an intricate and often gross looking fungal infection passed between cedar and apple trees, aptly named cedar apple rust. Several species of trees can substitute for the cedars and apples. Junipers, hawthorns, crab apples etc can all carry the disease in its various life stages.

Understanding the life cycle of the disease is tricky, and the first step in attempting to curb it. Often people protecting their more valuable apple harvest will simply remove all of the cedars from their property to interrupt the disease in this stage of growth. While we have chosen to remove many of the cedars for this purpose, it is not reasonable to expect to be able to remove all of the cedars from the surrounding area. Spores can be carried by the wind for several miles and considering the fact that Gohn Greene Farms borders Oconee National Forest management of this pathogen cannot simply rely on the elimination of cedars.

These galls form on the junipers, having been infected from spores off of nearby apple, crab apple, quince or hawthorns. The galls almost look like baby pine cones when young and can be tricky to spot. Once they get to this size they're more readily identified and removal of them at this stage is one of the easier stages to interrupt in order to slow the spread of the disease. They're often golf ball sized, sometimes larger. This stage occurs in early Spring and soon the little orange spots visible in this picture will begin growing like little horns emanating from the gall in all directions.

Once the Spring rains start to fall with more regularity the gall and its horns transform into what I think is one of the more disgusting stages of life. They fill with moisture until they begin to droop, eventually becoming mucilaginous globs of goo hanging from the trees. The disease is most visible at this point, but the damage in this stage of its life cycle has already been done. Spores are carried by the wind to the apple trees just as their tender blossoms and leaves are emerging. Here the spores infect the fruits and leaves in just a few short hours. Solutions of garlic or nettle can be sprayed on the apple trees to increase resistance just prior to this stage of infection, but we haven't tried this method as of yet.

A couple of weeks later the spores which have successfully infected the upper leaf surfaces of the apple trees begin to emit tube like structures from the lower surface of the leaves in cup like arrangements. These tubes will then emit spores of their own over the summer, carrying the disease back to the junipers where they'll develop new galls over the course of a year. Two springs later the galls erupt to start the life cycle all over again.

At Gohn Greene Farms our apple trees are rather new and haven't been affected to any significant extent at this point. We've been removing galls from larger junipers and removing the smaller junipers entirely to limit the spread of the disease as effectively as possible before it becomes rampant. If it becomes a problem in future years we may try spraying with a garlic solution, but so far prevention of the galls from releasing their spores seems to be our main point of attack. Preventing them from turning into giant balls of snot has its aesthetic merits as well.

Carrots!

Carrots! Carrots everywhere! The discovery of carrots growing wild on the farm was pretty amazing. It was one of those truly awe inspiring moments. We were out on the farm for the girls' spring break and our friend Mat had brought a bag of carrots he had picked up at the Grant Park Farmers Market along on the trip. I was getting ready to start shuttling water back to the food forest with the girls when he offered me a carrot, leaves and all. I thanked him and took one, crunching on it happily while planting what was left in an 18 gallon container full of sprouting things, squash, confederate star jasmine etc. I filled up a couple of 5 gallon jugs and hopped in the truck with the girls, cranked up the 1960's country on the radio and headed down the hill. I parked the truck with the taste of carrots still in my mouth, still thinking of planting the carrot nub in the container garden with just its leaves poking out of the dirt. I grabbed a jug of water and started watering a paw paw tree. As I was pouring the water on the ring of mulch around its base I saw a little clump of familiar leaves and thought, "huh, those look like carrots, I wonder what they are". I finished pouring out the jug and investigated further. I dug around the base of the leaves, found the taproot and pulled, slow and steady. Out came a long, slender carrot. It was actually the broken one in the picture, three times as big as the second one I pulled that is shown full. I broke it after removing it to taste a bite first, confirm my discovery and shout for the girls to come see. After we jumped up and down and squealed for a while I started looking around for more. Carrots. More carrots. Carrots... everywhere. I knew that the area we chose for beginning the food forest, down by the muscadines, had been planted as a garden by the previous owner, but I hadn't seen any carrots the year before. After I thought about it I realized that I didn't mow this particular area over by the paw paws until later in the year last year. I must have mowed off all of the carrot leaves that had already grown. This year I mowed much earlier and the carrot leaves stuck out like sore thumbs. What had become mainly an orchard to this point was already more of a food forest than I had originally thought. I can't wait to see what we find next!

The Dave Tree

 
 The above photos are of our new Wonderful Pomegranate shrub AKA The Dave Tree. These photos were taken March 13th the day the Dave Tree was planted, both before and after pruning. It was the very last thing I planted that day, around 9pm, mainly by moonlight. I pruned it with the help of my phone as a flashlight, mulched, caged and watered it and went home to rest up for my marathon a couple of days later. It was a long week.

We picked this plant to represent Dave, who along with Molly generously gifted this plant and the pineapple guava to us for our wedding. He wanted a plant that reflected his curmudgeonly nature. This scraggly looking shrub seemed to fit the bill. It's not really a bush, or a shrub or a tree, it kinda does whatever it wants. It requires no pollination partner, bristles with thorns and in my imagination is rather ill tempered.

The picture below was taken just 16 short days later on the 29th of March. The whole shrub has leafed out fairly evenly and vigorously. The Dave Tree really seems to like it's new home, in spite of its curmudgeonly nature.