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Cider Digest #1367
Subject: Cider Digest #1367, 6 February 2007
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1367 6 February 2007
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: Terrific cider brandy! (Dick Dunn)
Cider Lees (yeast collected at the bottom of vats) ("J. Kent")
Re: girdling (Bill)
vole prevention ("Katie Algeo")
Girdling by Voles (james cummins)
chewing voles ,rabbits (dan kelly)
Re: Cider Digest #1366--Vole damaged trees (Ian Merwin)
Re: saving girdled trees ("chris horn")
Summer Cider Making Classes ("Drew Zimmerman")
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Subject: Re: Terrific cider brandy!
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:58:12 -0700
Tim Bray <tbray@mcn.org> wrote:
> Greetings from sunny* Glasgow, Scotland, where I finally encountered
> Julian Temperley's cider brandy. WOW, this stuff is fantastic! We're
> bringing some home with us.
It is excellent, but beastly expensive!! That is, if you figure the cost
of the brandy, plus two round-trip tickets to the UK, food and lodging...
(The brandy itself is -relatively- expensive thanks to the weak dollar--
$40 to $60 depending on the age--but it's nothing compared to what it
costs to go fetch a couple bottles.)
Seriously, does anybody know if there's any hope of it being imported to
the US? It is SO much different from Calvados (at least any Calvados I've
ever had).
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
Subject: Cider Lees (yeast collected at the bottom of vats)
From: "J. Kent" <Sheep@kent9999.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:42:15 -0000
Greetings from herefordshire UK,
Has anybody got another use for the Cider Lees. The waste from the
bottom of the vat after fermentation has ceased. Other than throwing it
onto a compost heap.
Thanks
Jeremy Kent
Herefordshire UK
------------------------------
Subject: Re: girdling
From: Bill <squeeze@mars.ark.com>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 12:05:18 -0800
Eric, I don't know how well the bridge graft works, but I have had folks
tell me they'd done it .... what you'll find is if you do nothing to the
tree, in the spring it will flower and start leafing out, even if dead!!
I'd be inclined to go with scions, and if you keep them in the fridge,
wrapped in plastic with some damp paper towel, there's no problem using
them weeks later ... I think it would be best to wait awhile to collect
them, and as there's plenty of "life" in the trunk/limbs of the tree,
the girdling won't affect that ... later, take your buds from the scions
Bill <http://mars.ark.com/~squeeze/>
------------------------------
Subject: vole prevention
From: "Katie Algeo" <katie.algeo@wku.edu>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:31:28 -0600
Hey Eric,
I can't help you with the grafting, but I do have some advice about the
voles - cats and cheap plastic tree guards. I have voles galore at my
place. When my indoor cat slips out, it takes her all of 5 minutes to
poke under the leaf cover and catch one or two. Every fall I put
plastic tree guards around my apple trees. Every spring I take them
off (to prevent bugs from nesting there). So far, nary a nibble by a
noshing vole.
Cheers,
Katie
>I have a small home
>orchard where each tree is very valuable to me. This past November I
>noticed some chewing by I'm pretty sure voles. >Eric, Burdett NY
------------------------------
Subject: Girdling by Voles
From: james cummins <jnc1@localnet.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 10:28:51 -0500
(reply to Eric's note of 2/2/07)
Eric, if the tree is completely girdled, you really have 3 options:
(1) Remove trees and start from scratch.
(2) Take the old-fashioned route and bridge-graft across the damaged
area. This is excellent exercise although getting the lower graft in
place can be frustrating. If you choose this option, it would be
preferable to us Geneva 16 as your bridging scions.
(3) Inarch, using G.16 rootstock liners. For a 4-year-old tree, I
suggest planting 4 liners, spaced around the tree. Set as close to the
trunk as possible. Use the longest liners you can get. Plant the
liners as early as soil permits. Grafting the rootstock into good
tissue above the girdle can wait until bark is slipping well, usually
mid-May. Be sure to wax the cut surfaces thoroughly (Tree-Kote is an
easy-to-use cold wax).
What might have been: Last November, when you first observed the vole
damage, you could have coated all the damaged area with a cold wax.
Even though the voles had probably chewed away all the cambium, there
were still functional cells in the wood that could have reconstituted
the lost cambium. It's too late now -- too much drying -- but worth
remembering for next year!
An afternote: Malling 9 and Geneva 16 seem to be especially
atrtractive to voles and to rabbits. Some extra attention to
protection is prudent.
Jim Cummins
------------------------------
Subject: chewing voles ,rabbits
From: dan kelly <blueheronorchard@centurytel.net>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 10:02:22 -0800
Eric from Burdett, NY
My experience, two years ago, with rabbits completely stripping and
girdling my 14 year old winesaps (spur on seeding rootstock) made me
think they were goners. However, I was pleasantly surprised that
by midsummer they seemed completely unaffected and this past season
the trees needed to be hand thinned. I believed that the gnawing
actually stimulated the auxins for the following year resulting in a
bumper crop. Dan Kelly
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #1366--Vole damaged trees
From: Ian Merwin <im13@cornell.edu>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 15:47:55 -0500
Responding the Eric's question about vole (Microtus sp.) damage to
his Kingston Black apple trees: There are several things you can do.
1) You can try bridge grafting from the rootstock to the scion,
across the damaged area. Take budsticks from last years growth on
any healthy apple tree, cut them down to two pointed ends, peel up
the bark above and below the vole damage, and insert each end of the
budstick so that both cambial layers on the stock and bridge graft
piece are in contact. You can also dig up some seedling apple trees
and do inarch grafting. There is a good website (from the University
of Connecticut) with pictures of these two types of grafting at
<www.hort.uconn.edu/Ipm/homegrnd/htms/28graft.htm>. If you google
under the term "bridge grafting" it will take you to other sites as
well. You will need to cut the budsticks and keep them dormant until
early Spring when the cambium of your damaged tree becomes active so
you can do the grafting. Even a thin strip of undamaged bark
connecting the scion to the rootstock will be enough to keep your
tree alive without grafting, as that strip will become thick and
vascular to compensate for the loss elsewhere. If you decide there is
enough connective tissue left to let the tree heal itself, then it
will be helpful to paint the entire damaged area with a latex paint
ASAP to prevent dessication of the damaged tissue margins.
2) If you have tall grass or use most forms of mulch around your
trees, you will continue to lose trees to voles each winter. Keeping
the entire floor of your orchard mowed closely during the summer, and
especially going into the winter, will deprive voles of the habitat
they need to multiply (which they do prodigiously!). If you leave
lots of cover for them, the vole populations will build to a level at
which they will continue to damage and kill your apple trees.
3) Another measure that provides limited protection is to surround
your tree bases with cylinders of metal mesh hardware cloth
(galvanized quarter to half inch square woven metal screen) around
the base of each tree, about six inches in diameter and 18 to 24
inches in height. This will discourage voles from eating the bark on
your trees, though in a long snowy winter some voles will eventually
burrow under the mesh to get at the tree bases.
4) Providing good habitat for raptors, foxes, coyotes, house cats,
snakes, and hunting type dogs will help limit vole populations, but
only if you keep the grass mowed short enough so these natural
predators can see the voles to catch them. There are poison baits
that can also be used, but they are not very effective, and secondary
poisoning of the natural predators is a real risk with any poison
bait used for rodent control. Research in our program (Merwin et al.
1999. HortScience 34:271-274) and others suggests that the poison
baits are not effective if you dont also manage the orchard floor
habitat to discourage buildup of vole populations.
- --
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((!)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Ian A. Merwin, PhD
Professor of Horticulture & International Agriculture
118 Plant Science Bldg
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, 14853
Telephone: 607-255-1777
<www.hort.cornell.edu/department/faculty/merwin/index.htm>
------------------------------
Subject: Re: saving girdled trees
From: "chris horn" <agent_strangelove@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:56:22 -0800
Eric et al.-
'The Grafter's Handbook' put out by the Royal Hort. Society has some good
stuff on grafting. There is even some stuff (photos and diagrams) on bridge
grafting over rodent damage. It looks to be involved and I don't know what
the success rate is but if you are pretty sure that the tree wouldn't
survive if left, you got nothing to loose. If you can't find it at you
local book store, Amazon has it...
http://www.amazon.com/Grafters-Handbook-R-J-Garner/dp/1844030393/sr=1-1/qid=1170
784031/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3779233-1582416?ie=UTF8&s=books
Bud grafting is normally done in the summer when the tree has leaves. You
would be collecting scion wood this time of year. If stored correctly, it's
good for a few months. Success for that type of grafting is dependant on
more of the physical connection of the rootstock and scion. For that most
folks who have done it a few years, can normally get 90-95% success rate...
Chris Horn
Scappoose Oregon USA
'I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the
urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.'
~Lord Dunsany
------------------------------
Subject: Summer Cider Making Classes
From: "Drew Zimmerman" <drewzimmer@comcast.net>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 12:47:32 -0800
I thought I?d get an early notice out to any of you making plans for this
summer. We are again offering the Principles and Practice of Cider Making
course at the WSU Northwest Research and Extension Center in Mount Vernon,
WA. The course runs from June 25 ? 29, cost $845. I won?t belabor all the
details of the course; you can find them in the Course Syllabus and Workshop
Agenda at HYPERLINK
"http://learningcenters.wsu.edu/skagit/cider.html"http://learningcenters.wsu
.edu/skagit/cider.html Registration info is also there.
I would like to say that a lot of the recent questions in the Digest on
yeasts, fermentation, lees, bottling and other concerns are all addressed,
and there is also a good bit of attention given to orcharding and to sensory
evaluation of cider and perry. The sensory part includes both faults and
expected or desirable characteristics and would be a valuable experience for
any folks looking to do some cider judging in competitions. Oh, there is
also a daylong excursion to Merridale Ciderworks on Vancouver Island that
includes a two to three hour cruise through the San Juan Islands.
Cheers,
Drew Zimmerman
Northwest Cider Society
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1367
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