The tree made it through the winter and both halves are still alive, but growing at different rates.

Below you can see the flower buds from the winning half of the tree. They’re fully swollen and will open any day now.

The other half of the tree, the half that had fallen down and that now has less trunk attachment, it is growing, and is alive, and is still reattached as I made it, but it is growing slower. In the below picture you’ll notice the buds barely growing out of the branches.

These pictures were of course taken on the same day. Obviously I think the amount of cambium left attaching the weak side of the tree to the trunk is unable to fully support it at a normal growth rate, or at least, at the same growth rate as the strong side of the tree. I may need to do additional pruning on the weak side until I reach an equillibrium between the growth and it’s energy supply. But, regardless, the tree lives, and that is the important thing.

Related posts:

1. How to fix a tree with a split trunk from wind damage
2. Sambucus nigra. “Black Lace” Elderberry Update
3. Pruning a Pear Tree

I wanted one of these probably for 2 years before finding and buying one, and then, back in early October, disaster struck! A wind storm heavily, heavily, damaged the tree. Splitting the trunk in two places.

In retrospect going out and looking at the damage, it was bound to happen, the tree had grown so well that some limbs obviously outweighed the strength of their junction with the trunk, it should have had some preventative pruning done, but I was busy being a new dad.

Some people, when a tree is damaged like that, would just cut it down. If they think it’ll never be perfectly shaped again, they don’t want it. I personally think a tree that survives damage will have more character and be more interesting, plus, I did say it was my favorite tree, so I decided to repair it.

When faced with this sort of damage you really have two options, you can try to mend the split, which is possible when it is a 50/50 split or close to and there is still substantial amounts in tact on both sides. Or, if one side is severely weaker, it may not be able to be saved and so you’ll have to trim it up and make it as clean as possible. I had to do both.

The picture above is of the upper trunk split, this one you’ll notice is really severe with no structural integrity left on the right side. Trees do all of their physiology in the thin green moist layer right beneath the bark (xylem, cambium, and phloem layers, sometimes just called cambium) so if there isn’t enough bark area left to sustain the split branch, it’ll die. If you’re a few hours or a day after the damage and the leaves are wilting, you’ll know there isn’t enough cambium left. You might be able to do some heavy pruning so that the remaining foliage is better matched to the remaining cambium, but chances are you just need to cut the limb off.

So, for the damage shown above, the leaves were already wilting and the structure was so obviously compromised, so I cut the limb off, as cleanly as I could.

The above picture is of the lower trunk split. This is the first branching point of the trunk, the first main scaffold branch split off. In this case though the prognosis was much better, the leaves had not wilted in the least (and I was easily 8-10 hours after the storm) there was still structure integrity to the branch (it was hanging parrallel to the ground, not drooping all the way) and the split was probably 40/60. So I decided to fix it.

The first thing I did was some severe pruning to reduce the weight load of the branch. This branch had grown significantly during the summer and really weighed too much, I probably took off 70% of it’s mass. Just so I could lift it back into place as much as anything else.

I temporarily tied the branch up with twine, temporarily for a few reasons, namely because if you tie a tree you choke it. People run into this all the time with birdhouses. They do not want to “hurt” the tree so they use rope, twine, or wire (the worst) to tie a bird house to a tree. Really, the better thing to do is just to nail it. A tree can survive a puncture wound no problem, but if the tree grows into a rope or wire it’ll impede the flow in the cambium layer and choke it.

After the tree was in place I got out my power drill and bored a hole through the tree at the site of the split. Then I went down into my basement and looked through my screw/nut/bolt/nail organizer. In a bin called “toilet parts” I found some large brass bolts, these were perfect. Brass doesn’t rust, and being an alloy of copper it may have some antifungal properties. I put a large bolt through the hole and secured it.

I then drilled another hole a few inches above the split and put a longer bolt through there. I made sure the hole was slightly smaller than the bolt so I really had to shove and pound it in (thus making sure there would be no gap) and then I used a wrench to tighten nuts on both.

My tree was now a cyborg, and the actions I took may seem severe, drilling two holes, but as I said, trees can survive puncture holes no problem. There was another flap of torn bark and I actually brought out my nail gun and put some brad nails into that, more wounds, but the tree doesn’t mind them.

Eventually the tree will grow over those metal rods, incorporating them into it’s structure, and being all the more stronger for it, with no adverse damage, because they go through the cambium layer, not around it.

So, weight removed, gash mechanically repaired, now I had to worry about insects and diseases. I had both a can of tree pruning sealer and a can of natural shellac wood sealer. I had just read an article saying shellac was better than the other stuff and so used it. Shellac is an all natural waxy resin made by insects and used in everything from wood products, to food, to pills. You probably eat a little bit every day, it is harmless, but it seals wood good. Insects and diseases love open wounds and so it was important to seal the tree with something.

That taken care of, the last thing I needed to worry about was water. Just like with concrete, water can get in a crack, freeze, and then widen and make the crack worse. Even with the shellac the force of water expanding as it freezes was a potential hazard. What I eventually did, though which is not shown in the picture, is just put a bead of silicone caulk around the top of the crack (but not the bottom) preventing any water from seeping in, but if any does, still allowing it to seep out. Silicone is a neutral and inert substance and the tree will probably grow around it fine, or, after healing has progressed, I can take it out. Another option would be to wrap the tree in some sort of plastic, but that can hold in moisture too close to the bark and promote rot, I think my caulk solution is best.

I’ll post an update next year to show how the tree is doing.

Should you repair every tree? No, you shouldn’t, if there is a safety issue where the tree overhangs a structure or is where people often sit, walk, or play, you should always err on the side of safety. If the tree limbs are too big for you to manage to put back into place, you may not have to cut the tree down, but you’ll need to remove the limb. But, if your tree is not yet too large to manage (mine was only about 10 feet tall) you can try to repair it. It doesn’t need to be a total loss.

Related posts:

1. Split Trunk Repair Update
2. Pruning a Pear Tree
3. How to Stake a Tree

Well, I’m sure some citizens may hate this, but this is an opportunity for gardens, you’ll probably be able to finagle lots of compost from neighbors, or just do midnight raids on those green compost bins on the curb.

But if you’re going to be composting in a city, or trying to compost in San Francisco for this new law, there are issues you need to consider, especially if you don’t have a lot of land, yard, or plants.

Now, I wouldn’t really worry about making too much compost over the course of a year, unless you have no garden whatsoever. You may think you produce a lot of kitchen scraps, but you don’t, not really. Because they’re mostly water they shrink vastly in size while they rot, a cubic yard of uncomposted material may, in the end, produce a cubic foot of compost.

But there are things you need to worry about, such as rodents. Any open pile or bin with an open bottom or unsecured lid can and will attract wildlife, and not the kind you want. In the country it is mostly bears and raccoons and opossums. In cities you might still get raccoons and an opossum, depending on the size of the city, but mostly you’re looking at rats, dangerous and disease carrying rats. You don’t want to build a rat habitat in your yard, so you don’t want a pile or bin.

A compost tumbler is superior in that it is raised off the ground and fully enclosed, so that is what I would recommend for anyone in an urban or even suburban environment, or people in bear country (honestly, the tumbler will excel pretty much everywhere).

Don’t think you can squeak by leaving it exposed, I once let a bag of compost on my porch for a couple hours, and that is all it took to attract an ugly opossum.

Another big issue for the urban composter, is ingredient balance. Compost works best with aerobic decomposition which uses oxygen loving bacteria that need a balance of moisture, nitrogen, and carbon. Kitchen scraps tend to be high on the first two ingredients, but lax on the third. I solve this partway by loading all my kitchen scraps into brown paper bags, which are a carbon source, but that isn’t even, even I’ve had problems.

My main solution is to take newspaper, which is 100% biodegradable, run it through my paper shredder, and do that. It balances out the moisture because it is dry, and adds the necessary carbon. As a general rule of thumb, if your compost tumbler smells like garbage or sewage, you have anaerobic bacteria working instead of aerobic and you need to add more carbon (newspaper, shredded fine), less water, and mix it up (tumble) to produce more oxygen.

This balance issue is more an issue for city dwellers than country dwellers because urbanites have less trees, and so less leaves that’ll drop in the fall, which are a great and primary source of carbon for many composters. You can also use straw from a farmer, which is against more accessible to those in the country.

Another option for brown material is sawdust from untreated unpainted and unstained wood. You can get such sawdust from carpenters, building sites, saw mills, etc. Just make sure it is all untreated, and it is a miracle ingredient.

Finally, small amounts of wood ash or charcoal, again from unpainted, unstained, and untreated wood, also is an excellent source of carbon, but it can affect the Ph of your compost so you can’t use it in large quantities. So if you have a fire pit or fireplace and burn natural wood without lighter fluid or anything like that, you can save and use the ashes and any left over charred bits in your compost. In fact there is a whole gardening method called biochar that utilizes burnt wood to a large degree.

Following these tips should help you produce usable fertilizer for your garden from all the kitchen scraps your neighbors are going to be sending your way.

Related posts:

1. Opossum on the Porch, Compost Eating Critter
2. Smelly Soupy Poopy Compost Tumbler
3. Brewing Compost Tea on the Cheap

Composting is not an exact science, and even someone who has used a compost tumbler for a long time like me can mess up.

I use my compost tumbler in the following way: I take brown paper bags and while cooking put scraps of veggies, peels, watermelon rinds, etc, in the bags. Then I toss the whole bag into the tumbler. The bag provides the brown, the contents the green, and it should compost, and it does compost. I know though that the bag doesn’t provide enough brown, but I also add clippings from the garden, including chipped branches and other woody stuff, and of course in Fall I add leaves.

So, in this batch, not enough brown, too much green. It got wet, it get smelly, it got poopy. This is not good compost. You need enough brown to absorb that moisture and make sure it doesn’t smell. Compost shouldn’t smell, if it does, you need to add more brown, more carbon.

If this was Fall I would add leaves, I could also add straw, or more shredded woody prunings. But instead I’ve set upon a cheap, easy, and fast solution. Shredded newspaper.

To make this all you need is newspaper, and a paper shredder. Run Sunday’s paper through, leaving out any glossy or otherwise fancy pages. Newspaper print is completely organic and biodegradable, the ink is soy based. It’ll absorb the water, and because it is paper, will decompose fast, quickly rectifying my compost problem in less than a week.

Related posts:

1. Video: How to Assemble Your Compost Tumbler
2. San Francisco’s New Composting Law
3. Opossum on the Porch, Compost Eating Critter

The other day, well, almost 4 weeks ago (we’ve got a new baby, and so I’ve been too busy to blog), on my way to the hospital to see said baby I noticed large clumps of something on my Tanyosho pine. The pine hadn’t been looking too hot this Spring but I hadn’t looked too closely at it, but now it couldn’t be avoided.

Clumps of something had weighed down the tips of the needles to the point where they were drooping noticably, very obvious abnormal. So I took a closer look. It wasn’t a growth, it wasn’t needles with elephantisis, it was an infestation of caterpillars. They looked like the “tent worms” (gypsy moth larvae) that had defoliated so many trees around my parents house when I was younger (eventually forcing government intervention with airplane spraying).

I don’t, or rather I didn’t, often think of pines or other conifers as having pest problems. Their foliage is much more armored and it just didn’t seem like something they’d deal with. But these larvae had made short work of the needles on my pine and had defoliated maybe 30 or 40% of it before I noticed. This, is of course, much much worse than a critter defoliating a deciduous tree, because such trees are used to losing their leaves yearly and growing a new set in Spring. When most evergreens lose needles they usually do not grow back. Pines are somewhat of an exception, they do lose a small amount of needles every year and regrow them, but no where near 40%. So this is a big hit to the tree.

I googled it of course and turns out these are sawfly larvae, and the specifically target young or short pines, who would have thought, with all the other more vulnerable trees out there, the sawfly evolved to have their larvae target pines.

Couple the very bad damage, and the fact that I needed to get to the hospital (not for the delivery mind you, this was two days later) I didn’t bother trying to deal with it by hand (there were many dozens, but they were big suckers, so I could have, technically) or finding an all natural pest control (something I do usually think about, but rarely try, because they’re so hard to find to buy, and the one time I tried a home made concoction I killed every plant I tried it on). I grabbed trusty Sevin, and making sure no bees were present, I went to town. They rapidly started dropping and I haven’t seen one since.

Related posts:

1. My New Tanyosho Pine
2. Pear Tree Down
3. The Gardens of Rome

However, if you must stake a tree, let me explain to you how, because it is not as easy as you may think.

The above tree is an example of what not to do. For one, the tree is far too small to need such massive stakes. If your stake is wider than the trunk of the tree, you’re doing it wrong. For two, there are three stakes. The people obviously thought they needed to immobilize the tree trunk, and long term, those stakes have been there years. This is not the goal of staking.

Staking is used to moderate swings or to protect the tree from violent winds that could uproot it prior to it being established. It is not meant to prevent all movement. If a tree does not move it does not develop a strong trunk. Trees develop strong trunks in response to wind, it is a response mechanism, all plants do. This is also why plants grown indoors can be spindly and tall, there is no wind indoors (you can direct a fan at your seedlings to correct this).

So, when plants aren’t allowed to bend, then don’t put energy into growing stronger, so instead they grow taller. You can see this in nature. Trees clustered together in a grove will be taller and skinnier because they offer each other wind protection. Whereas the tree alone in a field with no wind protection develops a much wider trunk. This has repercussions even within the maple syrup industry as farmers have to balance planting density with the desire to encourage large trunk development.

In addition to not wanting to completely immobilize the tree, you also only need to stake it until it is established, which means one year, tops. Any longer than that and you can permanently weaken the trunk. The tree will grow tall, and spindly, and if you ever unstaked it it’d tip over like a limp noodle, so you think it needs to be staked more, nope. The only think that’ll fix a spindly trunk is removing the stakes. You stake for the roots, not for the trunk. Because of how staked securely increases vertical growth in lieu of a thicker trunk, nurseries often do it because many unwitting consumers buy the tallest tree. When you do your shopping, do yourself a favor, buy the one with the widest trunk.

Then, finally, the actual material you use to tie the tree has a big impact as well.

The above is a picture of my espaliered apple tree. Espalier is a method of training a tree to grow two dimensionally (such as along a fence) as opposed to three dimensionally. It is used for aesthetics, but also to increase air flow, make it easy to harvest fruit, and to spray fruit trees. Training is the exception to all of the above rules and is different from staking, if you’re training a tree for bonsai, espalier, niwagi, or whatever else (such as training a weeping tree to stand upright), you obviously need to tie it and manipulate it as such, but I show you this picture to show you what can happen. I had wrapped a wire around the trunk of this tree and forgotten about it, as you can see the tree has now grown around the wire and is completely encapsulating it. There is also now a good chance that eventually this wire could choke off and kill all the top growth of the tree. This wouldn’t be the end of the world to me, because two good scaffold branches exist below this point, but it would be a set back. What I should have done is loosened the wire every year, I forgot to.

But I mention all this to illustrate what can go wrong if you use the wrong material, like wire (or even synthetic ropes), to stake your tree. The tree can and will grow into it. and it can permanently harm the tree. The one thing the first picture in this post did right was to run their wire (which they shouldn’t have been using to begin with) through a bit of tubing to provide it some padding, but over time even that tubing is not big enough to fully prevent the tree from growing over it because padding or not, it is still on there tight.

So, now that I’ve written you a book on what not to do, let me write you a couple sentences on what to do.

To properly stake a tree place two stakes one foot away from the trunk on either side of the trunk in such a way that they’re perpendicular to the prevailing winds (which means typically one stake on the north side, and one of the south side, unless you’ve got abnormal wind directions in your area). Tie the stakes to the tree using something broad and flexible. Specialty tree ties are made, but old nylons work great. They’re stretchy, flexible, and broad. Then, leave your stakes on no more than one year. But before you do any of that, think if you really need to stake at all, and if the tree is less than six or seven feet high, the answer to that is usually no.

Related posts:

1. Pruning a Pear Tree
2. Split Trunk Repair Update
3. Pear Tree Down

So, bad knews. I thought last weekend was the end. I allowed myself to say “Wow, no late frosts this year, awesome!” Boy was that stupid. Now, tonight, they’re predicting a late frost.

I bought some hardy kiwi vines in 2004 and they have grown quite a bit. Had I known in advance I would have bought the variety called “Michigan State” which was developed a mile from my house and so probably can handle my climate better, but I didn’t know that variety existed. So the ones I have are very vulnerable to late frost. What is worse, this is the first year that they’re blooming, the flower buds are set, I’m quite excited. Maybe it would have bloomed in previous years if not for frosts (that happened a little earlier than May 17th!). So this frost doubly annoys me because it could prevent my first fruit.

So, since these are big sprawling vines, I tied tarps over them, what else can I do? In vineyards they have gas fed torches and literally run the fires all night. I thought about doing that with my tiki torches or my grill, leaving it on low all night, but decided not to. Small plants can be protected with unside down jars, pots, buckets, even cardboard boxes. You can use a styrofoam row cover like I posted about previously. Big vines and trees though that are marginally hardy you need to think of microclimates. In hindsight I wish I had planted this vine in a better microclimate.

A microclimate is a small area that might functionally be a zone or two warmer than where you normally would be. For instance if you lived in zone 5, you might be able to build a (or use a natural) microclimate that is really zone 6 or maybe even 7.

The first major factor in creating a microclimate is wind. The simplest microclimate can be created by blocking wind with a house or a fence or a series of trees. If there is a shrub or small tree marginably hardy, planting it really close snuggled in with other trees or shrubs (evergreens preferably) will shelter it and help it survive the cold.

The second factor is sun exposure, southern exposures (in the northern hemisphere) will be warmer, as well western exposures. An area that is sheltered to the north and east and exposed to the south and west is about as warm as you’ll get, and is the microclimate where my onions are.

The third factor is going to be radiant heat. Buildings radiate heat, as do rocks, stones, bricks, concrete, or pavement that absorb sunlight during the day and release it at night. A plant planted along a building’s foundation benefits both from heat from the building as well as the wind break.

The fourth factor is water. Liquid water does not go below 32 degrees (salinity aside), else it’d be ice. So a body of water (anything, big or small) that is liquid in effect provides a buffer. Pools, ponds, streams, lakes, all can warm the nearby air in winter (or fall or spring) and cool it in summer. The general rule is that water moderates. You will get more of a benefit if the wind typically blows across the water to reach you, so for most of the US if you live on the east side of a lake you’re warmer than people who live on the west side. The bigger the body of water the larger the affect is to the temperature. Water also raises ambient humidity, and humid air retains more heat so cools down slower at night.

The final factor is elevation. Wind trumps elevation so being on the top of a hill, exposed, is no good. But, cold air does sink, and a garden on the side of a hill with a slope down and away can receive some benefit and avoid a frost if the temperature only gets down to 31 or so. So, so long as you are sheltered still, a raised garden can and does provide some temperature protection if the cold air has somewhere to sink to.

If you look around your house you may see some microclimates already. If you’ve got the same species of plant in different locations pay attention to when they break dormancy, when they leave out, or when they bloom. The ones that do so first are in a warmer microclimate.

Had I known about the marginal hardiness of my vines I may have planted them elsewhere, such as on the south side of my house, someplace less exposed. There isn’t room near them for a water garden, a big one, but I could put in a well sized one, and I may.

Sometimes I go to the nursery and see plants I know are not hardy here (like blue atlas cedars, le sigh) and I’m always both tempted to buy one put it in a microclimate and pray, and tempted to swear at the people for trying to sell a plant that isn’t hardy here. But if you find yourself in such a situation, think of microclimates, and maybe, just maybe, you might have a spot in your yard that’d work.

Related posts:

1. Early Onions and the Miracle of Microclimates
2. Squash, Frost, Babies, and Kiwi
3. My New Mini Greenhouse

I am a man of science. I don’t believe in anecdotes, and having an analytical mind and having been exposed to rigorous scientific study in college when I was a research assistant in a lab, as well as of course the academic work in college, I’ve always looked at things scientifically, and today I’m going to look at pressure treated lumber.

Many people and sites and magazines will say you shouldn’t use pressure treated lumber, it is bad and will leach dangerous chemicals like arsenic into the soil and it’ll get in your plants and give you cancer.

Okay, there are a lot of assumptions there, and assumptions are bad.

I’m sure we all know the story of fish and mercury right? Mercury gets in the water and the fish drink the water, and since mercury and other heavy metals do not get metabolized, they can permanently build up in fish flesh (this is like lead poisoning in humans). Then predatory fish eat the little fish and they get even more mercury build up. Then humans eat the predatory fish and we get mercury poisoning.

So why can’t the same thing work with plants and treated lumber? Well you have to assume the lumber leaches dangerous quantities of dangerous compounds into the soil, then you have to assume that the leaching travels adequate distance in the soil, then you have to assume that the plant roots take up the compounds and do not metabolize them (remember, plants metabolize many dangerous compounds, house plants clean our homes of dangerous carcinogens) into some other compound. Then you have to assume that the compound is stored in the part of the plant that we eat and at dangerous levels.

There are a lot of assumptions, and just one break in the chain breaks the risk.

CCA lumber contains chromium, copper, and arsenic. Chromium isn’t that toxic and only if we inhale it. Copper isn’t toxic to mammals, and in fact it is used in some skin creams and whatnot. Arsenic is the bad one, a known carcinogen, something to be avoided. Did you know the Romans used to use it as makeup? But people didn’t live long back then anyways.

The truth is arsenic is everywhere, it naturally occurs in soil and water and we eat small amounts of it everyday. The type in CCA wood (inorganic arsenic) is more toxic than the natural types, but just for reference, it is already in the food you grow.

According to this article, which is an excellent source. Studies have been done showing most leaching only occurs during the first rainy season, and that it doesn’t leach more than a few inches from the wood. Then, most plants do not take it up from the soil, the ones that do in only small amounts, and the arsenic is stored in the parts we do not eat. For instance carrots grown in a control bed had 0.05 parts per million arsenic, those in a bed with CCA lumber had 0.11 parts per million, a doubling, but still a very small amount, and carrots were one of the worst (root vegetables in general were the worst since that is where the plants store arsenic).

So, is CCA lumber safe? Well, you can leave it out for one year letting the initial leaching get over. Then you can build your beds and line it with plastic sheeting or roofing fabric or some other membrane to stop leaching, and you can not plant root vegetables in it or near the sides of it where the leaching take place.

All told, by looking at the science, I do not think anyone needs to worry about growing vegetables in CCA lumber beds. Sure, you could use cedar, and pay 8x the price (if you can even find cedar in a 2×10 or 2×12 which is my preferred size), but CCA would be fine.

Should you go out and buy CCA pressure treated lumber to build your raised beds? Well no, you can’t. You see, despite the tiny safety risk, CCA pressure treated lumber was banned for consumer use by the EPA in 2003. Any pressure treated lumber manufactured for consumer use after that date has no arsenic in it. The ban all told was a better safe than sorry issue grown out of kids touching/playing on/eating off of/ CCA playground equipment, not garden contamination, but nevertheless, for the last 5 years pressure treated lumber has not contained arsenic.

So, for those worrying about it, don’t. Save yourself a few hundred dollars and get pressure treated lumber for your raised bed or other garden projects. It is cheaper than cedar, and worry free. Even if it still contained arsenic it’d be pretty safe, but it doesn’t even have that small risk anymore.

Related posts:

1. Video: How to Build a Raised Island Bed with Retaining Wall Bricks
2. Water Garden in Spring
3. Water Garden in Winter

So, last night I made some skillet apples, and as I do normally I got out a brown paper bag to put all the scraps into for taking out to one of my compost tumblers. I like this because the bag adds brown material the same time I’m adding the scraps (which are considered green) so it helps with the ratio.

It was late, and cold, and windy though, so I thought to myself “Hey, I’ll just put this bag outside on the back porch on the deck and run it to the composter tommorow.”

A few hours later my wife comes upstairs and says our cats are being well enterained by an opossum just out our (mostly glass, which is why the cats could see) back door. It was sitting there just a foot from our door and us, not a care in the world, eating the apple peels and cores.

So, not going to do that again, but you can look at it a couple ways, the opossum needed to eat too right? But do you really want a wild animal hanging around your small yard looking for food scraps? What if you have a family pet that goes outdoors, it could be bitten and have to be put down. The animal can also attack your food crops (if this was summer) or get into your garbage, or eat all your bird seed, or eat ornamentals even, plus, opossums are ugly.

It only took 3 hours maybe for the opossum to narrow in on that bag of stuff (and I’ve put bags out before without a problem, so it wasn’t as if this guy was already established in our yard).

This is why people who aren’t living out in the woods or on a farm or something anyways, people like us who live in a fairly densely populated area, should not run open compost piles. Imagine how many critters I’d have if I had an open compost pile? Raccooms, opossums, and yes, SKUNKS! Imagine that. Instead, I have 1 fully enclosed compost bin that is even on large concrete stepping stones so that nothing can burrow up into it, and 2 fully enclosed compost tumblers. Compost tumblers may be more expensive than freeform piles or large open bins, and they hold less in the end, but they work faster, and not having a bunch of nuisance critters living in your yard is a big plus. The last thing anyone wants is a skunk to take up residence under your deck because your composting kitchen scraps are readily accessible, after you pay $200 to have that skunk removed, a tumbler suddenly looks like a bargain.

And yes, I grew up in the country, in a house in the woods, and we had shotguns to deal with nuisance animals trying to live in our garage, under our deck, etc. Just for the heat and catfood. But, that too, is not an option here in town.

Related posts:

1. San Francisco’s New Composting Law
2. Smelly Soupy Poopy Compost Tumbler
3. Fledging Robin Visitor

Planted in 2003 this tree was getting fairly large, and bore a good deal of fruit this year. It was around 7 feet when planted in 2003, and now probably reached close to 20. The base of the trunk was maybe 5 inches in diameter, overall, starting to become a fairly big tree.

So I walk out there and as you can see in the picture about 6 feet of the top of the central leader had been broken.

We had no rain (notice the brown grass, we had a mini drought at the time) we had no wind. So my thought was a critter had climbed the tree to get at the fruit and the extra weight had caused it to snap. We do have a couple fat ground hogs, so I figured such a thing was possible.

But then, I thought, why would the animal climb to the top of the highest part of the tree instead of going after the low hanging fruit?

So in the end, I decided that this was likely caused by the fruit itself, and that seems odd. Pears, of course, evolved growing fruit, and so the tree should be capable to hold up the weight of it’s own fruit, right? I guess not.

So, for those of you with younger fruit trees out there, be mindful of the weight of that fruit, it can cause damage.

Related posts:

1. Pruning a Pear Tree
2. How to Stake a Tree
3. Apricot Tree Update