White Washing Fruit Trees | Summer Sunburn | ‘The Busy Gardener’ – TOUR | Backyard Orchard Culture

[Music] you've got a lot of success stories here and hopefully my reaganism is going to add even more success stories it's a rescue mission it's a rescue mission three two one st. all right my name is Charles Malky biologist and play an expert with Aubrey organics where we grow cool plants and today we're here with Cameron a crummy of the busy gardener and he got my attention in just the last few months and I'm so glad he's here visiting with us as he has mastered his understanding of white washing for well over a decade where his ivory organic says YouTube channel was found in the 2015 sharing on some demonstrations with you in 2016 and this guy here has been doing it for over 10 years on his property as you're gonna see with all these different fruit trees and his urban forest and we're surrounded by I'd say at least 50 or 100 fruit trees yeah I think like 60 and last count and out of curiosity what motivated you where did you get that inspiration or under store the understanding of white washing your fruit trees well this all started when I planted a few trees in my front yard I was watching these Dave Wilson nursery videos with Tom Spellman and Tom's like resident expert on YouTube or at least in terms of fruit trees he's helped sell millions and millions of trees and his instructional stuff he talked about the importance of whitewashing trees and so he's really the one that got me turned on to the idea in terms of protecting him by doing that that's awesome Tom Spellman is the master and the authority on especially bare root fruit trees throughout the country the deep Worcester nursery is the number one distributor of every fruit trees in the country Tom Spellman is a spokesperson and how fantastic it is is it that Cameron lives just a mile away from Tom Spellman's home I've seen him driving on the street before it's so funny did you say oh there goes Tom again that's cool so talk about location and before we tour all these fruit trees that are thriving so beautifully well your climate here is quite quite unique we're in the city of Rancho Cucamonga and your summers are quite hot how hot well we set a record this last year I think we'd a couple of days of a hundred and fifteen degrees in the summer so we're easily at a hundred degrees on a bunch of days during the summer usually in the high 90s but we get pretty warm but kind of a little bit desert ish out here so you can have I'm guessing several weeks with over 100 degrees yeah we can I know the last year we had that record spell that affected all of Southern California you said it is 115 Yahoo consecutive days and that affected avocados it affected a lot of food throughout Southern California when we had that record extreme heat but it's consistently over 100 degrees for weeks it on end during the summer here and then he got winters that are how cold we get down into the low 30s thankfully we don't dip to low below I'd not seem to go below 30 but it gets oh it gets really cold compared to a San Diego that gets you know low of 50 or whatever it is we get pretty cooled so it can dip just a couple of degrees below freezing but not much more than that yeah thankfully so when we're talking about when I say winter winter nighttime low temperatures not the daytime afternoon high that might bounce back quickly in the morning back into the 50s or 60s okay with that being said let's do the tour my favorite tree um just by the look of it is this magnificent reddish purple looking tree what is it this is a spice Z next to plum it's a nectarine plum hybrid that favors the nectarine so it's not from being so dramatic I've never tasted it but you said it's also oh it's sweet like sugar it's insane so an amazing addition to the food forest I think everyone should seriously consider it and let's take a look within the tree and again I told you they cameron understood the value of white washing but you can see that that tree trunk has been painted and he's been continuously maintaining the health of the plant by whitewashing periodically I'm guessing how often do you probably every couple of years when I first planned I washed all of these and then I think I've come through maybe these are in the ground for years okay so come through twice totalled why washing probably due for another one I see space on the bark there yeah as he continues to grow you reapply the whitewash and again being those concept you learned from Tom Spellman there's actually an educational lesson with Tom Spellman a couple years ago I attended a lecture where he said that from the time you pick up a fruit tree from the nursery yes then there's definitely the potential for sunburn that's why we talked about whitewash earlier so if I was going to plant this tree today the first thing I would do is whitewash any of the structure that faced that south southwest and if you're aggressively pruning a tree to an open center style you want to protect all that growth or all that that bark that's exposed to the southwest sunburn in Southern California is a muscle you're not sunburned protecting your trees you can definitely be losing trees or have trees that are that are weak in response to that absolutely absolutely especially subtropical material especially avocados absolutely happen sure yeah so you know what what should be part of your basic maintenance routine for any type of routing material just something that you know and all you want to do is get a light coat of protection on it I just want a nice light coat on there that's going to protect against sun damage for that first season and you can you can have sun damage in a matter of a couple of days if I took it out the bottom of this you know say Laverne nursery going out of kados can't fight in north-south roads those trees are each row is shading the next row each tree is shading the next tree so all of a sudden that tree gets pulled out of the nursery row and sent to a retail nursery and picked up and now I take it out and send out the middle of a yard where it gets a hundred percent sun exposure well now you've opened that tree up to damage to me so the day you plant a tree should be the day you wipe off that tree you can get damage in a very short period of time yeah that's how I was able to talk to Charles about a product that he has out here exact technique and then I made up a patient where I had really great success I hadn't been doing it enough and having a chance to talk with him I try on this product after actually after this meeting last year yeah it worked very well yeah so those of you that are concerned with whitewash there's your fantasy yes where it was in a group its entire life from the time it was created and grafted and even at the nursery it's always surrounded by those other fruit trees when you bring it to the home garden if we can just take a couple of steps back you can see for example this I'm assuming apple yeah Honey Crisp apple so we've got a Honey Crisp apple tree over here you can see again also it's been whitewashed but now it's standing alone all by itself in the middle of your food forest and that tree trunk is exposed to you here we are not going in the summer 14 hours of daylight and if our skin is out in the Sun 14 hours a day we're gonna spend more time cooking in less time you know working on our health and so by whitewashing it now that plant can focus more on growth and creating that canopy and ultimately flowering and fruiting and giving many more years of life and health to not just itself but hopefully your family as well yeah especially on a young tree because it doesn't have the same canopy that's gonna help to protect all of these in our branches and structure I mean each of these in our branches are going to be what I rely on to be strong and healthy and support fruits that later so keeping them protected now is going to set me up for strong fruit five years from now as these really thicken out and end up being the main structure of our tree that's great well on the theme of the spicy nectar plum right yeah so you've also got other related plants next to it what's this over here with the red fruit this is the Arctic star nectarine so check out all of these fruit over here look at the beautiful colors totally loaded how this branch is about the break maybe consider supporting it soon yeah and tell us a little bit about it I know this is another Tom Spellman unless and man we're pitching him heavily here right now but what is this concept where you've kind of gripped because as we continue to tour throughout his urban food forest you'll notice that there's a theme within all the different parts of your backyard explain what it what is this concept that you've done yeah so this is essentially called like a backyard orchard cultures what they call it and the idea is that rather than in the space of where you've got one tree normally you'd have one traditionally you'd have one gigantic tree maybe a plum tree or something and that plum tree when it is ready is gonna have 900 plums and those plums are all gonna be ready within a single week and then they're all gonna fall on the ground or you're gonna go pick them the idea here is that in the space of a single tree we're able to plant two or three or four trees that have successive ripening and they're kept smaller so that way rather than having one plum tree that's giving me 900 plums at once makes that I've got you know it's gonna this one tree will give me me me like this nectarine will give me 150 fruit for these couple of weeks and then a month later one of the other ones in the group are gonna give me another 150 fruit so he says the idea is that they don't all ripen at one time you get some variety so more dense planting yes you're looking for successive ripening so you know how to find varieties that ripen in different months like for example May June July August night four months of fruit this is probably the largest tree by the way that we has in his food forest as we continue the tour and he's kept pretty much all the fruit you can see within arm's reach I can reach the very top of the tree even even if these crude I'm gonna be able to bend it down to pick the fruit off well the fruit is all on last year's growth so all the flowers happen in a range where he pruned it Within Reach this is all the new growth for this year there's no fruit on the new growth if he allows it to continue growing and it doesn't prune it back by next winter and before the next flowering season next spring then he's gonna be able to keep the brew all within a manageable reach and this is a valuable lesson for those trying to just benefit I'm gonna have you repeat the words what is the concept again of having on the success of ripening oh so this whole concept is a backyard orchard culture backyard orchard culture so the way to sum it up is that the backyard grower like me are like you as different has different aims or goals than the commercial grower who's gonna plan nine hundred or something they want the trees to get as big as they can do and they want all the fruit to be harvested at one time so that would the way they can go through one time with the tractor but I don't want all that and the goal is also on the same concept is that each trees supposed to reach maximum just fruit production maximum yields and so they're spaced accordingly and and and prune for maximum fruit yes that's not the goal here no no we we want fruit that we're gonna be able to come out and pick regularly yeah I'm over a growing season a few months yep and also again no we're not coming out here with tractors I don't want to bring a ladder out here so the idea is that I can just whatever I can reach is what I can pick and that's where I keep it prune to that's fantastic well let's continue the tour to another part of your garden cool so here we are now in the apple orchard and here we have three varieties of apples planted close to one another with that method again known as the I gotta say man do it do it backyard orchard culture yes and that method known as the backyard orchard culture again you can see that they've been densely planted closely to one another and explain the varieties to us yeah well we have that success of ripening so here the first that's going to go and that's already ready here is this Dorset Golden Apple you got to check these out yeah we're the beginning of June and these are gonna be ready within a couple of weeks okay here we have a Fuji apple and there's some apples we can see within the canopy yeah yeah so you got Fuji and then what's over here this is Granny Smith wonderful and Granny Smith is a few months out this is probably gonna be ready at the very end of summer or in a long line or close to like November yeah on my property so you've got these three varieties of apples all spaced months apart ripening successive ripening wise and again we're talking about whitewashing I want to kind of emphasize because hammering enters this concept well over ten years ago you can see all of the tree trunks have been whitewashed but you may need to come a little bit in towards the center of this canopy here and you'll see over in this area that there's some girdling happening to the tree and it looks like maybe some animal chewed here on the bark you can see that it was protected there's no protection in this area and if you come in a little closer you might even see some tunneling from either so possibly some beetles or termites that have come in at this point and if we come up a little higher in the structure you can see again there's some more girdling damage that's happening up in this canopy so these are all areas that afterwards we're gonna come through and whitewash and offer protection with the ivory again x300 on plant guard that has these seven essential oils that will serve as a repellent keeping beetles and termites from potentially entering this is now exposed wood and causing further damage to the structural support of the tree well that's continue now to another part of the food forest well now let's add to your plum yeah right family yeah Pub family is a good way to say it every we're gonna start here with these that are called blue Aries blueberries are essentially a plum cherry hybrid people think those are two very different fruit but they're all part of the same prunus family and so they're all you all can generally pollinate each other I'll get some sort of unique fruit so yeah we have a sweet treat blue airy candy heart blue Aaron you gotta come a little closer to these trees because they're actually shaped as a tear drop part on these fruits so it's a begin plum and cherry is the combination of this particular fruit and let's continue so this beauty this giant beauty over here is a santa rosa plum it's the most vigorous tree in this entire water look at the trunk is just five times aside the other trunk in this entire place very strong very well established and I'm guessing two three four hundred fruit on this tree easily so I hope you're gonna capture the fruit as we continue the tour we got this little baby over here ya have a little baby that hasn't actually been whitewashed okay shame on me well we're gonna do that now there you go and so this is a emerald drop pluot so a pluot is a plum apricot hybrid that is really tasty and ends up retaining a green fruit even when it's ripe it's gonna be green that's wonderful and then the one behind you is loaded with yeah this is a champ tonight if somebody's gonna plant the pluot I think especially for a backyard this is flavor grenade pluot and the reason I like flavor grenade is one it tastes exceptional and the other is that the fruit hangs on here for six weeks all that's phenomenal so if you're wanting to come out and just pick through periodically not all at one time this is a wonderful fruit and another Dave Wilson Thomas Bowman educational lesson is that typically the stone fruits ripen in a very short period of time give me one week two weeks you're seeing this one here it can hold on for up to six weeks yeah and that's very valuable so that if you've got a ton of fruit as you've got in this case you can enjoy them over a greater period of time instead of just being completely in a dealing with just too much and too short a period of time and a lot of it goes to waste yeah exactly and you're able to eat it fresh as opposed to happen to do that really labor-intensive jamming at freezing yes this is a just a new tree in our orchard here this is a cotton candy a priam so it's kind of a it's a related to those but this favors the apricots its apricot plum hybrid so the atrium is a pre pour apricot come for the plums a premium cotton candy check out the foliage of the new growth that kind of does look cotton candy ish as well look at the color it's quite unique compared to the apricot with the reddish new foliage that eventually then turns green looks to be an apricot but it's not what is this this is probably the weirdest named one in the entire thing it's called a peak autumn and this has peach apricot plum parentage and so that's amazing the fruit in practice has ended up being more of a neighbor and the others but it's it's really a unique piece of fruit yeah it says peach plum and apricot yeah all in one and all of these fruits that we kind of just visited it all came from who was the inventor of like this concept of blending fruits together yeah so Floyd's Uyghur zinger so I figured we'll give him credit yeah you know creating all these amazing flavors he's been doing it since like the 1940s or something he's in his 90s now really incredible stuff so something also important to know is that none of these are like genetically modified that's very important all they're doing is speeding up what would naturally happen in nature with pollinating that's an important lesson so even though we talked about apricot plums being like mixed yeah we're not doing GMO as you know or genetically modifying the genes as would happen for example by taking the genetics of a bug yeah and infusing it you know with the genetics of a plant which is what they're doing with some sciences just mixing things that would never otherwise mix these are basically an accelerated hybridization which is basically a cross-pollination between what would otherwise happen naturally in nature it's just on under controlled scientific conditions yeah and that's how we're creating such amazing flavors and reading quality fruit trees and again I'm just taken away by that first tree that we visited beyond their nectar plum then that deployment reddish purple foliage and fruit yeah quite spectacular so found a tree here and that's not doing quite so well in the busy gardener urban garden yeah what is this over here there's a Hass avocado I sure it's a Hasson other Hass according to mr. Haas is it's a Hass avocado with a hassle yeah hard to get over that when you've heard Haas for your whole life Center yeah yeah this has been really struggling ever since I put it in we think we may have some drainage issues in this area which have not helped but I've planted it above grain and I and just looking at it I think the sun's beat up on it on the positive and when it does come to avocados its importantly trying to keep at least the top 1/2 inches of the root ball sometimes above grade and there's see here with Cameron he's got a nice layer of wood chips which helps in so many beneficial ways in the summer helps keep the soil cooler and the winner is offering insulation keeping the soil warmer and also has these wood chips break down it's feeding the under soil biology which includes the earthworms beneficial bacteria the beneficial Michel Raizel fungal hypha that's creating this network not just between this tree but all the other fruit trees within the garden but there is a stress happening and we're gonna talk again about the value of whitewashing which we've already discovered but whatever reason you didn't do this one tree and take a look at what I call third-degree sunburns and when you come in I can tell you from now that this is the southside of the plant which is the side that's getting the most Sun so the sun's rising up in the sky it's never directly over the plant being in the northern hemisphere as we are here in you know the United States but anything in the northern hemisphere it's the south side of your plant that's gonna get the most Sun and you can see that on this side we're seeing all of this brown tissue and this is not just you know from age and getting developed is when we go to the other side you're gonna see that it's quite green as you come down you can see all this cracking happening a little further down this branch has given up and died going out which we're going to be pruning soon and again more cracks the cracks are not just on the surface we're talking about even the underlying cambium tissues are drawing out and burning resulting in the stresses in the struggle for this plant to even stay alive on its ends so we're gonna be whitewashing and offering the street now protection or clothes from the weather extremes of the hottest days of summer as well as in the winter it offers the plan also insulation from the coldest nighttime low temperatures as well from what they call winter Sun scald and if we come around back I just want to share with you now if we reverse this now we're on the north side of the plant and I don't even know which way I'm not even asking or even pulling out a compass but I can tell you North is this way because this side of the plant is not burnt it's still owned it's still all green true North right there so Cameron is confirming that I have got my job if you're right just by looking at the tree you can see that this side is all green relative to the other side that's all crispy Brown and charged so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna begin whitewashing so now here we are one other thing I want to share with you if you take a look here at the tree trunk we're talking about again the underlying wood is exposed as well it's burnt so badly that the Bark's even starting to peel off in a couple of places along the tree trunk and now we're gonna protect it using the ivory organics three and one plank guard and it's Omri listed here for use in organic agriculture and you can see it protects the plants from summer sunburned insects and rodents and for use under roses fruit nut trees ornamental trees and shrubs pretty much versatile for all plants to basically curb weather extremes and an offer of insect and rodent protection as well so if you ever seen any girdling happening around your plant which is a big phenomenon up in the Bay Area we're apparently Roger chewing on trees year-round this will offer protection to basically keep rodents from growing in the tree the first thing we're gonna do here is I noticed that you've got a branch in up is dead completely dead it's dried all the way back from the tips down to the tree trunk and when it comes to pruning dead branches you don't have to wait for winter time to be pruning something in do year-round so I'm gonna have you being at your tree have the honors of let me say this hurts me more than it hurts you it's actually helpful to the plant so that it's not wasting any of its resources attempted to go in two directions that are otherwise dead now it can put its water and other mineral resources too now benefiting the other more healthier parts of the plan what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go with the three one plant guard here and then let's prepare the product so here we are now on since you've got the apron on not that it's necessary but it looks good yeah but if once I start going like this you know you can't stop me the aren't half and splitter splatter on so we're basically gonna take the organic base powder I'm gonna read the ingredients while you open that up it includes iron oxide which controls the color this one here is white but it's also available in colors brown and green so you can do things that I may be more in line with whatever the aesthetics are instead of just having a white looking tree and then it also includes limestone Mike milk silica methyl cellulose diatomaceous earth the value of the diatomaceous earth is also another insect repellent property that's in there limestone and mica were the way it was done traditional like thousands of years ago before paint and talking about paint I just want to say what if you paint your house 100 years later it still paints on your house but if you put paint on the trees within one two to three years as you already said like every two years you got to repaint your plants but all that pain you put on your trees is now in your soil it's gonna take a long time for that to break up yeah that's the reason I'm for doing the whitewashing gardening concept that was known thousands of years ago but doing it in an organic way so have you had the powder to the pan and while you do that I'm just going to share it there's also the white washing cars that can also be done and are ready to use spray that can and the directions on the back we can actually spin a row clay I can share with you that the foliar spray this one pipe makes up to five gallons of this red and you spray and you can also make your own spray bottles by simply taking one half to one third of the teaspoon of the powder to a spray bottle such as this this is 23 ounces and this here is to get like the leaves and the harder to brush on on areas of the plant you can just now do a total plant whitewashing protection before you had the oil I was like to add water next and I'll add water about halfway and you can now add the oils or I'm just going to start mixing Wow how does that smell yeah it smells really nice it smells like a diffuser inside my house sometimes I always say it smells like an Italian kitchen yep again the the oils that are in there beside from castor which is not the most pleasant smelling but the rest of all more amazing cinnamon clove garlic peppermint rosemary and spearmint got all of those good seam in the rosemary but all those plants are naturally insect repelling plants as well as aam rodent you know repelling plants as well so all that's going in there and now we can start mixing it and if you've got less water it'll have more of a paste consistency when you apply it [Music] but the bowl when applying it is to have something the consistency of about a 50% latex paint so this is gonna go go on quite watery and this is gonna allow you to extend the product over a lot of trees here in your garden not just this one so let's get to whitewashing and protecting your house avocado tree so it's important to protect the tree trunk and also all of the primary branches coming off the tree trunk because although the branches that are going to support your hopefully many decades of group production and we want to make sure that that heart is protected and not suffering with these unfortunately third-degree burns that are happening here but even if it's a first-degree burn or even not a noticeable burn we just don't want that plant investing resources towards sunburn in the summer Sun scald in the winter or just dealing with any pest issues if we can protect the heart of the plant it's just gonna produce that many more years and decades of success for itself and hopefully for your family and friends to enjoy as well especially avocados avocados are one of the most sensitive of fruit trees when it comes to summer sunburn especially and another one that's in you know up there is citrus trees but all fruit trees all plants in general even roses figs and so forth are all susceptible to getting burned especially when it's got an open canopy a very young canopy and until it creates that much larger canopy that naturally shades the understory of the plant you're gonna need to consistently whitewash your tree from year to year and the cool thing is once we do this just as with your other trees your plants going to be protected for a you know a solid year possibly even two years from the elements I'm really focusing on this these little areas where they have these third-degree burns in these holes where he's getting in through the through the trunk to the bark so you can see here we've probably used about a quarter inch maybe half an inch of the product so far on this pie five six foot tall avocado tree we've got a lot of product in a lo paint on all of these other unprotected whitewashed fruit trees here in your garden what I'm going to do next is I'm going to take the ready you spray and like I said you can take about a third to a half of a teaspoon of that powder and recreate your own spray bottle but I've got this on hand and now we can spray the leaves and all of those stems that would otherwise be too difficult get your brush in and you can see now we've got some sunscreen protection now on the leaves as well we can do that for the entire canopy of the tree as well and this is going to offer protection here we are now in June once it's on the leaves again we know that the brush on protection is going to be good for about a year the leaves it'll offer protection for about nine months so that's gonna take you well into summer and fall and you won't even have to reconsider doing this unless there's anything you grow up that you want to protect during any weather extremes as well so I had a lot of fun here at the busy gardener yeah you've got a lot of success stories here and hopefully every Guinness is going to add even more success stories it's a rescue mission it's a rescue mission thanks for sharing this wonderful opportunity with me and also all of our subscribers here at the ivory organics youtube channel for those of you that have not already subscribed be sure to subscribe and hit that push bell notification in addition to don't forget to go to the busy gardener with cameron he has been and i don't think we started off with this but i'm gonna share he's been on YouTube since 2006 and he's got a ton of valuable lessons there they've been bringing content and sharing their beautiful urban garden with those viewers and to get a lot of great advice and helpful hips and to continue seeing the growth and the success stories happening here at the garden be sure to visit again the busy gardener like subscribe and also hit that push bell notification because subscribing is not enough to get the notification of those videos as soon as they become released as always keep growing with ivy organics and how do you conclude and I like to stop my channel say whether you've got one tree in your orchard or 500 until next time stay busy stay busy happy gardening [Music] you

Channel: IV Organic

Views: 6,096

Rating: 4.8870058 out of 5

Keywords: iv organic, ivorganics, cameron akrami, the busy gardener, painting trees, paint fruit trees, organic paint, OMRI, zaiger genetics, dave wilson nursery, tom spellman, california rare fruit grower, CRFG, Zaiger Hybrids, Cot-N-Candy Aprium, spice zee nectaplum, nectaplum, pluerry candy heart, pluerry, Peacotum, santa rosa plum, backyard orchard culture, apple orchard, granny smith apple tree, dorsett golden apple, fuji apple, pluot, pluot tree, grow your own food

Id: XljOsWoZjVQ

Length: 31min 25sec (1885 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2019