 They're very fortunate to have the Hardy-Fruits Project Manager from the Carrington Research Extension Center, Kathy Wieterholt. And Kathy's going to tell us about all the fascinating research she does on so many different types of fruits. So let's welcome Kathy to the forum. Thank you. Good evening. Tom kind of stole my April Fool's joke. I was going to say, guess what? It's spring of April Fool's. On Sunday evening before the storm, I went out and I looked at the orchard. And the only snow was in between the grapes. It was kind of mound right in the middle of the trellis. And now, well, it's all over. And the snow's about twice as deep. So we have about 10 inches in Carrington, so a little more than the Fargo area here. So there's some nice dress. There's some nice dress. Well, as Tom said, I'm the fruit project manager at Carrington. And we'll talk about our cold climate fruits there. They're kind of neat, I think. Some you may know about, some you may not know about. And well, let's just get started here. Which way do I go here? Where's my computer? There? There. Hey, it's not moving. And it did just when I practiced. Here, how about this? It is not moving dives. Well, we'll do a little background in the meantime. So you know, I don't have a horticulture background. I'm actually a food microbiologist. I studied bacteriology. OK, what do I need to do here? OK, it was just sleeping. And anyway, when I moved to North Dakota here, and I've been doing microbiology and genetics for a long time, and then I've always had an interest in horticulture. I studied the books on plant ID when I was a kid. And I knew a lot of the scientific names of plants. And I took classes when I was in college. Just on my own botany and zoology and horticulture. I took a horticulture in my fifth year of college. And I didn't even know about horticulture. And now I do. And you know, I thought about changing my major. But I thought, no way, no way. I've already been in school for long. And then I went on to grad school in factuality. So I just had the opportunity when I came here to Carrington. And I have really loved every minute of it. And you shouldn't tell the research center, but I would do it even if I wasn't paid. And that's saying something is really fun. So let's look at the slide here. This is kind of the soil types of North Dakota. And Carrington is in this drift per region. It's this big, brown area. It takes up a lot of North Dakota. Really nice soils. In general, really nice soils. And a lot of our research has been applied to a lot of places in North Dakota. And certainly, the water conditions across the state. So this is a little overview of our orchard. It's six acres in total. But we share it with Woody Plant Research. Dr. Todd West is out there. And part of that is Dr. Herman doing all of their Woody Plant Research. And we've got just a lot of cool stuff out there. So we have a deer fence. That was kind of the square line around there. We have a deer fence to keep them out. And that really helps. We have a lot of them. So this is our research project. We don't just head for the front of it. We actually have research goals. In the beginning, we just wanted to identify different plants that would grow up there. We started with apples, plums, grapes, and Juneberries. Those were kind of selected before I even started. And I have to say, the project was the brainchild of our director, Blaine Schott. He really is interested in fruit. And he could just tell us from going and meeting around the state, going to the very first wine and grapes meeting at Carrington, that people wanted to know more about fruits than they were getting information for. So he said, we should do this here at Carrington. And then he ordered some of the first plants. And they hired me. And we got started on it. And I kind of ran with it. I planted that first stuff. And then that winter. And I have to say how poor we were, or at least for my project, because we're just funded internally. I worked for my own home that winter. I just went over to the internet and looked for stuff. I wanted to find things that were household, that were hearty, of course, in North Dakota, that grew really easily. We wouldn't have to spray them a lot. So there were a lot of things around the country and around the world that we aren't growing here in North Dakota that we could be growing. And so we will talk about these things tonight. We take notes of all these plants. In the spring, just see if anything has winter damage. And then throughout the year, if it has any kind of diseases. And then we harvest all the fruit, pick it. We weigh it. We weigh individual berries to check out that size. And then the fall goes along. Wait, wait, summer. Start measuring. And we look for vigor, which is, and we include height and width and any diseases and insects bothering the plants. So we do take a lot of notes on the plants. And it pretty much takes me until around January, sometime, to get all those notes entered in the computer and writing reports and stuff. So there's a lot of info there. So the other part of our project is to deliver information to the public. And I have to say, I'm pretty impressed when I look at the numbers. We didn't really start doing talks like this or presentations. Until about 2010, we started in 2006. And then 2007, we applied to a lot of other plants. And then about 2010 is when we started doing presentations and having field days. And since then, I believe my numbers are around 3,100 people that I've had contact with in the state and a little bit out of state, but mainly in the state. So we're pretty proud of that. We're pretty proud of all the work we've done with that. This is a list of all the fruits that we have. We have 14 different kinds of fruits. And when I say 14, we have cherry shrubs and cherry trees. So I count that as two. They do write them a little differently. And then we also have like half-daps and honeyberries. Kind of the same, actually different species. And their terms are kind of used interchangeably, depending on who you talk to. So let's get into the really cool fruits that we have here. I kind of condensed this down. We have 20 minutes. And then we're going to take questions. So if you've heard me talk before or you just have questions about any kind of disease or production issues that I don't talk about, just ask that. So I'll be really happy to answer that. The first truth we have here are pictures of black, red, and white currants. I'll talk a little bit about the red and white currants. You know, they're really popular in other countries. They're tart. If you like a tart fruit, you will like these. People eat them as just like a snack in the northern countries of like Norway or Sweden, maybe in Russia, things like that. They're really kind of a snack for people. They'll be on at somebody's table when you visit them at their house. Well, I don't know if we like those so much here in America. They're really too tart for me. They really kind of make my teeth hurt a little bit. But they make fabulous jelly and they make really fabulous wine. You know, I had some berries for two years and I didn't know what to do with them. And I gave them to our local winemaker and I said, just try these, all right? And then he brought me a bottle at Christmas and I took it home to my family and I tried it. Oh my gosh, it's red. It's delicious. It's really juicy. I really can't speak highly enough of it. It was really delicious. I actually had a second winemaker make wine from the currents and his wine is just as good. So I'm really looking forward to this, to seeing more red current wine. And then our third current is black currants. They're the most economically important across the world. You know, like I said, they don't really know about them here in the US, but back in like the early 1900s, we had about 10,000 acres. And I just, I've said this before and I still haven't looked it up. I remember 10,000 acres. And I don't know if that was from New York State or if that was from the US, but there were 10,000 acres of black currant somewhere in the US in the early 1900s. And they were all been moved by an eradication program. There's a disease called white pine blister rust and it came in from, actually it's from Asia, it migrated to Europe and then we actually brought in white pine seedlings to the US when we had to replant all those timber trees in the East, you know, we didn't have nurseries here in the US. So we brought in little trees from Germany and those trees had white pine blister rust on them. And so then it spread and it has to travel between the black currants and the white pines. And, you know, we get it here in Carrington and we have, I would say zero white pine trees in our area, but, you know, it travels on the wind. It can come into the current from 350 miles away. So kind of crazy, but it only travels a few hundred feet to the pine trees. So you can plant resistant varieties, there are several, more than several resistant varieties of currants that are resistant to this disease. And then it won't spread to the white pine trees. So I think they're really something you should try to grow. They're kind of funky in that the leaves and the branches have like a cat pee smell to them. You know, I hear everybody's looking at me, but that's just the leaves and the branches is not the berries. The berries taste like pine. They taste like a piece of two-by-four. But that shouldn't, that shouldn't slow you down either because actually that's kind of a fresh flavor. And when you make a jelly out of them, if you make a wine on the core, anything, that flavor is gone and they are just so rich and so juicy. And I'm telling you, you have to try to believe them. Raw, you know, I love them raw, but it is something you would have to get used to. I really think because it's sweet, it's tart and it's piney. And it's not cat pee, that's just a bonus on the plants. But the berries themselves are very delicious and just thinking about them, I'm wanting some. So, you know, they're pretty cool and they're really high in nutrients. They are really, really high. So, well, let's go on here because I'm running out of time so I'm not chattering about my plants. Hasgaps and high berries. We have these at the research center. They are native to more than areas around the world. They're native in Canada, they're native in Russia. They are native in Japan. So, they're also very helpful. They have extra skin and like, there's actually two berries together with a third skin that covers them. And a lot of these nutrients are right in the skin. So, that's really cool. They are zone two hardy. So, flowers when they're blooming early in the spring can withstand about 19 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if it gets kind of cold, they'll be all right. And then, what else? They're juicy, they're delicious. They're really, really good. And they, our soil is just fine for them. They can take clay, they can take pH eight. So, no problem. I would definitely try to grow these in North Dakota. A little hard to find, I would call your greenhouse and your local greenhouse or nursery and ask about them because I'm sure a lot of them have been hearing about them from me, probably. So, I hope they actually asked about them. But if not, there's information. I also have some sources on the handouts that I have. There's a source for these honeyberries. So, the one thing about them that is a slight problem is you have to net them. The birds think these are the best things ever and you will have to net them or you won't get a crop. That little bird in that picture was only about eight feet away from me and he didn't care, he really wanted those berries. So, we have these cherries. We have the Canadian hardy shrub cherries or dwarf hardy cherries. They're just a shrub, they're not a tree. They get about seven feet tall, maybe five feet wide, something like that. And you can, you know, improve the size in that and it can make them more open if you need to. This last year was, we planted in 2007 and it was the 2013 season. When I planted them, there was just a little six and this year we had 30 pounds, on average, 30 pounds of fruit per plant on the Carmine Jewels. So, they're just loaded and they're wonderful. There's several kinds available here in the US but in Canada, there's like six kinds. So, we're hoping to get more here in the US. That would be really nice. They're red all the way through so they're a little more helpful than a typical cherry. I mean, these are tart cherries, they're pie cherries but actually they have a lot of sugar. They can be actually sweeter than a sweet cherry. It's just that they have more acid. So, they're high in vitamin C and they will always be kind of tart but some of these are very, very good and nice for fresh eating. So, that's the cherries, june berries. We have five varieties of june berries and we have a hundred plants total. The varieties we have are from Canada. We have smoking, honey, smoking honeywood. Those are kind of older, I call them. Little more vegetal, little more chewy. When you eat them, then we have these big juicy varieties. We have patient, we have martin and we have JB 30 and they are really nice. They really are juicy. They're like a large blueberry. I mean, you can see the picture there. They're very nice and one thing with june berries, I think I included this on the slide here because they are native to North Dakota is they have native diseases. They're in the family, they're in the ACA along with apples and they can get a lot of diseases. I don't know if this is true or not but in Canada, I've been told you cannot grow them organically, you know. They get, see your apple rust pretty readily but we have not had much of a problem. You can see in this picture, let's see if this works here. I have to do it here but will it work on here? Oh, I can use my pointer perhaps. Yeah. Here's this picture with the netting and there's a little orange spot, that is cedar apple rust and then there's a little yellow leaf that is probably Entomous Florian leaf and berry spot. It's another fungal disease that gets on the plants and then those pictures, the picture of the flower down below. A little brown spots on the flowers are from thrips, little flower thrips, they chew on the flowers. So there's a lot of things going on with these plants. So, you know, you may need to apply some pesticides early on but I've been able to control this in your organic matter with organic pesticides so I feel pretty good about that and if you need more information, I would actually say just to email me or call me later because, you know, there's a lot of stuff to talk about in there but, you know, as far as growing these is for a you pick or something, I think jingles may be the way to go because there are a few around the state and they sell out every year and they command very nice prices for these. So I really think a jingler orchard might be some very nice plant to have as a you pick and then add some of these other fruits in too because, you know, if people try them, I think they're really gonna like them. We may not know about these fruits but if you try them, you're going to like them and you might be surprised. So, aronia, here is our aronia and, you know, I think aronia is a bit of a conundrum because it produces like crazy but the fruit doesn't really taste that good. It's just kind of neat, it's kind of vegetable, it's really tannic, it has a lot of tannins which means that when you eat them, they're really gonna dry your mouth out and I have, you know, I can't waste the berry and when the bird, when we're picking the fruit and the birds have maybe tried one, they just try one and they break the skin. I'll eat them. And I think maybe a dozen of these things. And then I have to go for a drink of water because they are stuck in my throat, they really dried out your tissues that much but, you know, they say you should freeze them before using them and cooking also helps. I've read that putting them with a dairy product, like if you put them with yogurt or ice cream or something like that, that will help remove that tannin because the casing binds to the tannin. The casing is approaching in the milk but that binds to the tannin. But definitely freezing them. I made some banana bread with them frozen and I thought, well, this isn't gonna work out but it was wonderful. I actually would serve it to you. It was very, very good. So, you know, they're growing Aronia like crazy. There are some big plantings, like even 10 acres in Nebraska and Iowa. There's some Wisconsin, probably some in Minnesota. There are, I don't know, between three and five plantings of maybe a couple thousand here in North Dakota. So, people are interested in them. I mean, like I said, they produce like crazy and you can generally grow them organically and that is what the market wants too is the organic Aronia. So, yeah, they're pretty interesting little guys. All right, here's our apples and plums. The side of our apples and plums. We have five kinds of apples and five kinds of plums. Our plums, you know, we've had this really spotty production on them and we had pretty good production this last year but then we got the plum percolios and they bit them and then they started, you know, they'll start to turn red while I pick those all off and I throw them away in the garbage. Try to reduce that and I haven't sprayed for them. So, some years you get more problems than others. They say chickens. Chickens will eat those little bugs. They'll shake them off the tree and the chickens will eat them. So, I don't have any chickens but maybe I'll pay them a few crows. I don't know. We do, I said we have five kinds of apples and the starred ones are hazen, honeycris and zestar and those have been really wonderful for us. I've been kind of down on hazen in the past because it gets kind of mushy and soft. Like, if you pick it and let it sit on your desk for two days the ground inside is mushy, it's terrible. But if you, you know, you watch how right they are on the tree and you pick them, just a nice time and then you get them right into the refrigerator. Well, I still last at least one month in good quality and then I'll start to go down but they're just a good, you know what I'm gonna say? They're a good average apple. They will bear pretty much every year. They make a nice pie, I've made crisps with them. They're good to eat. They're not spectacular but they are a good apple that produces every year. So, and then honeycris, we have had such good luck. We had about 400 pounds on the six trees we had this year and I really thinned them. First we pruned and then when they're just like little dimes, we pick off all but one fruit from the cluster and then about a week later maybe two weeks, I don't know about two weeks but a week or so later when they've gotten to like an inch when you can really see them and I've gone back through and picked off some of those really to reduce the number on the tree and still there was a lot of apples when we did that. I think we should maybe reduce maybe six inches per apple next year or four inches or something like that just to make sure but you know, by doing that you can maybe get your apples to produce every year but every other year. It's possible for some varieties, not possible for others. And then the last one I really recommend is Zepstar. It's an early apple. It is juicy, it's crispy, it's tender, it's really good like a Macintosh on steroids because you've had a good Macintosh, a really good one. So these Zepstar are really delicious. So that may be the end of my talk. Oh, there's a picture. There's an ideally pruned apple tree in your home orchard. Really clean out the inside of your tree and Tom actually came and helped me this year. When he counted anything, he told me to take down the height of these standard trees and I said, you'll come and like hold my hand because hold my throat or something. I just wanted to see how much damage I could really do to them. We can do a lot and then they look great. So yeah, open up your tree and really get them out there so it'll be good. And that tree was partly picked already when I took the picture. Don't think there's not any fruit on there. So all right, the end of my presentation, 20 minutes and 41 seconds here, this is good. Here's a picture of my little timer. This is a picture from the fall of our orchard. It is very beautiful. And those beautiful yellow leaves on the Juneberries at the end of the spring and we can very thought showing its ugly head in the fall. So all right, if there's any questions, I'll take them. Thank you. We have some questions already. First of all, about Juneberries. Person's heard, you shouldn't grow Juneberries if you get seeders or junipers nearby. Does that make sense to you? We shouldn't grow, should I repeat this or no, we're fine. Okay, okay. You know, you will see, I believe you will see the rust if you have junipers nearby. I don't know if the seeders are really part of it but for sure the junipers are. I only thought it was seeder alpha rust and I recently read that it's actually the junipers that do it. Perhaps a red seeder, it's really a juniper, I know. So that might be it. But you probably should be cautious. You're probably gonna see it. Right, okay. How about aronia, aka choked berry? Does it have seeds or pits? Aronia does have seeds, they're little apples. Aronia is, if you look at it, it's a little apple, like a delicious apple. It's got a big shoulder and then it's got kind of a small bottom and it's got that apple scar that you can totally recognize as an apple, you know, or in the rosé-ca family. So yeah, they have little seeds, just like an apple. Now, are there varieties of aronia that are non-edible? Other varieties, and these are, there are some red ones but I think the red may even be edible but I think there are some that are not edible. The ones that are going for fruit for eating like this they're actually a cross between mountain ash and aronia, Melana Cargo, which is from the US and they just found this out in the last year. They did genetic testing. So the wild aronia is here in the North America. I believe they're still edible but they're gonna be smaller and not as nice as these ones that are bred more for the fruit production. Yeah, you know, why would you want a non-edible type? I'm gonna just let the birds eat them when they're starving in January. I think they're not non-edible for the birds. They may just be too panic and horrible to us. No, even when they're hungry enough, like now. Okay, here's another question on apples. Can a zestar pollinate a honey crisp? I'll say yes if they bloom at the same time. I have to say I'm not really sure but if you live in town and there's crab apples anywhere in the neighborhood, a crab apple will pollinate your apple. That's the best pollinator, best pollinizer that there is but you just have to see if they bloom at the same time. Do you have any recommendations on who's theory cultivars? All right, I didn't talk about them. What we have some, I would recommend King Maki's Wedge. I would say it's the most playful and it's from the most disease resistant for us. So it's a very good variety. Okay, how about elderberries? What varieties are you considering and which ones do not work? Ah, our elderberries. You know what? The name varieties didn't work. The John, the York, the Adams and the Nova. They are the name varieties that are said to be the hurriest. None of them have ripened in Carrington. They kind of will get a red-black at the most but they just won't ripen fully. I have heard from people across the state that the ones they've gotten from soil conservation ripened just fine here in North Dakota. So I've asked people to send me little roots of the, you know, you can dig down in the soil where our stem goes in and you'll see like part of the root. If you could say, if you've got one that grows really well, produces a lot of berries, I would like to hear from you and I would like a piece of that plant. All we need is like five inches of root and maybe a little bit of stem so leaves can start growing and that's all it takes to start an elderberry. So. Okay, good. Here, how about raspberries? This person last year, Jackie, when picking the raspberries, noticeable looked like a white worm in the fruit. Ah, but this person already eats some. Ah, but evidently they survived. Any comments on it? For you, because you're like a world citizen eating insects. Those little worms are the five wings of soffa love and I'm glad you asked this because I did want to bring it up. It's a new fruit fly here in the United States for about the last five, seven years and it has just showed up in North Dakota. It was actually, I wasn't confirmed but it was in North Dakota in 2012. I had a little damage on our cherry plants and then in 2013 we had a lot of damage and I sent in fruit and I sent in a fly that I caught and it was identified here at the lab and it was by the wing of soffa love. This rotten little fruit fly it lays its eggs in fruit that is just starting to ripen. It's a color starting to change to its ripe color and then it lays its eggs in there. So by the time it's actually ripe the fruit is spoiled or the worm is growing in there. So especially in raspberries, they love raspberries and a group from the horticulture group is putting together a fact sheet from North Dakota and it will list pesticides that you can use in North Dakota in your home garden and I hate to say this but it's true because I hate to think about it, not say it but I hate to think about it but to control these fruit flies anywhere a fruit is grown where the fruit fly is that fruit will make you be sprayed every seven days, every seven days with a pesticide. And a lot of them are pyrethroid products. Organically you can use something called n-trux which is a spinosin and then you can use which is things Monterey Bay or Monterey Garden, something I can't remember the whole name of it but it has to be a spinosin and then you can also use pyganic which is the organic pyrethrin form. That pyganic is only good for like two days because it breaks down in sunlight, it just doesn't have any residual. So organically you are really challenged to keep these berries free from insects. So know that any place this fruit is grown where there are fruit flies, your fruit is being sprayed on a regular basis because you would not get a crop without that. So it's just something to think about. So raspberry and cherries for sure we know they love them here in North Dakota but they love many things. Is there a way to monitor for them or to trap them to see if they've found your planting? There is a way to monitor and what people are kind of using are like the one quart clear deli containers. You poke a few holes, oh sorry, there's no camera. You poke a few holes around it and you can find this online and I think this is cited in the statute that's coming out. You poke a few holes in it and you can even use apple cider vinegar. I got the best trapping when I dropped a few cherries into my apple cider vinegar. This is of course after the fact. And then there's another way they say it's the best is to use water, sugar and yeast and that will really attract these female fruit flies. And you put a little sticky card in there you can buy them on Amazon, that's where I got mine. Other plant will garden, your garden catalogs will have these little yellow sticky traps and you can see if their fruit flies sticks to them or you can just have the liquid and they'll fly down in the liquid and put a drop of soap in there to boost the tension and they say every week you should, at least once a week, but perhaps more, you should pour this out into a strainer or look at your sticky card and see if there are fruit flies on there and the time you ask is when you find one fruit fly. Cause you might guess the right term right, you find one and then there's a hundred million. So you start spraying when you find one fruit fly. So this is pretty depressing. You should have heard our heart call when we confirmed this here. We were all pretty down in the dumps. Kathy was weeping openly, that was very sad. If I was making, for Daniel who here in North Dakota cause it's our great winters and you know how many people are growing fruit so there's not a lot of pest pressure. So. Kathy let's be more optimistic change of topic here. How about we got a budget conscious gardener here. Do you need more than one half cap plant for production or is one good enough? Half cap, you do need more than one. You'll need at least two and you'll want more than two because they taste so good. They really do. Yeah, they're kind of like apple trees. You need two different varieties to pollinate each other and whoever you buy it from should be able to sell you the correct pollinizer. Kathy do you have tours of your fruit reachers center at Carrington? And if so, when? Of course we have tours. Our big tour is the field day in July. It's the second, I believe the second Tuesday in July. It's the 15th this year. Make sure that's right. I'm a challenger but it's a Tuesday. This year, very exciting. I haven't actually announced this in a press release but so you are the first ones to know. Dr. Bob Boyd is coming to our field day. He is the plant breeder from University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon and he's super famous. He helped release those cherries, those hardy cherries and the hash gaps. There's over two million hash gaps now planted up in Canada, probably a couple million pounds of cherry thing harvested every year. Like three fruit organizations have started because of his work. He's really influential. He's the northernmost and really only breeder of cold hardy fruit in North America. So he's doing a lot of good work. So pretty exciting. You should come see him. Okay, we will. How about Cathy, keep talking about organic pesticides but we don't know where to get them. You know what, the best source I can tell you and I guess I should say it's not an endorsement but it's where I look for them. If Johnny select seeds or Johnny seeds, they got a table in there, it can tell you the pest, it can tell you the pest size they like best and they try to go with no toxicity or organic products. So that would be a place to start. It would be a really good place to start Johnny's seeds. How about blueberries, do you have any recommendations on growing blueberries? I do, I do. You should move to Minnesota. Our weather is fine for blueberries but they hate our soil. Blueberries like a pH, a soil pH of four and a half to five. Our soil pH is eight, seven and a half to eight. No matter what you do, that plant will always be sad because the needs are not being satisfied. And I mean, you can try to change the pH but every spring when the water's table comes up and stuff, the water's just moving horizontally, it's gonna bring high pH water into your blueberries. The only thing you could do is a container or a raised bed and then when you water you would acidify your water a little bit and you would have special medium there in that bed, you know, something with peat moss and maybe sand, I'm not sure on the whole formulation but they do grow in sandy soils in northern Wisconsin. So and they love acidity, so peat moss, so. Right, forget blueberries. They only have gas, they only have gas. Don't even think about it. You can use that in place. How about plum cultivars? Do you have a couple favorite plum cultivars? Plums, you know, I think, I can't remember. I think pipe stone. Wait, let me go backwards. It's probably sleeping, but pambana. Pambana was one we've had a couple trees that have just been loaded and they've been very nice. The pambana pipe stone and Juanita are very good tasting plums. The toca is the best tasting one but ours is just like three quarters of an inch to an inch, it's really tiny. But again, we just have really spotty production. If I was to plant a new palm tree, I might try the new one from Dr. Brian Smith in the Falls, Wisconsin, and that is the black ice plum. I've heard good things about it but I haven't grown it myself. We're the tri, I think. You know, you need two cultivars to make it work. I mean, very good. That's how anizer may be a wild plum. Is a Saskatoon berry the same as a Juneberry? Yeah, Saskatoons and Juneberries, same thing. Sorry, okay, we'll keep talking now. You know, I know Regents, so a couple of our Regents is available from catalogs but that is kind of marginal and I don't think you'll be very happy with it as compared to some of these Canadian varieties. Okay, Cathy, how about, which apple tree was the one you pruned hard to get it to produce every year? Which apple tree? Well, all of them but Hazen just does produce every year. We prune it nicely. I would say I don't prune hard like a real orchard does. I normally really cut the tips of the branches back and stuff. I don't do that. But just try to prune for openness. My best advice is go for upward and outward. So something like this is upward and outward. You want to get rid of all kinds of low stuff but all apples will just be, apple trees will be happier if you prune. I just wrote something about this but you know, if you prune out a lot of the extra growth you're also reducing the crop load when you do that and you're running in more light. The apples you get will be bigger and they'll be fewer. So hopefully your tree will ripen them a little faster and then when you pick them and relieve that crop from the tree, your tree will just be a little more ready when winter really comes. It'll have a little more energy to try to produce a good crop next year. So. Okay, we're gonna have some rapid fire questions here. All right. Will a snow crab work as a pollinator for an apple? Yes. We need a boomerang at the same time. Yeah. What's your favorite Juneberry variety for North Dakota? Give us a couple. The three that we have that are really like our teesins which sounds like these things but it's teesins like Thomas, teesins, Martin, KB30 and I've heard good things about V8 or Northline. Jesse, how come you're talking about blackberries tonight? What's going on? Blackberries. Do you have a high tunnel? If you have a high tunnel, you could probably get them to ripen. I'm not totally sure but when you see them in catalogs, they say zone five, zone six. They are not really hardy here in our parts of North Dakota and they take a long time to ripen. So I think if you've had a high tunnel, you might even try the Primer Cane varieties. There's Prime Jim and Prime Jan and I think one more but I would actually try those or a formless variety if you had a high tunnel. Extra growing degree days. It's got three honeycrisp trees. Will they pollinate each other? No, not very well. I mean, you might get a little production but you need something else in the area. If someone's got a crab apple tree, that'll do it. Right. How about, oh, when I was a kid, we used to have wild growing. We called them blackberries but they had the consistency of Juneberries. They grew on the edge of the garden on small bushes. Do you know what they were? No. So on the bushes, did they have... Right back, did they have... Blackberries, right? Blackberries. Did they have thorns? Yeah, they had thorns on them. How about a black raspberry? It could be a black raspberry and with cotton, they grew wild and I do have some here that I planted a variety called Jewel. I say they'll kill you when you sleep because the new cane will grow like this high and then they'll push the ground way over there. So you need to look out for them. This person says blackberries will grow in the wild of North Dakota. Go for it. They grew in the wild in Wisconsin too but we never were able to grow them, those pain varieties in our garden. Maybe they should take some cuttings of them and send them to Kathy at Carington. I don't want me. We'll name the variety. I'm not going to wrong for anything. Okay, here we'll just do one more question. How about apricots or pears? And the varieties? Yeah, you know, I'm not familiar with the apricots and people do ask me about them and I think if you're a little farthest south maybe they might do a little better. You know, they say you might get a crop one, three, five years so we don't have them. You know, people are working. There's the Northern fruit explorers, North American fruit explorers, NAFACs. They're very interesting and they have an apricot group that's active and they're trying to put the apricots on hardier cleats roots to try to get them to bloom a little later and maybe be hardier so they're working on that. And what was the other one, pears. You know what, I'm interested in pears and I keep thinking I'm going to get some but I haven't. I've heard the varieties that do well are the summer crisps and is it luscious? Yeah, there's, is it Parker? The Uri golden spice, right. Those golden spice summer crisps, Uri, they're the ones for sure that do better here in North Dakota. I would say maybe we could try from St. Lawrence Nursery and they have something they say are extra hardy and they claim their zone four but that's a different zone four than North Dakota. So, I don't want to win. That's right. Okay, we want to thank you, thank you Kathy for your presentation. I know we didn't get to all everybody's questions but we will have an overtime session at 8.30 and we'll do our best to get to your questions at that time. So we're going to take a five minute break everybody and then we're going to start learning about diseases. Okay, later.