April Fools

We are all April fools, this year. At least me, I am in a confused state, trying to make sense of the world spinning around. Our enlightened leaders responeded to the oil supply risks by lowering the tax on diesel and gasoline. Could that help to reduce consumption in any rational way? Maybe war makes us more stupid?

During a visit to the Gothenburg University earlier in April, we saw the invitation to a lecture to prepare for war:

University endorsed lecture to prepare for war. Free coffee to encourage students to join.

We, Men, conquerors of Nature are also waging a war on soils. Some battles we seem to be winning. The other day, our road was covered in dust for hours and hours.

Some people drive at full speed into the dust cloud.

I wonder how many tons of top soil was lost that day...

So, at the end of the month, we light up the Walburgis Night fire, to scare off any bad influence that the winter months have had. I feel confident that we will wake up into the month of May with peace in our hearts and a clear mind on how to collaborate to tackle the large challenges of our times. I cross my fingers.

A good burn off to scare witches and other winter threats.

Nut trees

Chestnuts

April is the month for chestnuts, and starting some early walnuts too.

In our cold storage room, the chestnuts start to sprout - time to sow!

Most of the chestnuts (approx 500), we have sown in one of the low tunnels, and another 400 seeds outside. The most valuable seeds come from orchard trees from known, large fruiting varieties. Some of those seedlings will give good nuts, so some of those trees I will grow out as they are. Some others I will use as rootstock, or sell as timber varieties.

I learned a new technique to graft chestnuts this year - root grafting. It was fun to do this indoor, precision grafting. At least one of the seven I tried has taken, and at least one has failed, the other ones I don't yet know.

I cleft graft a small scion into the first root of the chestnut.

*The chestnut goes into a small pot, that I put in my germination box, at +30C. *

After two weeks at least one of the grafts has taken and new roots form.

One of my interns helped to plant out the chestnut seeds. It is a bit fiddly when the chestnuts have started to sprout, to get the sprout vertical downwards.

An intern helping to seed chestnuts at approx 10x10cm distance.

Another of my interns this spring learned how to do chestnut grafting. We grafted 28 chestnut trees, seedlings inside one of the tunnels. This year I will try to grow out these trees inside the tunnel to see what the growth improvement will be compared to outdoors.

Chestnut grafting on one-year seedlings inside the tunnel.

Walnuts

Walnut seeds sprout slower than chestnuts. I have the seeds in mouse-proof cold storage in moist sand over the winter, and now I try to make the seeds wake up. I want to have a short time between seeding and a seedling tree, so that mice and birds have a short time window for eating the nuts.

This year I tried to induce the sprouting by immersing walnuts in water for an hour at a time, almost every day. I rinse off the water and keep the bucket at room temperature in our kitchen. After a couple of weeks, some started to sprout and the white tongue starts to stick out of the mouth.

Soaking the walnut seeds in water.

After a couple of weeks, most of the walnuts start to open up and sprout.

I seed some of the walnuts in the ground, and some in "air prune beds", to get a more bushy root system.

Air-prune bed with 40 walnuts. Then I cover with 5 cm of soil and water well.

End of April, I also start to graft walnut trees. I dig out the walnut seedlings from last year to use as rootstock and graft varieties that I keep in my chest cooler.

After grafting, the trees go onto a "hot pipe callus-bed" for three weeks.

The rootstock walnuts in the tunnel got some frost damage in the night of 26 April. We had -2C in the air and some of the trees that had leafed out got frost damage and black leaves. Interestingly enough, not all trees had the same damage, even though they are seedlings from the same tree. Some keep their leaves green, some are black (frost damage).

Rootstock walnut - some frost damage (black leaves).

April is also the last weeks for planting walnut trees. We planted fifteen trees at Anders' farm with the Nut growers' course. He is expanding his nut tree orchard this year with one hectare and next year with another seven hectares. Lots of beautiful trees!

Anders shares his experiences of planting walnut trees.

Hazel

We also sowed some "turkish hazel" - Corylus colurna - from Helsingborg. I want to use these ones as rootstock for tree hazel hybrids, like 'Farris F88Q'.

Beautiful sprouts of the turkish hazel.

The Farm

Last summer we learned from Viktor Säfve that willowherb is their family's favourite vegetable. I did not even know it was edible, and we have some growing wild on our farm.

This spring we have been waiting impatiently to get the first shoots of this perennial flower. We picked some 20x shoots and blanched them in hot water before frying a willow-herb-omelet.

Willowherb growing straight out of the lawn.

Willowherb omelet. Tastes a bit like asparagus, but more leafy.

We are also very happy with our winter storage of apples. We have a hundred apples left. This variety looks almost as good and it tastes even better than in September when we picked it. I don't know the variety but coming fall I will mark the tree to be able to take scions and propagate this amazing variety.

Amazing crisp apple with delicious taste, half a year after picking.

Maybe the only ones who are not more confused than normal are our happy hens: