Overall Grafting 2009 was a Success

It’s been a while since I did all those grafts in spring of 2009.  It is now Fall of 2010.  The scions that took had a full two seasons to grow.  Most of the scions took except for the experimental grafts.

The ones that failed were the cross genus grafts between the apples and pears.  Although I had one success before grafting an apple scion to a pear tree, I was not able to repeat that.  Also, except for the branch shown above, all the cherry grafts did not take.  While not having more cherry grafts take is a disappointment, it was not a big surprise.   Most of the branches I got from my friend Dave were mature branches.  Most of them had

One Simple Way to Conserve Water

Generally, it is advicable to run the tap a little bit before drinking the water off a tap, especially if the tap had not been used overnight.  Also, one might just want to run the water till it is cold for drinking or warm for washing hands.  Lots of water can be wasted.  Why not collect the water to use for other purposes in the house.  The water can be used for washing dishes or watering plants.

One easy way to do it is to wash and save a gallon milk or cider jug.  Keep the jug near a faucet so that water can be collected instead of letting it go down the drain.  In our house we collect about a gallon of water every few days.  This is just about enough to water the potted plants inside the house.

Fruit Tree Grafting 2009 Round 2

My friend Dave got me some fresh cherry branches from his sister’s cherry trees a couple of weeks ago.  When I got the branches, the temperature started to climb into the 50s and even 60s.  I was getting worried and wanted to get the branches grafted as soon as I can.  I did not want to repeat what happened last year where the leaves all came out suddenly and ruin my grafting opportunity.  We had a rainy Saturday but Sunday turned out to be great so I went out and did as many grafts as I can.

Make Your Own Picture Book

(Posted for bleung)

With the rapid technological advancement of digital photography and on-demand digital printing, why not explore the possibility of creating your own hardcover picture book.  There are many places on the internet that you can create and order the picture books.  With very heavy competition, the prices are very affordable and it provides an opportunity for everyone to produce and publish your own customized picture book at a quantity of one.

Fruit Tree Grafting 2009 Round 1

After the total grafting failure in 2008, it is time to try again.  This is very early in Spring.  But the temperature had been in the 50s and 60s already.  The daffodils came up and is blooming.  I can see that some of the fruit tree flower buds are showing signs of opening up.  Temperature next week will be around 40 to 50 degrees with night temperature in the 30s.  Best time to graft is when the day time temperature is in the 50s and night temperature are in the 30s.  This will give the scions a chance to develop in the day time while the process slows down at night to give more time for the scion to be taken.

Making a Chopstick Holder

Rather than just throwing away the chopstick wrapper, here is an idea to turn it into something useful. It is also a great conversation piece and might gain you some points from your date or companions at the dinner table. Folding this chopstick holder should take less than a minute once you give it a practice or two.

Change the Orientation of Your Rubber Gloves

For some reason, my right hand rubber gloves always seem to be the first that develop a leak. Being a right handed person, I guess that I must use my right hand a lot more. I even tried to balance the use of my hands as an experiment to see if I can get the two sides to wear out at the same rate but that did not produce any improvement. The right one always go first. Being a person with conservation in mind, I kept the good gloves when I switch to a new pair. Guess it would be cool if you have a partner that is a left handed person that you can swap with. Unfortunately, we are both right-handed.  Our left hand collection of rubber gloves became so large that I was given an ultimatum to go do something about it or else all my saved gloves go to be recycled.

In desperation, I looked at the box of gloves and an interesting idea came to me. What if I flipped a glove over? Don’t I get a right hand glove then. Well, it worked. The left hand glove turned into a right hand glove. Now I have a box full of semi new gloves to use. Problem solved!!!