I have been gathering the medlars and leaving them in a cardboard box with the flaps open. The squirrels haven't bothered them yet. Maybe it's because they can't climb up the open flaps.
I also am using this device I developed. It has a long handle and a plastic jar tied onto the end. The metal handle is a broken hang glider down tube, but it could be anything. I find it very useful to gather fruit that is under a branch or hard to get to, under something. It feels that it is more useful to us who have achieved more than 50 years of age. I flip the jar the other way in the summer to pick plums before they fall and splat. .
Being as tender hearted about animals as I am, one of my residents that I manage wanted me to remove live squirrels from getting access to around her window where some sleep and so she can sleep. She used live traps earlier in the year. I agreed to release them live as they became entrapped. This amounted to the mother and whole litter of about 4. By summer there were no squirrels bothering anybody, these Alaskan squirrels chirp for territorial rights more than ours.
Before snowfall one of the bunch traced back along the Chena river about 2 miles to reclaim the same window. But this time it was very tolerating of people, and although the lady requested it's removal, we both looked at each other trying to be merciless to this now human friendly squirrel. The animal quickly learned that I was insulating an underground 500 gallon tank with blankets I fetched from dump sites. By the time I left to come home it became under zero F and by then it had changed locations from around the window to a nice winter place in the blankets.
I don't know what to say about your tool yet. Give me a few more years to get old.
As of today, January 16th, I am still harvesting medlars and hawthorns from the trees. The medlars aren't quite as tangy and vibrant as they were a couple of weeks ago. The ones I gathered and put in the tool shed are still edible too. The hawthorns are somewhat damaged, but many are still good to eat. Remember, hawthorn isn't just food. It's also heart medicine, and the leaves are edible as well.
John S
PDX OR
Hawthornes and medlars since there are hybrids known between them should graft together too. The Rombough family have at least a single large tree of such a hybrid of perhaps some value since it fruits. Lon pointed it out a long time ago.
Lon taught me that most wider hybrids than between hawthornes and medlars that they in most cases don't exist because people don't know that wide hybrid roots don't live past a certain age. I tested this at least once on 'Nadia' which is a plum x sweet cherry hybrid. Cuttings root easily but roots could not be kept alive past three months. Which means the development of nadia got off to a start by a knowledgeable person that knew how to overcome.
Most likely by an early spring method of propagation (is what these experts must have known about). For example, shown as my old topic of;
Well I at least hoped everyone else would take it the way you just stated, so yes. You of course know that I meant wide crosses. Like Nadia, most will understand cherry and plums are wide, and that I can tell you that Nadia will not ever be found as a root anywhere in the world.
I'm going to find you a historical example of a cross between medlar and hawthorne and revise then post in a few minutes because (a) people are eating a heart healthy food and (b) I think that, in this case, is a narrow enough example from a hybrid cross from them found as standing on it's own root.
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Citation: Enzenbacher, T. 2019. A Medlar by Any Other Name. Arnoldia, 77(1): 16–25.
Tom Frothingham (at left) encouraged the collectors to sample fruit of the Stern’s medlar (×Crataemespilus canescens). His colleagues Lauren Goldstein and Connor Livingston are pictured, along with Kea Woodruff (right). Tiffany Enzenbacher
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
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