Looks like a pear, apple, plum or a cherry, not well maintained, 10-15 years old. Probably an apple or pear based on the flowers? It also looks like it was maintained at one point, you can see the sub-canopy which was probably being managed as the main canopy out of the main fork, and then you can see how it got super leggy and out of control from that point, like no one did any maintenance or management to the tree for a while (3-5 years).
Kind of depends what you want. Fruit trees are great but do require work, especially in terms of branch maintenance. You can’t just let them go or they’ll tear themselves apart. So every year you would be doing branch management, otherwise it will split, good chance of getting diseased, produce less fruit, produce fruit in place that you cant get to or are a pain in the ass to get to, and otherwise looking like crap. Domesticated fruit trees have evolved under human management and require regular maintenance otherwise they generally don’t do as well. They don’t self-limb effectively. Then there is the annual fruit harvest. You may need to use a pesticide depending on where you live to get fruit if you have a significant pest load (depending on the species). If this wasn’t a planted variety, its fruit might be of questionable quality, but you can’t really know that till the fall (earlier depending on the species/ variety).
The easiest answer: Hire a professional tree trimmer to do a skeleton prune and take this raggedy boi way back, then put off the decision till next year. That will get the branches out of the way for the construction crew and you can have them ID the tree and make sure they leave some flowering branches so you get some fruit. Put the decision off until you get some fruit; figure out what kind of tree it is (you really can’t tell as many of this species group apart until fruiting), and go from there. Regardless, a hard trim is necessary on that tree, and you don’t know if its worth keeping until you get to try some fruit.
Second piece of advice, don’t worry at all about pulling the tree if you end up going that way. There are some ridiculous poets in the comments here who obviously have no conception of where food comes from or what nature is and represents. Unless you live in Kazakhstan, this is a non-native species, and you should be thinking about it as it its a wrench, or hammer, or any other tool. Domesticated fruit trees are a tool that humans intercepted their evolutionary paths and made them into food producing machines. They don’t exist in nature. If the tool isn’t doing what you need it to do, you should feel no obligation to continue to use it if it isn’t working. Trees and plants die CONSTANTLY in nature. Don’t worry about pulling it what-so-ever. If you decide you don’t want the work of maintaining a fruit tree (probably 1, 3-6 hour day in the spring, and 1, 3-6 hour day in the fall for maintenance), consider putting in a native tree that’s ecologically appropriate for wherever you live. Native species (and this isn’t one of them) are struggling everywhere. They need your help, and can represent a much easier to manage (you don’t have to do anything) option to a fruit tree.
Yeah. But its also a machine that for relatively little effort, food just… appears. I have maybe 25-35 fruit trees planted at this point? They all require a decently high degree of maintenance and each species has its own issues and considerations, fertilization requirements, and timings that as a grower I need to be aware of. I also get boxes and boxes of fruit every year for basically the cost of watering and time of maintenance. I’ve harvested maybe 100lbs of fruit just this month? We get to have fresh fruit everyday. We also get to allow it to ripen on the trees, which makes them taste about 2x better, maybe more. In combination with above ground gardening, a significant portion of our green grocery bill is covered. It requires hours (8+) of work every week.
Last year a Lemmy user ( I think called Thrawn) mailed me some tomato seeds of their favorite varieties, plus some mammoth sunflowers. I sent them foxglove seeds. It made me feel connected. They have all sprouted and are growing vigorously. I’m excited to eat them! Brad’s Atomic Grape tomato and Sart Roloise.
BER is caused by a calcium deficiency, usually induced by fluctuations in a plant’s water supply. Because calcium is not a “mobile” element in plants, even brief changes in the water supply can cause BER.
Droughty soil or damage to the roots from excessive or improper cultivation (severe root pruning) can restrict water intake, thus preventing plants from getting the calcium they need. Plants also can develop calcium deficiency and BER if they are growing in highly acidic soil or are getting too much water from heavy rain, overirrigation, or high relative humidity.
To add further, most people with blossom end rot are watering incorrectly, ie a little every day, when you should water a lot but less often (about every 3 days, depending on your climate). Mulching will also help you manage better, and testing the humidity of the soil before watering goes a long way.
Remember, tomatoes are plants from warm regions, they can handle a little drought but they do much worse if they're over watered. Watering deeply and less often also encourages them to develop deeper, stronger roots.
Yeah they're more expensive because the sellers had just as hard a time getting them to live as you are lol. The cheap ones are cheap because they're effortless to maintain
Corrugated galvanized steel roof panels with a frame of 2x4s. I’d never built anything before, so I had some issues with bowing almost immediately, which just got worse over winter as the soil settled. We put in some braided steel cable braces last month, ratcheted it all back into place, and it’s not budged at all!
Agree, looks like a sunflower to me. For OP: do you or one of your neighbors have a bird feeder? We have black oil sunflowers coming up in all kinds of random spots because of our feeders.
That’s what I’m hoping, it looked to mainly be the lower grass parts, wasn’t everywhere atleast, so it appears I have frost pockets though…
Wasn’t supposed to have frost, it was 4 last night, but the forecast doesn’t account for the valley it seems. I’ve got poly I could lay across them, but rolled the dice last night as there wasn’t any warnings for the towns around that I saw either.
I’ve tossed some ideas around on my head, something like that is super easy, I can also get some rebar and pound it into the ground with some pvc pipes as hoops and drap poly or a decent grow tarp over. This has the advantage of also doubling as critter guards too with a mesh covering.
I think the neighbours cat dug up a portion of the garden last night… so sounds like it’s gonna be a sooner than later fix ughhh…. Haha.
Partly that, partly ergonomics, and one reason that no longer applies….
Here we have very clay heavy soil, so it’s easier to go up, and the more viable soil the more densely you can pack your garden beds. With raised beds you can avoid planting row style for more dense plantations since you aren’t walking between the plants compressing the soil.
Raised beds warm up earlier I’ve heard, haven’t tested that one yet, but supposedly you can plant earlier with them too.
Ergonomics should be self explanatory, less bending.
And I sadly had to put my blind dog away last week, so the taller beds were so she couldn’t waltz through them.
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