Re: pine cones
gardenchat@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: pine cones
  • From: &* B* <j*@lewiston.com>
  • Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 11:20:57 -0800
Jesse & Auralie, Remind me next September/October & I'll send you a box of cones. I have a sugar pine that hasn't produced cones yet, a five needle pine that produces long pitchy cones and hemlocks that make raspberry sized little miniature cones. We threw away barrels of the pine cones this fall. There are still a dozen cones laying out on the lawn & who knows how many in the flower beds. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Aplfgcnys@aol.com> 
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] pine cones



I regularly use my pine cones as fire starters without any addition,
though I do sometimes add a candle-stub to the kindling mix.  The
white-pine cones have so much resin that they are highly flammable.
If I plan to use them for decorations, etc. I toast them gently in the
oven - about 275 degrees - and the resin melts and gives them a
shiny, glazed finish - and the house smells wonderful while I am
doing it.
The large pine cones are from the Southern Long-needled pine
which doesn't grow up here.  My Alabama family used to send me
boxes of them each fall.  They don't seem to be as resinous as the
White Pine cones we have here.  These are 5-6 inches long and
much more fragile than the big Long-needled ones.  The cones I love
to work with are the short, nearly round ones from the Japanese Black
pine.  Our tree blew over in a storm about three years ago, so I no longer
have a source.  I do love all sorts of cones - spruce and fir as well as
pine - though I don't make things with them as I used to do years ago.
I don't know how I used to have time to do all sorts of crafts when my
kids were growing up - I guess because I had to spend more time at
home with them.  Kids nowadays seem to be programmed to the limit -
at least my grandchildren are - in ways that mine never were.  My son
just sent a schedule for their weekend with my two youngest grandkids -
Skiing on Friday, then a whole string of events all weekend.  It worries
me - they never have time just to be kids - but I don't say this to them.
APL

In a message dated 12/9/2010 1:06:54 PM Eastern Standard Time,
justjess01@gmail.com writes:

Geeeeze.  I wish I had a place to go and pick up some LARGE, opened,
pinecones.  I love to decorate with them during the holidays.
I also save all of my old candles when they burn down - and then in
October (if I have some pinecones) I melt the wax down and dip the
cones in there over and over again until they are thick with wax.
When dried, I put them in a basket and use them as fire starters.


On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Johnson, Cyndi D Civ USAF AFMC 95
CS/SCOSI <cyndi.johnson@edwards.af.mil> wrote:

Our pines seem to continually put out amazing amounts of pinecones and
most of them rarely get watered, they do pretty well on less than 10
inches a year. I don't know what kind we have though - there are surely
pines native to our mountains that are adapted to less water. But based
on what else was here when we moved in, I bet the previous owners just
went to the nursery and picked up 50 of whatever they had in stock.
I wish I had the "crafty" skills to make something of the cones but it's
not gonna happen in this lifetime.

Cyndi


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
Behalf Of Aplfgcnys@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 7:26 PM
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Subject: [CHAT] pine cones

Started a fire in the fireplace this evening, since it's dropped into
the
teens.
I've been putting it off because firewood is scarcer and more expensive
this
year than in the past.
Last year there were so many pine cones from our white pines that I
picked
up bushels - gave away at least two garbage-bags full, used another two,
toasted another to use for decorations on Christmas wreaths, and still
have
a couple of bags left.  This year there are almost no cones at all. I
went
out
to look for them before the leaf-clean-up crew came, and there were just

almost none - I found about six.  Is this a result of the dry season? Or
do
the trees have a cycle of reproduction?
I'm noticing that the dogwoods are full of buds for next year.  Their
bloom
was exceptionally poor this year.  I have heard that heavy bloom
indicates
stressful conditions, and surely this drought year was stressful for
them.
We lost many dogwoods about 20 years ago when they were attacked by
a disease, but the remaining ones seem to have been stabilized in recent
years.  I hope we're not going into another spell of losing dogwoods.
This
is just about the Northern edge of their tolerance zone - not many just
a
few
miles north of here - but we used to have many and still have quite a
few in
the wild.
Auralie


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