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Post by mskrieger on Jun 22, 2015 16:59:03 GMT -5
How're your trees treating you all? I'm starting this thread to share my (over?) excitement at my first fruit crop of the year: sour cherries. Despite a nasty case of brown rot and alternaria, aided and abetted by a healthy cherry fly fornication fest, I seem to be getting a decent crop. 9lbs and counting off of two trees. Theoretically I could be getting 40-60lbs, but with the fungus taking 60-70% of the crop this year and the critters another 10%, that won't be happening. Anything over 10lbs is bonus, I'm happy. Nothing like cherry pie fresh off your own trees.
So now, everybody else: how's the season treating you?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 22, 2015 18:37:31 GMT -5
Apricot, and peach blossoms got frozen, so no fruit this year.
Pears are OK.
Apples are doing great.
Cherries mostly got frozen.
Grapes are thriving this year.
Raspberries are doing great.
Too early to know yet on the melons and watermelons.
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Post by steev on Jun 22, 2015 20:23:57 GMT -5
Two apricots have produced; some peaches are branch-breakingly productive (the occasional strong wind doesn't help); nectarines are producing; plums are coming on strong; some pears were hammered by fire-blight last year, but some are looking productive; apples are a mixed bag; grapes are out-doing themselves; almonds are variable; medlar is fruiting; jujubes are blooming; olives seem robust.
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Post by philagardener on Jun 22, 2015 20:58:38 GMT -5
I've had a nice crop of black raspberries and put up a batch of jam just yesterday. Red raspberries are not far behind.
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Post by khoomeizhi on Jun 23, 2015 4:18:54 GMT -5
well, after 12 years or so of renting, moving around, and accumulating a collection of potted fruit trees, bushes, and vines, we finally bought a farm this spring and are working on getting things in the ground. so this year, it'll mostly be peaches and blackcaps that were already here, but apples, pears, pawpaws, hardy kiwi, muscadines, cornelian cherries, blueberries, mulberries, haskap, more cane fruits, and more will be following in the coming years. will also be topworking many of the existing black walnuts on the property with cultivars.
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Post by philagardener on Jun 23, 2015 6:42:03 GMT -5
We finally bought a farm this spring and are working on getting things in the ground. Sounds like wonderful news! |
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Post by reed on Jun 23, 2015 8:34:52 GMT -5
Bumper crops for black and raspberries, both in the garden and wild. Should get enough jelly to last for years.
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Post by mskrieger on Jun 23, 2015 12:02:20 GMT -5
Joseph: Glad to hear about the apples, grapes and raspberries. Too bad about the stone fruits--is it because they blossom to early, then get hammered by a late frost?
Steev: My peaches lost branches covered in fruit to high winds a week ago, too. Just chopped it up and considered it a contribution to the ramial wood chip mulch. A lot of folks thin peaches (whacking the limbs with a baseball bat is a favored technique I've seen around here...) do you ever? And what are medlars like, worth growing?
Philagardener: Black raspberries are the best. Pennsylvania is the epicenter of black raspberry happiness. Might try to grow them up here at some point...any favorite cultivars?
Khoomeizi: Top-working black walnuts? Seriously? Dude. I had no idea people did that to the big nut trees...I though you just let 'em grow how they want, then gather them when they fall. (Preferably wearing blue latex gloves, if it's black walnuts. The stains from the last mast year stayed on my big thumbnails until April.)
Reed: Enjoy the berries. I love blackberries. Not sure if it gets hot enough long enough to do them justice here...
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 23, 2015 16:36:00 GMT -5
The peach trees are dying... They don't thrive here. The apricots and cherries flowered prematurely because the season was so warm so early. So when the normally timed spring frosts arrived, the flowers/fruits got frozen.
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Post by philagardener on Jun 23, 2015 18:03:58 GMT -5
Philagardener: Black raspberries are the best. Pennsylvania is the epicenter of black raspberry happiness. Might try to grow them up here at some point...any favorite cultivars? has done by far the best for me so I am glad to recommend it. I had difficulty getting them established, but after that they have been very reliable. Berries are a bit small but the plants make up for that by bearing in quantity. I use a food mill to remove the seeds from about half of a batch to make what seems to me a good jam. |
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Post by steev on Jun 23, 2015 18:59:41 GMT -5
Guess I've gotta get a ball-bat.
My medlar produces fruit ~1" diameter, not much worth waiting to blet, IMHO, nor does the flavor knock my socks off; it's a pretty, trouble-free, little tree.
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Post by khoomeizhi on Jun 24, 2015 4:31:05 GMT -5
Khoomeizi: Top-working black walnuts? Seriously? Dude. I had no idea people did that to the big nut trees...I though you just let 'em grow how they want, then gather them when they fall. (Preferably wearing blue latex gloves, if it's black walnuts. The stains from the last mast year stayed on my big thumbnails until April.) seriously, though the bigger they are, the harder to topwork. anything up to about 5 or 6 inches in diameter works for me for a rind-graft, and we've got a lot of many sizes. i have been convinced in recent years of the worthwhile-ness of cultivar black walnuts. thinner shells, can be cracked out in halves. nuts! forgot to mention that i found a hidden area full of wineberries at the new place, too (just starting to think about flowering) plus a massive amount of elder. |
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Jun 24, 2015 6:27:19 GMT -5
Most everything is a first (or second) year sapling. Tho I am getting scolded because the chestnut and pecan are not growing bigger.
I told the Sapling-In-Chief that the first couple years the feet grow first on nut trees.
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Post by mskrieger on Jun 24, 2015 12:43:12 GMT -5
Khoomeizi: Hm. Thinner shells and walnuts coming out in halves does sound appealing. If I ever get around to taking down the bitter hickory trees along the north side of my property (so beautiful, so productive, such bitter nuts!) I may look into cultivar black walnuts. Tell me, what's a rind graft?
Philagardener: Thanks, I'll look into Bristol when I start berry beds.
Joseph: Do you know why the peaches are dying? I thought they were native to NW China, which has a climate much like yours. Is it the erratic warm spells, maybe, that get the sap flowing and then a hard freeze kills them after they break dormancy? In New England we get that kind of freeze/thaw cycle all the time, so people plant peaches in spots where the tree is shaded throughout the winter (to the north of a building or tall stand of evergreens, for example). They don't get sun until after the equinox in March or so. Would that help at your place?
coppice: I did not know that about nut trees. Should I take it from your name that you're a woodsman?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 24, 2015 15:22:18 GMT -5
Joseph: Do you know why the peaches are dying? I think that the primary reason my peaches are dying is because they are not locally adapted... They are not even regionally adapted. There are the borers, and the blights, and the rots, and the sunburned bark, and the low humidity, and the bugs, and the alkaline soil. Besides that, my garden seems to be right on the ecological limits of where some varieties of peach trees can survive the winter. The next valley to the west, which is 600 feet lower elevation, and thus warmer, grows lots of peaches with copious amounts of -cides. The peaches are growing in the lawn, and I apply the minimum amount of irrigation to the lawn to fulfill my duty of keeping the horrid grass alive. They would do better if I watered them more. If I had the inclination to start a peach breeding project, I'm certain that peaches could be developed that would thrive on my farm. All of my fields are begged or borrowed, and people are flighty and unpredictable and they die without warning. So it's hard for me to feel stable enough to start a tree breeding project. In my valley, we get about 1 frost in 5 years that takes out most of the stone-fruits. That could probably be pushed back to 1:8 or 1:10 with the right genetics. I just came in from picking a bowl of raspberries. Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm. I've been picking a few strawberries... But I let the grass overgrow the patch, because this is the third growing season that I've farmed this field after the landlady died, and the estate still isn't settled, so I haven't been weeding like I would if I thought I'd be there another year... |
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