Welcome, Marcelo. Glad you de-lurked to introduce yourself. We have several TX forum members, so you have some TX fruit lover buddies for sure, here. Hope you enjoy our forum, great group of folks here, and some very knowledgeable folks.
Nice to meet you, I look forward to hearing all about your orchard.
Welcome E.P. Tex.
Come and grow fruit trees with Us.
Tony
Hi, Marcelo. Iâm glad youâve introduced yourself! I hope this means youâre ready to come in from the sidelines and join the conversation. I noticed that youâve spent lots of time over the past 10 months reading thousands of posts here. So you probably know each of us like neighbors, and share a very strong interest in fruit growing with all of us. Now that youâve taken the step of introducing yourself, I hope you continue to join in the dialogues and freely share your own experiences and questions. Youâll find you get even more benefit from this forum while helping others and making friends along the way.
Iâm glad to meet you, Marcelo, and am looking forward to seeing many more posts from you.
Hello all!
Been lurking here and at gardenweb for awhile, itâs probably time I introduced myself. I bought my first house in central IL 3 years ago. It came with a few big apple trees and I discovered I really love having fresh fruit available at home. I have 2 young kids, so itâs fun for us to have things you can eat in the field and thatâs what I try to focus on. Currently growing 6 types of apples, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, black and red raspberries, mulberries, pawpaw, and gooseberries. I have a very young planting, but itâs growing rapidly.
Thanks to Scott and everyone who contributes to the forum, I cannot overstate how helpful it has been.
Welcome!
Doug,
Youâve come out of the shadows and into the light.
How are the cuttings doing? More roots yet?
Matt,
The fig cuttings look very good, Iâm worried though because the roots have barely poked out yet but the leaves are growing very fast.
They will be fine. Once in a while, I took the fig cuttings and pushed them straight into the ground, watered them and a few months later I got figs growing all over the my place.
Tony
Hello everyone, I have posted a few times and read this site almost every day. I am located about 50 miles North of Dallas in what is considered zone 8A. I have lived in Texas all of my life, growing up west of Houston, going to school in College Station and moving to the Dallas area after school and have been living here for 16 years now. My wife and I moved about 2 years ago to a home with a half-acre back yard. I told the kids we would plant a peach tree and now I have 19 items growing and am adding 7 more this winter 
I am a software developer with pretty limited knowledge on gardening. I feel like I have learned quite a bit, but am definitely still in an experimental stage with my orchard. I have made some poor choices in cultivars for sure, but am enjoying every minute of it.
I have had 3 trees die (a pear from unknown, and 2 apples from rabbits eating complete circles around the trunk of the tree, I have added spiral tree guards around all of my trees after that) and have pulled a few other trees to replaced with something else. Below is what I currently have:
3 Apples:
Starking Red Delicious (2 years - Stark)
Enterprise Apple (2 years - Stark)
Stark Grand Gala (2 years - Stark)
4 Peaches:
Blazingstar White Peach (2 years - Stark)
Red Globe Peach (1 year - 3 peaches - Lowes (is it really a Red Globe?)
Unknown #1(1 year - bought from Lowes as a White Chief Nectarine but produced 2 yellow peaches for me)
Unknown #2 (1 year - bought from Lowes as a Red Gold Nectarine but produce a single yellow peach for me)
2 Pears:
Stark Sugar Sweet (2 years - Stark)
Seckel (2 years - Stark)
4 Cherries (cherries are my favorite fruit, but from what I have learned they will most likely perish in my environment, I built a 4 X 8 foot raised bed made from 2X12âs for 2 of my cherry trees):
Craigâs Crimson on NewRoot 1 (1 year in raised bed, growing like gangbusters - GrowOrganic)
Lapins on NewRoot 1 (1 year in raised bed, also growing well - GrowOrganic)
Minnie Royal on NewRoot 1 (1 year in a container - GrowOrganic)
Royal Lee on NewRoot 1 (1 year in container - GrowOrganic)
4 Blueberries:
2 Sweetcrisp (planted in October in container - JF&E)
Springhigh (planted in October in container - JF&E)
Indigocrisp (planted in October in container - JF&E)
2 Blackberries:
Osage (planted in October in container - JF&E)
Kiowa (planted in October in container - JF&E)
On order for delivery soon:
2 Figs:
Alma (to be delivered this week from Just Fruits and Exotics)
OâRourke (to be delivered this week from Just Fruits and Exotics)
1 Nectarine:
Arctic Blaze on Lovell (scheduled for delivery later this month - Bay Laurel)
3 Plums:
Flavor Grenade on Lovell (later this month - Bay Laurel)
Sweet Treat Pluerry on Myro 29c (later this month - Bay Laurel)
Candy Heart Pluerry on Myro 29c (later this month - Raintree (Bay Laurel emailed me to tell me they were shorted on Candy Hearts so I had to scramble and found one at Raintree)
1 Pomegranate:
Parfianka (later this month - Bay Laurel)
1 Like
Welcome, Charlie, another Texan! Youâre in good company, weâve got several folks from Texas on our forum. Glad to have you, and you sound like youâve got a very nice home orchard shaping up. We look forward to photos!
Welcome Charlie.
The Alma fig should do really well for you, especially if you can minimize any winter cold damage.
Be sure to thin your Seckel pears so they size up and get nice and fat. Let them get blasted by the sun and develop a red cheek. Then put them in the fridge for a while before final counter ripening. They taste real good that way.
Have fun with it. Cheers.
1 Like
Charlie,
I suggest you consider chicken wire cages for the base of your trunks as well as a white wash paint job. This would be superior to your spiral tree guards which I have seen attract borers and disease.
1 Like
I have been contemplating doing this for a while now. A white latex interior paint is what I need correct?
Yup, Charlie. The cheapest flat, white latex indoor paint you can find. Cut it in half with water.
Thanks OLPEA, now to get my bearings straightâŚI vaguely remember reading a good deal of useful info you posted on that other site and look forward to more of it. Please be patient with me, my brain has been through hell over the last 3 1/2 years.
Letâs see, you know of peaches, right? I have an 8th leaf Reliance and a d=soon to be 3rd leaf Redhaven. Last Spring the Redhaven was loaded to the hilt with blooms but no bees of any kind were visiting the flowers as it was too cold for honeybees for sure. I got only 1 fruit, dang it!! About 10 days after Redhavenâs FB Reliance was in FB, the weather was warmer and there were bees ll over it. Many fruit were set. Prior to this I was unaware that peaches need to have their blossooms worked by insects of some sort to get pollinated. Does this sound right to you?
Iâm figuring on Redhaven always blooming when itâs too cold for my local critters to do the pollinating and am starting a colony of Blue Orchard Mason Bees next SpringâŚ
Good to know you are still out there OLPEA, please be patient with me,
Michael
1 Like
Some species can bear fruit without seeds and may require no pollination. Pears are one of them. Iâve never had a peach without seed so itâs a pretty good guess pollination is required.
Here Red Haven flowers with most other peaches so Iâm surprised yours is so early. Might it be mislabeled? It is noted for being a productive peach in your conditions.
Hi Alan: Iâm basing my conclusion on observations this last year when the Redhaven was in itâs 3rd leaf and had tons of blooms finally. Those blooms were not being visited by any flying insects that I could see and I looked a lot during the warmest times of the days. The temps. during bloom were noticeably colder during Redhavenâs bloom than during Relianceâs when itâs blooms were swarmed by bees and it set lots of fruit. Reliance was an 8th leaf tree in 2015 and has always set plenty of fruit and been a bee hot spot during bloom. Therefore, it seems as though peaches may indeed their blooms worked but Iâll leave open the possibility that something else is the culprit. The Redhaven blooms looked undamaged by frost and disease butâŚwho knows. Iâve decided to hedge my bets this year and am going to establish a Blue Orchard Mason Bee colony as they are supposed to work in relatively low temps compared to other bees and like to work peach blooms. Sure hope to get a load of fruit off that tree this year, itâs now big enough to do so and I havenât even had a taste yet.
perhaps the term Parthenogenesis would work better than incestuous.
Most peaches are self pollinated by the wind. They donât need bees. But if you like thinning maybe bees would give you a little more fun time.
1 Like