Mark,
We have been soaked repeatedly. I don’t remember a time when I had 4 days in a row without rain. The best was 3 days in a row. Right now, it is supposed to be a week (from today on) without any rain. I will believe when I see it.
All my stone fruit that ripened in July, August and up to now suffered serious rot esp. brown rot.
To my surprise, Autumn Star, my late peaches, came out better than all other varieties that ripened before it.
I am able to get 60+ lbs of clean Autumn Star peaches. It has earned my respect. Its damage from brown rot was about 30%. Considering it has been through so much rain and humidity, that’s impressive.
Earlier peaches were 90% rot and nectarines were 99% rot. Tough year for stonefruitl
I have a few Ashmead’s Kernel drops now. For some reason this year I am having drops with all of my apples. The one Ashmead’s drop tasted pretty good. Hopefully not all of the Ashmead’s will drop and I will get to taste a fully ripened one.
Autumn Star was a standout for me as well. My only complaint is that the entire crop seemed to ripen in about 5 days. Great for a commercial grower who benefits from single picking varieties.
Mine ripened in 7 days. I am most impressed that they did not suffer as much brown rot as about 7-8 other varieties I have. It endured more rain and humidity than others since it was so late.
This has been the year of drops for us as well. Not Ashmead’s so much, but Macoun, Jonagold, Hubbardston, Starkey, Stayman, Baldwin, Rambo, King David, Winesap, and Northern Spy, especially.
We got ton of rain here. A friend of a friend has an apple orchard with mixed varieties about 30 mins from us.
One morning recently, he woke up to find almost all of Macoun dropped on the ground. No other varieties dropped like that. He could not figure out what happened.
We wondered if excessive rain was a contributing factor.
Most of Alan’s fruit was far sweeter than mine this year (though he did have a few laggard varieties). I think the main issue I had was a lack of thinning. Some of mine was thinned enough to be OK, but not great. While others were underthinned to the point of breaking branches and poorly ripening. Maybe in a year with less rain and more sun the partially thinned stuff would have been good and the massively overloaded would have been more passable.
I have similar tastes in corn.
Earlier today I was eating some excellent corn from the farmer’s market (we’ve been giving each other produce recently- I’ve had lots of extra figs, something most pros don’t grow).
The bi-color corn was much better than the yellow, even though they were both quite sweet. But the bi-color one was crisp and popped off the ear when my teeth hit it, while the yellow one was a bit sweeter, but not crisp. I ate mostly bi-color and gave my wife the remaining yellow ones. She thought they tasted great, though she isn’t picky at all. She would probably even be fine with what Alan grows
I picked a few Ashmead’s Kernels the other day and it was good. At 18 brix, it was good, though I think I’ve seen a couple points higher.
