I like the looks of your AS, love the sugar speckling. How do you like Thomcord?
Man it must be warm in Santa Ana. Your fruit is as far along as my greenhouse…!!
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Very nice, what kind of apricot are we looking at? Surprised you can get them to fruit at all in Maine. Is this something you get every year?
Thanks fruitnut. I like Thomcord a lot. You do get a bit of residual seed where you can feel the texture, but nothing large enough that you would want to spit out. This is third leaf on the Thomcord and they were great last year. I really like the purple-to-black table grapes and this one has been my favorite.
Been an interesting weather year in Orange County so far. Didn’t get the 90 degree spikes we saw last few years, but a lot of consistently low 80s days after the weekly rains stopped. I did lose about 1/3 of my fruit crop with some Fall-quality winds last weekend – but the trees needed the thinning anyway.
I’m a little slow I guess, because I’m still not completely clear on this, and I appreciate your help…what I was saying was that I thought flowers on a self-fertile peach tree still had to receive pollen from another flower on that same tree. Is that right or wrong? For example, if you covered a flower (on a peach tree for purposes of this discussion) with an impenetrable plastic bag from before it opened, would it ever form fruit? Or do self-fertile trees somehow just form fruits from a flower independately of anything else that happens?
I’m sorry if your other post answered this and I just didn’t get it, so please try again! 
Thanks Ryan.
I believe a peach flower could pollinate itself.
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Depends on the exact fruit. Some fruit, ie squash, have male and female flowers, one of each is needed. A bagged squash blossom is good for decorative and lightly flavored stuffed dishes, and nothing else.
Peaches have male and female parts on the same flower. Self fertile flowers just need pollen from the male part to move to the female part. These are called “perfect” flowers. A single bagged self fertile variety of peach blossom can pollinate itself either by being jostled, or by the stamen growing through the anthers as it opens. In tomatoes, this often happens before the bloom even opens, and the first thing you’ll see on the end of the bloom is the already fertilized pistil.
Edit- If you look in the hybridizing fruit posts, I believe there’s some discussion of the need to neuter self fertile flowers if you want a cross, this is what they are talking about; cutting the male parts off the perfect flower before the female parts are receptive.
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That is hands down the best explanation I’ve seen on how peaches “work”. I know everyone here except me probably already knew this since its pretty basic fruit tree 101 stuff. But I wasn’t clear and now I am and I really appreciate your educating me!
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Today… Growing an orchard is hard! I have plum curcs already, I have trees with not 1 single bloom/apple,
I have other bud9 trees that must have a 1000 apples on each and they can handle about 30.
Tested my soil and it’s deficient in everything… PH around 8.
Added 40 lb of 12-12-12 today. Waiting on my 40lb of sulfur…
I have one year old trees that bloomed and made apples and had to clip them all off!
Grrrr.
LOL!
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OUCH !!! 
Mike
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Daemon,
What kind of Ph meter/measurer do you use? I just determined today that my Rapitest Mini Ph probe is worthless and doesn’t work. I did lots of experiments with it. White vinegar and baking soda was involved. The thing is a piece of junk.
Count your blessings. Which fruiting plants are you most excited to taste out of your orchard this year?
Nooooo!!
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This time I used “Environmental Concepts” soil test kit.
https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Concepts-1662-Professional-Tests/dp/B003JCMKEK
I have used several different ones over the years and it’s always been 8. I just decided to do something about it this year. (or rather try)
Please help me not buy this:
http://shop.cumminsnursery.com/shop/grab-bag/various
The practical person in me says I don’t really have the room and they might not be appropriate for my area.
The impractical person in me says “APPLE TREES FOR FIVE DOLLARS!”
Added a “must have” tree today based on all the comments from this fantastic group. Many people have it in their list of top 3 trees to have if they had just 3 fruit trees to choose from. So here it is!!! The famous ILLINOIS EVERBEARING MULBERRY!!! Woohoo!! Makes me happy!! Now pardon me, someone wants me to go throw his ball a zillion times over.
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Second leaf? Does any seed that I sent you germinate at all? If not, I can send you more if there’s any available this year!
Here is a picture of my ILLINOIS EVERBEARING MULBERRY 5-1-17 (Atlanta, GA), haven’t tasted one yet. It did the best of the 4 different mulberry varsities I have, the others were affected by a March 14th frost we had for 3 days and they were already budding so I lost most of them, the ILLINOIS EVERBEARING MULBERRY was still dormant so it’s doing great.
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OMG… I wish I could taste them! They simply don’t exist here !!
Tom,
The six tree peonies that I bought are on their second year. They are about 2 feet tall. I planted the seeds that you sent to me a week ago. Hopefully, they will germinate. Well here is my Desert Rose blooming.
Tony
I can see he doesn’t like planting trees! My dog was so excited that I didn’t have to go to work but got real board quick too. I was rebuilding spindles for my 1973 Simplicity 48" lawn deck. I had bought an extra set from eBay and got bearings real cheap so I built all the extra tower spindles to. I had a break in the middle. I had to drive mom to her Dr appointment that they had canceled, got home finished the extras and made potato dirt then threw the ball.
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Love it!