I feel your pain. This year I am seeing MANY, limbs breaking about a foot or so in from all the egg laying they did last year. In a month or so with the apples getting heavier I’m sure I will see more breakage. Not much you can do…
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BobC,
There was no fighting them here when the 17 year cicada showed up! The fruit load was huge the following year though because that damage they do to trees acts like girdling does not killing the tree but kicking in the fruit production. As you mentioned unfortunately by them cutting up my peaches they killed several by them getting canker from the wounds. They also caused me a heck of a case of fireblight the next year. What a good and bad year that was! Fruit was laying everywhere on the ground where the small branches had been weakened by them and broke off as the fruit matured! 17 year cicada's woke up hungry
I lived through them 14 years ago, they made mincemeat of my young trees. I know their habits well from that round. This time I am going to have Surround thickly coated on the limb bottoms. The damage does not start for some time, now they are all flying away, mainly all I see is shells now. Here is one coming out:
Agents of Satan.
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No, I can get around the ones further back but the limbs keep you away. I can get through all but two spaces in the orchard by going real slow. It’s great on the rest of the yard though. I planted some of the newest Bud9 on 6ft space before I bought the mower. I wish I had that to do over I would have made them fit the mower.
It reminds me of Alien (the movie).
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The spouse has one of those - he does the space around the trees with a push mower
We’re in a constant conflict - he wants the tree limbs higher for ease of mowing, I want them lower for ease of care and harvesting
Constantly hitting my head/face on low branches…it is annoying. Short trees are just so much easier to deal with. Its funny when the squirrels climb my container trees…trying to nab peaches. I yell and throw things at them.
I have that mower
Standing on a 6’ ladder, in the 9:00pm twilight, sometimes using my cell phone flashlight, putting bags on my apples…
Pretty sure the neighbor came out to see what I was doing and made a lame excuse about checking to see if his motion light still worked when he came out to figure out what I was doing.
I also did a graft in the dark with my pocket knife, holding my cell phone for light. We will see how that turns out…
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Been waiting for this ever since I had my first tropic snow peach last year. Probably could have waited one more week but it was still gooooooood. 
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Well, I got my 25 Earliglow strawbs in the ground today, which is good. But, as I was just starting on the 25 Jewel’s at about 7pm, a nasty black cloud with rain and lightning came over the hills from the west, and that put the kibosh on any more planting today.
It’s just raining a bit, and rumbling some now, but about an hour ago we were getting kinda antsy as they issued a tornado warning for just south of us, thankfully it didn’t develop into anything, and the warning was dropped. We needed some rain, as the ground was getting a bit dry, and we had just planted our potatoes and onions over the last couple days. I know I can’t be picky, but I hope we don’t get too much more rain, as I’d like to get the rest of the strawbs in the ground soon.
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No fair! You Cali folks and yer freaky growing seasons…
Looks delicious, hope you enjoyed it. Never seen a peach with colors like that. What kind of flavor did it have compared to a regular yellow peach?
We have four peach trees in the ground, a couple are in their second year, so hopefully next year we might be able to enjoy some.
It is a white, sub acid peach. Very little zing to it like most yellow peaches have. Very sweet.
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He wanted to call in a UFO siting.
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I need to find my own cute patrol to help out.
John S
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Oh does that look good!
That looks scary Scott! I hope they don’t defoliate your trees.
I would get out the sevin!
