What's Happening in the Fall of 2017

Well, darn. That sure is a bummer, particularly because Enterprise is being a slow-to-bear tree for me. I picked my two and I had the one with bug damage tonight with dinner. Not as good as I remember when I’ve purchased them – the best of those have had a nice spicy flavor. This one was sort of dry. Not a bad flavor, just strange texture. There is always next year…

I had a couple Enterprises today from my 5-on-1 tree. They were the best apples by far that I have tried all season. Unless somehow the varieties got mixed up.

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Agree totally, one bite and it went to the chickens, bland and tough skins. Locally grown. He didn’t like them either.

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The first 20 Fuyu. They hang well, hopefully there is enough for daily picking in the next 2 months.

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Nice harvest. Enjoy them. How old is your Fuyu persimmon tree?

Tony

Thanks, Tony. They are really carefree here in Southern California, other than the tendency of being alternate bearers. This tree is about 10 years. I have a young Izu in the front yard, for season extension, because I love persimmons!

Gorgeous day for working outside!

I finished the not-really-summer-anymore pruning of the later-bearing fruit trees

I have fruit still to harvest. Figs, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, just a few but the red alpine has been kicking berries out daily for months, and it’s a new plant this spring. and raspberries.

One of my favorite sweet peppers is Doux D’ Espagne Sweet Pepper.
It kinda late this year because the plant suffered a set back when hit by frost. It still is rather a late season, but large sweet peppers are hard to grow here. These do OK. I keep descriptions from seed sellers as I like to know the history of heirlooms.
" This variety was introduced before 1860.
In the 1880’s, this pepper was shipped to the large markets in Paris from
warmer areas like Algeria and Valencia. In the 19th century the 6-7-inch
long fruit were among the largest offered, and popular with cooks.
It produces long, cone-shaped peppers that are perfect for frying and
salads. They are sweet and flavorful, but hardly ever offered in America.
A good-producing pepper that is reported to be disease resistant.
Heirloom Doux D’Espagne Pepper also known as Spanish Mammoth because of
it’s large sized fruit.The 6" - 7" peppers of Doux D’Espagne start out
green and ripen to a deep red color. Doux D’Espagne Pepper grow upon
large plants that produce excellent amounts of cone shaped fruit.
These are a good choice for frying peppers. 90 days until harvest.
Purchased from Azure Dandelion Herb N Art Store"

The peppers are almost ready, they can be used green too, so if frost comes, I can harvest. it is in a pot so i could move it to the garage for the night and take it back out. Seems I have done this before for this one.
It has about 7 peppers on it., they are big, and for a potted plant, not a bad haul for this type of pepper.

From the other side

Size is decent

These are really good too, I had another plant with 6 peppers that I harvested already. The frost did stunt them, I usually at least get a few more most seasons.
What I love about this pepper is that this is a bad year, yet it still produced, it is a consistent producer even in the worst of conditions. At least in my area, you never know, I could be just lucky!

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Progress speeding up on the new orchard ground. Big chainsaw day today, getting ready for the rental excavator in a few days.

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That’s my favorite pepper too! I happened on it in a package in Lowes one year and now I manage to plant it every year. Bells are difficult for me to grow for some reason…they never get big and meaty. The Doux are always big and beautiful and delicious.

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Looks nice. Hopefully they’ll ripen up before the first freeze. They’re calling for temps in the low 40s next week, so I guess my peppers will make it OK. Got lots still ripening. Those Ancho Mulato are finally turning a bit dark now. Also have some gold bells, Bulg Carrots, yellow bananas, Serrano’s, etc ready to pick.

We actually had Pepper Steak for supper tonight. We cut up a small, lean beef roast, a big red bell, an Ancient Sweet, and added a few slices of habanero and Padron peppers to give it a little heat. Also added onions, mushroom slices, a little soy sauce and pepper flakes, and prepared some brown rice on the side. Not much leftovers between the two of us…

Sounds good! My wife cooked tonight and she makes a delicious chicken piccata, which she made tonight.
I can bring the peppers in the garage if frost threatens, and they are good as green peppers too. So it’s all good.

Another I like is Yellow Monster, even bigger, produces fewer but usually produces. I have not grown it long though, so still testing.

these are some muscadine grapevine wreaths i made for my mom

and some fall reine de glaces lettuce, aubervillers cabbage, tete noir cabbage, red russian kale, blue curled scotch kale, and morris heading collard greens along with a bed of buckwheat i planted in midsummer let to go to seed then tilled under, much more plants than the first time around and it brings honey bees in the morning

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Great idea using the vines for a wreath. Wish I had thought of that when I cut mine down last year. Very nice!

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My wife harvested the last of our popcorn that we grew this year. Shown are Strawberry and Japanese Hulless. She put them in a bag and will let them dry out for a while before we try popping any.

And, we had a nice pumpkin harvest this year, our first attempt at growing any. These are Early Sweet Sugar Pies. We’ll be puree-ing and freezing some, and can the rest.

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Beautiful!!!

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Awesome, the corn looks very nice! Well the pumpkins too! Nicely shaped! An orchard owner here beat the Michigan record for biggest pumpkin, sent the MI record to over 2K pounds now.

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@mrsg47, @Drew51, thanks!

My own MrsG planted both the popcorn and the pumpkins. I didn’t think the 'kins would do well, but she did plant them by the barn where the soil is quite ‘enriched’ by previous grazers. Some of the vines ran out to about 20ft. We didn’t protect the plants/vines but the deer pretty much left them alone. Pumpkin vines are very prickly, so maybe that was the deterrent. These aren’t that big, no bigger than a basketball, but are good for pies.

We don’t usually eat a lot of popcorn, but we thought we’d try to grow our own. We wanted the ears to dry on the stalk like field corn, but we had a horse incursion into the corn patch, and needed to make sure we didn’t lose any more of it. The horse did tear down a few stalks, and got to some ears, but not as bad it could have been. I’m just glad she didn’t get into our sweet corn when it was ripening. The horse has since been put back into her pasture in front of my in-laws’.

The deer did get into the patch, which had beans growing too, but they didn’t do too much damage, thankfully. We have had an issue with the deer around here getting ‘blue tongue’ disease, which is one of the Hemorrhagic Diseases that deer get occasionally. It’s transmitted by midges, or gnats, that spread the virus when biting the deer. The disease typically runs in the late summer/early fall, and stops when the first few freezes kill the insects, and hence the infecting vector. The disease is not a threat to humans, and our pets should be OK. Since the disease stops with the first freeze, any deer left over should be free of any disease when hunting season starts next month.

Personally, I’m not too tore up about the loss of deer around here, as y’all have know about my battles with them regarding my plants and trees. A couple weeks ago when it was very warm, we were subjected to a horrible stink when we were outside, especially when the wind was out of the south. Well, last week, while I was out in the pasture looking for the aforementioned rogue horse, I came across the source of the stink. It was a small deer that had croaked and was laying in the field decomposing. There were flies and stink rays (j/k) coming off it. It was FOUULLL. I gave it a rather wide berth. I didn’t get close enough to see if it was a victim of the virus, but since it was so young, I’d assume it was.

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Today I noticed something funky about the Spice Zee tree that I assumed was dying. I plan to remove the tree this fall. It is stunted and hasn’t put on any new growth this year and hardly any last year. It started dropping its leaves well before my other trees. This morning I noticed a handful of flower blossoms on it. What the heck?

That is peculiar. Maybe it’s going into reproductive mode because of it about to croak? The limbs look rather dark, is that true, or just the angle of the shot?

Quite a few of my fruit trees and plants have lost their leaves this late summer/early fall. I know some were stripped by J beetles or some other insects. I don’t think deer this. And, it’s been rather dry for about 6 weeks here, until last week, when we got about 4" of rain, with more due today.

I hope all the leaf loss doesn’t mean that they won’t recover when they come out of dormancy next spring.