Four years in the making, I ate the first apple from my yard this week and I was stoked. It’s a Razor Russet, and it’s been in the fridge for several weeks now softening up. It could easily have lasted until Thanksgiving and maybe longer, but as soon as I could feel some give to it I cut it up. It had a great floral sweetness and was very firm but yielding. I am stupid excited hoping for enough to make a Thanksgiving pie next year.
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I planted a few pecan trees yesterday. I have a unique method to keep the goats and sheep from eating my trees and bamboo.
My Great Wall persimmon graft is displaying some nice fall foliage. The two Matsumoto grafts are not up to par.
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Great pics @BambooMan, thanks for sharing. Nice job of protecting your trees that should keep those newly planted Pecan trees safe. Are the newly planted pecans named varieties or native seedlings?
Curtis, Sumner, Elliot, Ellis, Candy and Amling were the ones I planted this weekend. I have quite a few other cultivars to plant. I plan to graft over some wild volunteers next Spring. The seedling pecans have an annoyingly small nut.
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So about asking strangers for fruit, I did that! This morning on my way to work, I saw this gentleman with the persimmon tree coming out to the steeet to grab his garbage can. I stopped the car and asked him for a fruit from his tree. He told me to help myself. I picked a ripe,soft persimmon right off the tree. Didn’t eat it at work as I wanted to share it with my family. At home I cut it open, tasted a piece and it was delicious! No astringency. Tough skin, I peeled it off and after that it was yummy. I don’t know if this is the difference between the two varieties or if it’s the fact that this one is a home grown tree ripe fruit but either way this one made me want to plant a tree. I saved half for hubby so I can convince him we need a persimmon tree too. He thinks I’m getting carried away with fruit growing. The fact that I haven’t been able to show one ripe fruit after having a peach tree for 6 years haven’t helped my case. If this is how home grown tree ripe fruit taste I can’t wait to have my own! Next year is going to be the year.
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Thanks for the picture it’s nice when people show the inside of their fruits, I think that’s the 1st persimmon I have seen the center of, now if someone can show the inside of there Jujube, seen tons of them but not the center of one yet?
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I got my order of bare root muscadine vines from Ison’s earlier this week. The root systems look great. As an added bonus, I got an extra Dixie Red delight, Ison and Darlene.
I’m really excited about my 15-1-1 New Muscadine
I wonder why more companies don’t ship bare root in the fall? These plants look great, they are the smallest size Ison’s offers on muscadine.
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Fall is usually much better for me to plant, I wish more places would accomodate it
Wow, those are really nice roots! I never got stuff like that from Isons. Maybe they improved their growing techniques, those look more like the Double A vines I have gotten.
Now you’re making me want more muscadines!
Hey Kathryn, I know I’m not helping… check these out from the last NAFEX meeting at ABAC. I wish I could get my hands on the two numbered patented varieties in the second photo. The skin on those two cultivars is very friable, not nearly so chewy, they dissolve with little effort. The flesh is much more like a table grape, somewhat firm, not “snotty” as other muscadine are.
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So who holds the patent on those…are they not marketing them yet? They look good!
UGA, they are so new they haven’t been named. They were created for large scale farmers to compete with the table grape market. I have no idea if any nursery will be offering them to the general public. It seems a lot of the cultivars, regardless of species, are being patented by UGA for sale to farmers not the public. They developed some cold hardy citrus, but only one nursery is selling these varieties that I am aware of.
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I know of that practice and I guess I can see the reasoning but kinda unfair isn’t it to us fruit fans. 
I have this mental image of skulking like a ninja into the orchards where these things grow, pruners at the ready
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Yeah!!! Good idea!!! Lol
I hadn’t looked at the saffron crocuses for over a week, so thought there might be a laggard blooming - 21! A real crop! There were 11 cut Oct. 29 and one Nov. 1. We now have enough to try cooking with 'em.
I bought 24 for $19.00 eight or ten years ago, from White Flower Farms, My wife and I have divided them twice in that time - plenty of little starts surround the fat corm. Only the larger corms bloom - at least 1/2 inch across - and live one or two years at that size before collapsing. We’d have more if we didn’t share 'em with colleagues and friends to grow themselves.
We’ve got them in reasonably fertile soil and buried under about an inch or two of wood shavings. 9-10 months of the year, that patch is bare - except for the weeds I must pull and apply more mulch. Leaves come out late April, die back and the corm stays dormant through the dry summer until leaves emerge again late September. Then the blooms. Some years they are covered in snow and I don’t see 'em.
This might be about as far north as they can be cultivated.
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We had such an extended fall I wish I had replanted radish etc.
