What's Happening in the Fall of 2017

The red is so pretty!

I think they taste like an Irish potato.

iā€™d guess I got about 60-70% of the root system - losing some of the side feeder roots.

That is a fair amount of roots, larger trees though take longer to recover, it may be 3 years before it fully recovers. Doesnā€™t mean it cannot be done, it can.

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I have Pink Lemonade, it will be its 3rd year next year. Beautiful foliage, very disease resistant, tends to grow thicker and bushier instead of leggy like most rabbiteyes.

It bloomes earlier than my other blueberries, by about a week. My other blueberries were Centurion and Powderblue. They got completely zapped by frost when we had it due to their early bloom.

Hope that info helps.

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Thanks. So if your PL blooms earlier, didnā€™t it also get its blooms zapped this year?

I thought bloobs are one of the last fruit plants to bloom. Odd that they got hit this year.

Iā€™m sorry, I think I must have been unclear. Pink lemonade did start to bloom about a week earlier than the others. Powder blue about a week later, then centurion a week after that. When the frost happened, 100% of the Pink Lemonade were in bloom, so all the blooms died and I got no fruit. About 50% of the Powder Blue had bloomed, so those blooms died, but I still got fruit from the blooms after that. Centurion was untouched.

Georgia had a hard frost after a period of warm weather. A lot of the peach farmers were very hard hit, as well as farmers with SHB blueberries (which bloom earlier than rabbiteyes in general). I donā€™t necessarily think youā€™ll have a problem with Pink Lemonade most years, but if you do have a late frost, it will be affected more than other rabbiteyes that bloom later.

(I think a read somewhere that Pink Lemonade was a cross between a rabbiteye and a high bush, so perhaps that is why it blooms among the earliest of the rabbiteyes.)

Donā€™t get me wrong-Iā€™m not dissuading you from buying PL! It is a very beautiful, disease free plant, and the frost hit everyone hard. I do not think the PL will get zapped most years.

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Well, I just got in from pulling stakes off my tomato plants, that stopped producing a couple months ago. The patch has turned into a nasty weed patch, I spent a while picking cockle burrs off my clothes.

I didnā€™t get finished, but I pulled stakes off of 30 plants. Also removed the twine I used to tie the stalks to the tobacco stakes. Each plant had about 5 stakes, so I guess I yanked about 150 of them! Thereā€™s 13 more tomā€™s to do, plus about 25 pepper plants left.

This will be the last plot that needs cleaned up. After that, Iā€™m going to get soil samples of all the plots, and see what amendments Iā€™ll need to add for next year.

Yeah, I remember the spring, very warm in March and then boom, hard freezes in April. Not a lot of folks got a lot of peaches up here either, but itā€™s not exactly the ideal area for those fruit.

We have 4 peach trees, but I doubt theyā€™ll be big enough to produce next year. Our Coralstar did better this year than last, but itā€™s still only 4ft tall. And obviously the Contender and Blushingstar trees I planted this year are still too young.

Iā€™ll keep Pink Lemonade in mind for next year. Thanks for the info.

Yesterday, to my surprise, 11 more saffron crocuses!

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I like novel fruit, but this one isnā€™t a good fit for here. So I was excited when Pink Popcorn was released. Itā€™s nothing like PL though. Itā€™s a cream pink, unlike PL which is a deep pink. It tastes like a blueberry, PL has a unique taste Iā€™m told. . Crossed in 1983, selected for trials in 1987 by the University of Minnesota. Itā€™s called popcorn because it has a very crisp texture, and I think burst open when bitten, much like firm grapes. It is a highbush-lowbush cross of unknown parentage. Perfect for here.

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Beautiful fall day, almost 60 degrees no wind, perfect for fall spray. My sticker arrived yesterday so I got the fall spray done today.
A friend went to a garlic festival and picked up the variety Music for me. I planted that today. Had planted 10-15 cloves already about a month ago. Planted another 15 today. If everything goes well Iā€™ll have a lot of garlic in 2018. I had sent my son away crying when I did the spray. He helps out with everything in the yard so he was puzzled why he couldnā€™t help out withspraying. He was happy he got to help out with the garlic.

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Beautiful sunny day indeed but wind was 15 mph. So, I will spray next Tues instead.

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Yesterday was mid 70ā€™s. Today was 70ā€™s so Iā€™ve been wearing shorts all day outside and there is zero wind. We had a bunch of bad wind storms recently so Iā€™m glad to see good weather.

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75 yesterday. Havenā€™t had anything below 28 yet. Apples and plums still have leaves. Turning color but havenā€™t fallen. Pomegranate just started turning colors.

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I am putting the fruit growing year in the books. I did my last spray of the year today.

I sprayed some basic copper sulfate (Bonide Copper Dust) with 2 teaspoon/gallon of NuFilm 17 for peach leaf curl, using the highest labeled rate of the copper on my Redhaven. I found an old RTU bottle of Daconil (chlorothalonil) on the shelf, so sprayed my 3 newly planted peach trees with that. I think I will buy another bottle of the RTU chlorothalonil in the spring and spray it alongside Kocide 3000 as an experiment.

Earlier in the week I sprayed a ridiculous amount of Nu Film 17 on my southwest-facing evergreens. 3.2 ounces in 1/2 gallon of water. It is interesting stuff when applied at that rate. It goes from yellow to milky white in solution. You can really tell it is on the plants when applied at that rate. It made the foliage shiny and when droplets bridged between needles dried, a clear film formed in their place.

Yes, Wilt Stop is the same stuff, and it is milky white. I find it to work on stopping desiccation and buys you a full zone. I have zone 7 plants in zone 6. But it does not work on some, only those where desiccation is a problem. For example figs, itā€™s the temps, not the drying that kills the above ground portion of figs, So it wonā€™t help on figs.

Winter maintenance in blueberry patch today. All the tall blueberry bushes are rabbiteye climax and premier. The empty spaces are where I have pulled out non-Rabbiteyes and will replace them this season with more Rabbiteyes. Also did some maintenance on the 8 foot high deer fence which has worked out great. Manny is the German Shepherd. He is with me literally everywhere I go out here and at home. Super dude. :crazy_face:

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my moonglow pear and several of my plums have bloomed and fruited abnormally due to the warm fall this year. wonder if this will affect spring bloom and summer fruit next yearā€¦

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My Moonglow did the sameā€¦

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