Cherries are starting to emerge from the wilting blooms today. I also spotted the Male Chickadee with a moth for the female. His call is sorrowful and has a minor quality to it while the other chickadees are major and bright. He’s actually hard to spot immediately in the third picture.
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Thanks for the reply. My plants didn’t send out a lot of runners last year. Maybe because they got hit with deer (or some other varmit), and I gave up on them and the weeds almost took over. Later in the year, I weeded them and they did recover some, but didn’t sucker much. I’ve noticed that the Earliglow sucker more than the Jewel plants.
Kinda excited to see the little green berries on them, but I’m have to temper that because of the threat from varmits.
After they produce, I’ll need to be diligent about renovating and fertilizing the plot. I guess after they’re done producing, then they get mowed down to the crowns?
Speaking of watermelons, we might give them a try this year also.
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Today I have Mason bees filling their tubes.
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Grrrr… Spreading branches with sticks and broke a good one off!
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I just came in from digging up more strawberries to make room for watermelons. I put some in a few containers and plan to give the rest to my office mates again. My neighbors showed up with a wheelbarrow and helped himself a cart full of berry plants.
Last year, the second year they exploded. I don’t mow them and do not know how people who grow rows and rows of berries do. I only have one haphazard patch 
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Saturn has done very well here the past few years…seems to be hardy.
Saturn/various plums on prunus americana
Saturn blooms up high and future source of squirrel food
Krymsk 86 blooms…very peachish
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I net the strawberries to keep out the varmints - mostly birds
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Sprayed Glystar Pro today around all my trees. Started at 11AM. It was hot and clear. Finished around 2PM. Mixed 4oz of Glystar and 2oz. Of Dawn detergent per gallon. Wasn’t expecting rain but of course it poured!! Quick and hard pop shower for 10 minutes and I hope my spraying from 11-2PM isn’t for not!! Pop up shower came at 330PM so everything had a minimum of 1.5 hours to dry. It was hot today too and only 30% chance for that pop up shower. It was 80 degrees and it looked like the spray was drying quickly and absorbed by the weeds/grass. All it takes is for it to dry right? Dry into the plant and any rain after that doesn’t matter…hopefully. What do you all think? Repeat in 3-4 weeks?
I had a ripe Earliglow once the last weekend of April here in Somerset KY area. Usually plenty by the 10th of May. Unfortunately, after 5 years of cropping and three years of neglect…the weeds and briars and saplings took my strawberry patch a long while back.
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My 2 favorite plants, unknown Etna fig and Tifblue blueberry, both standing about 8’ at 8 years old in 25 gallon containers.
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How big do the EG berries get? Right now the biggest green one is about thumbnail size.
Yeah, they do get going early, I think the first ones started blooming about 3 weeks ago.
Do you grow any blackberries? Or rasps?
I grew strawberries last year in 1 1/2 gallon buckets I found the watering to be the hardest part. They produced well but I think they would have done better had they been watered more.
This year I inserted net pots in the bottom of each pail. I thought I would use up some of the things we had around the farm. DH is an electrician and we had some 4 foot plastic florescent light covers on which the pots sit and the net cup conveniently just reaches the bottom.
I find I need to let the gutters dry out once in awhile or the plants are constantly wet. I fill the gutters about once a week, this also keeps the algae at bay.
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Yup…the annoyingness of container (which i have a ton of) seems to be the non stop watering.
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Couple of pollinators on pink lady and pixie crunch. The third one is a carpenter bee but can anyone ID the first two?
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Those are Hoverflies, they’re good pollinators that lay eggs on plants with aphids. The Hungry maggot eats the aphids and starts the cycle over again. I love seeing them around. They mimic bees and wasps to fool other animals into being scared of them.
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Odd year for apples
Last year I didn’t spray the crabs and they got scab really bad - defoliated one Radiant tree and essentially killed an old weak one. This year the living tree leafed out, but no bloom on it. It’s always been covered in bloom, until this year. I’ve sprayed and hope it recovers, but it’s also an old tree.
I did spray the apple apples, and they avoided scab problems, but only one tree is in bloom - full, burgeoning bloom - my runted out Fuji. I’ll have to thin most of the fruits.
All the other fruit trees are in blooming profusion, but the apples are being weird.
Gonna end up with a pretty small crop
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Well…good apple fruit set for me. But some varieties didn’t bloom.
Bob, concerning your EarliGlow strawberries…the first fruits are “medium sized”.
Within 10 days, the later maturing fruits will be lucky to be bigger than your thumbnail.
Still, I would highly endorse the variety.
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Bob…the flavor is excellent…they keep well…they are resistant to just about every strawberry disease…they are the earliest…they make superb pies, jam and shortcake.
Who cares if they aren’t the biggest? 
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Thanks, sounds like a good variety to have. Can’t wait to try them out in a few weeks. They are really sending out the runners now, I’m pinning them to the ground when they get a good distance from the mother plant. My wife has been buying strawbs from the store, but they are not very tasty or sweet. They’re big berries, but bland. So, in a few weeks hopefully we’ll have some to sample.
Speaking of apples, it looks like most of ours are not blooming. I did the pull down branches approach on some of them, and on quite a few trees they already have limbs near horizontal. The trees have some leaves on them, but aren’t fully leafed out yet, so maybe it’s still too early. Granted, some of them are too small to produce but there are others that should be big enough. I’m surprised my 10ft tall Winesap doesn’t have any blossoms on it.
There are old apple trees close to these that have already bloomed and have set some fruit, so I’m puzzled.
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