Thanks
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Another heat wave, more than 110F, will be here on the weekend so we picked nearly everything. The only stone fruits still be on the tree are Flavor Grenade, Elephant Heart, and Laroda plums.
Emerald Beaut plums
Flavor King, Flavor Queen, and a Kelsey plum
Elephant Heart, Prime Ark blackberries, Passsion fruits, and a bell pepper
This Elephant Heart is good. The inside is firm and can be described as from melissa’s website
These are large, heart-shaped fruit with bronze green skin that turns reddish purple when completely ripe. They are juicy and have blood-red free stone flesh with a distinctive rich flavor of honey and vanilla with tart berry undertones.
However, if left until very soft, the texture and flavor will be like an over ripe banana going bad. 
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The smaller Korean Giant pears are ripening at an increased rate now. I found an over looked Liberty that might be over ripe and a small Mutsu drop.
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10-ish lbs of wild labrusca grapes. Many had split from recent rain after almost none for months. Whipped up a batch of jam to enjoy them through the winter.
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Do you have other Asian pears besides Korean Giant. My graft has one fruit, its first, and its not very big. My Chojuro are just getting ripe. I’d like to know when to try the Korean Giant.
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With only one pear as you know it is hard to determine when it should be picked. Recently I have been picking when the skin gets lighter and they have been sweet. In my area they never wait until the expected early October ripening date that is typically reported. My KG have a considerable size difference from small to softball size. Most of the small ones will be almost as good tasting as the large ones (softball size). I know what I’m writing will not help much and I think you will have to get more pears to determine your best picking date. I have Three Asian type pears Korean Giant, Unknown Asian, and a this year graft of Dripping Honey.
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This is a year of first time fruits for me,especially Plums.Here is the Empress prune.Didn’t taste exceptionally sweet,but was 25 brix.Nice flavor.bb
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This is one of few Europeans plum that I like. It (store bought )is usually very sweet and good size
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My wife and I have been taking out numerous fruit trees over the past few weeks. Some of them are being replaced by new varieties and some are being replaced by a greenhouse.
Trees removed permanently: Shiro plum. Methely plum, mericrest nectarine, Harko nectarine, sweet bagel peach, toka plum, and 2 asian pears.
We have decided that mediocre plums are just not worth it. We had a good crop of fruit this year and we keep reaching for the same things, which are peaches, pluots and pluerries. The only plum I will have left is weeping Santa Rosa. I will mostly be adding more peaches next year.
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I was thinking about adding this variety next year… Can you please share why your getting rid of it? Don’t like the flavor or other reasons?
Thanks!
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It’s pretty hard to get good fruit off the tree and I didn’t think the peaches were all that good. I didn’t eat that many and they may have improved like most trees do with time, but I decided there are other varieties that I would like to try instead.
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Hi Phil,
Were Mericrest and Harko not making the cut on account of poor quality fruit, or a productivity issue? Or were they just occupying the wrong real estate?
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They were in the wrong real Estate. Harko is a solid nectarine, productive, but not exceptional flavor wise. Mericrest is better tasting, more flavor, more sweet acid balance, but it was generally on the smaller side, less productive (less flowers) and stink bugs would always hit that tree hard for some reason. If I had infinite space I would probably plant Mericrest again, wouldn’t bother with Harko.
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It was 118F yesterday and today. The Laroda tree in the container had a hard time with the heat so we picked.them all.
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Very artistic, Jessica.
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