Backyard Orchards, chronicling, musing and more

Lucky you. I have several plums with bite marks and a week alter, the fruit turned yellowish and dropped. These are decent sized plums that should not have dropped without bite marks.

I am puzzled too. I kept picking off plums with bite mark(s)and cut it open to check the worms, but found none.
We had rain last night. I just found and smashed couple if PC on the fruits.

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My fruit this year is good, not great. So much rain this spring ruined some pollination but not all, even on self pollinating trees! My plum « Quetsch » is just not holding fruit yet. The tree had many flowers this year but the small fruitlets are dropping one by one. I may get 10 or 11. Plums take so long to produce. My apricots are not yet ripe but will be in another week or so. The peaches are not far behind. My apples, all dropped except for my Granny Smith. Again pollination was a problem and aphids. My figs and citrus are incredible, as they would be. My new. Fig (three years old) only has one breba and three new figs, but they are huge. My Ronde de Bordeaux is excellent even after sever pruning last year. My satsuma mandarine dropped all 12 fruits. Its just not a perfect year, but not a bad one! My cherries were superior. I will buy another Montmorency this fall. Xxoo C. MrsG

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Steven,
Have you seen cracking on your nectarines? I am dismayed to see over a dozen of my perfectly good (escaping plum curculio) got cracked badly on my small tree. Arctic Glo is the worst. A bit cracking on Emeraude and no cracking on Zephyr and Freckle Face. Granted, we have had rain and, at rimes, soaking rain.

Anyone else in the east coast got cracked nectarines? @Ahmad ? @scottfsmith?


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Last year I had extensive cracking of Arctic Glo and Arctic Rose. This year I have seen about a dozen cracked Arctic Glo and a few Arctic Star, but no cracked Emeraude so far. I actually top-worked three quarters of my Arctic Glo with Honey Blaze this year (because of cracking and because I have other nectarines that I like more).

By the way, two other east coast forum members have reported extensive cracking by Arctic Glo in prior years.

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Thanks for the info. I am seeing top working Arctic Glo in a horizon. :grinning:

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Round 2 of thinning. Although I thought I thinned aggressively the first time, I still left way too many nectarines on this tree.

I have tried to avoid harming bees by not spraying Spinosad during blooms for thrips. I got 60% or more of thrip damage. I may need to do some spraying for thrips next year.

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Yep. A fair amount. It seems worst on the ones that had thripes damage. Maybe that compromised the fruits and made them more susceptible?

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My Arctic Glo that cracked were mostly free of thrip damage!! That was why it was frustrating to lose perfectly good fruit.

How much thrip damage has it been on your nectarines? Mine has been so much that I consider Spinosad next year. Most damage has been on Freckle Face, a large tree. A lot less less damage on the other two smaller nectarine trees. None on peaches but I prefer nectarines to peaches these days.

A fair amount. Maybe 1/2 the nectarine fruitlets have thrip damage. Which I guess is okay since I have to thin that much anyway.

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I think thrips damage is mostly cosmetic, I would not worry much about it as I don’t sell fruit.

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@Ahmad and @SMC_zone6 Thanks for your thoughts on thrip damaged fruit. I’d like to give away some of nice looking fruit. Thrips damaged a lot. What have survived thrip-damaged thinning may or may not survived being damaged by other bugs. Timing my spray has been challenging due to rain and wind vs work schedule.

Just venting, I guess!!

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Cherries!

I used clay and baggies. It seemed to work. Birds were very good at getting the ones I could not bag.

My first pluots are here. Most I bagged. But I missed these two.


I have loads of peaches all bagged and. Just a Few apples. I also planted 7 more trees this year. Always the optimist.

Try to nail down how to prune espaliers… still.
Hot day yesterday!
Colleen

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What does blossom rot look like?

Blossoms turned brown and shriveled.

My Black Gold had brown rot blossom blight every year despite weekly fungicide spray (Indar and Luna Sensation). I am giving up. The older the cherry tree is, the more problem it has given me.

I used to bag everything. I am giving that up, mostly, too.

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same thing im dealing with on my romance cherries. despite spraying with copper and infuse i had to cut out 1/3rd of my c.j and some branches of my romeo 2 days ago. juliet had about 5 strikes. lutowka polish, siberian peaches and my black ice plum werent affected despite them all being within 50ft. of each other. 3 summers ago i thought i was going to lose c.j completely as it had rained all summer and i wasnt able to spray at all. i chopped about half of the canopy out to save it from blight.and brown rot. the romance cherries might be disease resistant in the northern plains but not here in the n.e…

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My sour cherry is Juliet from a Romance series. Cherry leaf spot and brown rot has been well-controlled by Indar.

It is the sweet cherries that have given me a headache. I am down to one Black Gold and this is its last year.

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im going to have to bite the bullet and get some.