Buds , Flowers and Fruits 2022 Edition!

Victoria peaches. These have been pretty easy to grow. I haven’t sprayed them since my last big spray. Little bug damage. Nice to have peaches again!

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@BlueBerry … never found a live sanddollar… pretty rare where we go to find a whole one and i found two this time and one with just a small chip out of it.

I found one conch shell with a live hermit crab in it… did not realize it was in there until it ran off our table.

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Yesterday I walked around and looked at how my trees and grafts were handling the scab that seems to have set in after copius amounts of rain.

I rated each tree and graft with a clear, light, medium, or heavy case of disfigured leaves. I guess my findings were not surprising, but I didn’t expect there to be such a difference depending on what tree the graft was on.

I’ll give you a few examples. Bite me, Stephens apple graft was completely clear on Jonathan but really bad on Virginia Beauty. Granny Smith grafts were clear on wolf River but covered with scab on McIntosh.

The worst looking leaves were grafts of chenango strawberry, tollman sweet, and Newtown Pippin. Some of the clearest–red fleshed apples like pekka, redfield, odysso, pink delight. Liberty, freedom, and Enterprise did well too, as expected. The limbertwigs mostly fell in the light scab spots, as did Ambrosia, wealthy, winter banana, among others.

Moderate scab was McIntosh, Arkansas black, honeycrisp, winecrisp, summer banana, jonagold, ashmeads kernel, and quite a few others.

My takeaway was that although certain varieties are more or less resistant, it depends a lot on the immediate disease pressure of that tree or nearby trees on how it’s going to perform. Some granny Smith grafts were clear and others looked pretty bad. The trees they were grafted to did have different amounts of scab but not enough to account for the significant differences, in my opinion.

Why do this ridiculous amount of review? I guess I just like to look at the trees in a variety of ways to see if it makes sense to me. I’m trying to figure out what trees perform best in my area, but it’s often not that simple.

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You mean CAR or actual apple scab? I did the same thing with my apple trees to look at the fruit and also the leaves on the trees. I normally do not see CAR on my trees. This year with the multiple days of rain then heat, then rain every other day for a month. I could not spray like I normally could. I think that was probably was a bad combination. I am taking notes so I compare this year to next year. See if the CAR is the same next year. It seemed to be a mess this year.

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Not CAR, although I did a similar review of that when it occurred earlier in the season. I had the same weather pattern late in the summer. About 3 weeks of daily rain which kept me from spraying. Here’s a pic of those CAR leaves from early summer. Worst on the bottom although mutsu and Virginia Gold are not represented and they looked terrible.

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I’m checking out scab versus marssonia. Septoria?

This relates to @BlueBerry discussion regarding disease resistant varieties.

Here’s a picture. I don’t think it’s fireblight. It’s in multiple trees. The damage is frozen in time. Came out one day after lots of rain. Has not spread appreciably. No leaf drop. No shepherd’s crook. Across varieties. New growth on the same limb is clear.

I had the exact same thing early in the season.

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Perhaps you might also post this under my old thread about “most verdant and disease resistant” apple trees?

Good information.

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Great photo of all your apple tree leaves.

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After work trip to the garden and… Good eats…

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Question: Could you manage to get by if okra was outlawed like hemp?

@BlueBerry … love the okra… we eat it 2 or 3 times a week and just do not get tired of it.

Had grilled hamburger steaks tonight… and keto fried okra… and some bigbeef and cherry tomatoes.

We topped that off with some CH figs…

Just excellent food.

Okra is also very keto friendly… a few details below.

Okra is a vegetable that is rich in nutrients and is great for a keto diet. One cup (100 grams) of raw okra has just 33 calories, 7 grams of carbohydrates and 3 grams of fiber. For just 4 net carbs per serving , you get a great source of both Vitamin C and K, a host of antioxidants, and 2 grams of protein.

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Nor going to object…I like fried okra, or in a soup.

I’ve never seen so much blush on a Winter Banana. I don’t care for the fruit.

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Send some okra to France, they really do not eat it here! They eat everything else that is slimey so I have no idea how okra missed the list! I love it!

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Good point and FUNNY! :laughing:

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Moonglow pears done for the season. It was fun pears season.

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I use Winter Banana more as a pollinator than an apple to use in my house. I had some last year and they were good but sort of mealy. I fed them to my horses. They LOVED them. So I leave that tree for those two purposes.

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Finally getting a decent every-other-day haul of tomatoes!

Most of the “Optimal” (yellow/red striped) and all the “Pink Boar” (green/red/pink striped) are from in the greenhouse, but the rest are from outside, and the two sizes of red tomatoes are third-generation volunteers that are descendants of sungold and seem like perfectly fine little tomatoes.

I was lining up the different varieties and one member of the family insisted on eating one:


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:slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face:

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Beautiful child, tomatoes too!

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