Wow, some people are unreal. Thanks for the correction, I bookmarked the wrong trap, got it now! I may need one soon. It’s illegal in my city, but I hope to retire to a smaller house in the country. The city requires you use their traps, and requires animal control to take it away, and you have to pay for both. It must be a problem animal, and they might not consider my circumstances as qualifying. Luckily my dog has effectively kept them away, no fruit was taken this year, not one! I do have a tall tree in the yard, as soon as I can swing a thousand I’ll have it cut down.I bet this Ultimate killer would work, nailed in that tree! http://www.animalcontrolproducts.com/ez-catalog/X355890/4%20Kill
I don’t think people really think about the problem they are causing others. My own grandfather, who was as fine a man as any you’d meet, used to catch squirrels at his house in town and drive them to the city park to dump them. I was too young to ask him about it when he was alive, but I suspect he thought he was doing the squirrels a favor moving them so they could be near a more open space with more squirrels. It probably never occurred to him the houses around the park probably couldn’t grow anything edible and probably had issues of squirrels burrowing into their homes/cars looking for shelter.
Amazing your city has such restrictive rules on trapping squirrels. My guess is they don’t want people moving wildlife.
I spray copper at dormant and that’s that. I don’t have bacterial spot that badly so I live with imperfect fruit. Bac spots are mostly on my peaches and nects. I don’t think I see bac spot on my pluot (yet). If they are bad, you may want to remove the trees and find better varieties with more resistance.
If you use Liquid-Cop, you can follow its label and spray when trees are actively growing at a rate suggested on the label.
You can use the search engine here (a magnifying glass symbol on the top right hand corner of the page) to search old threads about how other people deal with bac spots. It’s a common peach issue so there are several threads about it.
Thanks much mamuang… I used copper for bac spot, but it is a thin line between phytotoxicity and protection from bacterial disease. The dormant spray does nothing for bacterial spot, it is however good for peach leaf curl and other early season disease. I am planning on using oxytetracycline next season for bacterial spot, but was wondering if you or anyone else here had success with it. My pluots are FK, FS, FG, Emerald Drop, splash, geo pride and dapple dandy. My nectarines are Arctic Jay, Zephyr and Heavenly White.
It was a very encouraging year. The apricots harvest was pretty decent, and I expect it to increase significantly in the coming years. The same with peaches/nectarines. Among plums, Howard’s Miracle was my best producer this year, but again more trees are on their way to production. August is the month of figs for me, a good crop second year in a row. The fall was highlighted by feijoas and pomegranates, the first significant harvest for both. For the first time, we had enough to eat these fantastic fruits every day, very happy with them. A big crop of olives this year, and with negligible loss from olive fruit fly thanks to a single application of Surround in mid-August. In fact, I was overwhelmed with the amount of olives I had to process, so I sold a couple of trees.
Olpea, I have two Frost Peaches and one Elberta Peach trees that have survived -30. I use Tree Tubes by Nativ Nurseries https://www.nativnurseries.com/p-112-tree-protector-package.aspx to keep the sun scald and rodents away. They do not protect the buds. Our cold temps do not persist for very many days but just short cold snaps. If it did I would expect that my Peach trees wouldn’t make it. The fruit is not large but they are sweet.
Thanks for the info. That’s pretty incredible! I’ve read about peach trees surviving those temps, and also read about peach trees iced out at -20F (or even warmer). I remember a few years ago one of the west coast nurseries (C&O) lost a bunch of young peach trees at much much warmer temps. But the tree death was caused primarily because the cold temps came in very early before the peaches had time to harden off.
Can you tell me what rootstocks your peaches are on?
Btw, those are some nice looking peaches for such a little tree.
I did like them,especially Purple Heart.The skin wasn’t very tart and the inside was meaty,thicker than some other Japanese Plums.Very good flavor.
Pearl was sweet,close to 20 brix and not real juicy.With just two tasted,more are needed to form an opinion. Brady
I had a nice harvest of Zestar, Liberty, and Suncrisp and 40 lbs of peaches off my Redhaven. I had my first graft produce apples (Williams Pride). I got 3 or 4 plums after our summer weather in February and the subsequent temperature drop in March. I’m hoping next year I will get apples off all my in-ground trees.
My most notable result from the year is in control of summer diseases on apples. I did two sprays for summer disease. One was an organic spray I found in a publication, but I had an issue with the soluble copper causing russetting. (Here: My fungicide fail) I sprayed that one June 8. I sprayed Pristine fungicide (Bonide Fruit Tree & Plant Guard) on July 8 this year. I had zero sooty blotch and flyspeck. We had a drier than normal June, a wet July followed by a drier August, and dry September. It is hard to say whether this is typical performance. If so I’m totally sold on Pristine for sooty blotch and flyspeck. I think I will keep using the Bonide product as it has lambda-cyhalothrin in it aslo. It seemed like the cyhalothrin killed or deterred Japanese beetles for about 2 or 3 weeks.
Yesterday I made an Arctic Glo-red currant crisp. I have made at least 100 crisps in the last few years, and this one was in the top five. Man Arctic Glo is a great nectarine. The skin is thick, and these had skin, but cooked, it was not a deterrent to texture or flavor, tasted good actually.
I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary about Madison, but they were good. They were firm and juicy but the skin might have been a little bit on the thick side. That seems par for the course for the cold hardy peaches. Madison and Veteran produced quite a bit even though the blooms got hit by some frost this spring. Other peaches also produced a few, but not as much. All the trees are still young. I like Veteran and Contender slightly better but would be happy with Madison every year. The few very ripe President plums I’ve had have tasted excellent, with a nice deep orange color on the inside. I didn’t measure the brix but they were very sweet. The only drawback for me is that they are a little late in the season. Since they are black knot resistant I’m going to graft a few more onto some rootstocks this spring. I wish I would have planted a few more Presidents early on instead of so many gage trees.
Edit–> Here is a picture of the Madison tree this summer. The first peaches I picked measured 12-13 brix, but the later ones were 14-15. Peach time! - #130 by ztom
I’m in zone 6a along Lake Ontario in upstate NY. Bay Laurel wasn’t even going to sell me the Arctic Star nectarine telling me that it wouldn’t grow here. Did they mean not cold hardy, or bud sensitivity? They said it was for zone 7 but I ignored them. I had two nectarines the year after planting and expecting more next year! Could someone tell me if it’s not as cold hardy as other peaches? I wrapped it last winter based on their warning for my zone, but had no problems so maybe they meant bud hardiness.
Basically what they told me is that Arctic Star tends to bloom early and that I am taking the risk of loosing its bloom to late frost in the north east. But I responded that it is rated down to zone 7, which I am in. My other concern was it’s sensitivity to bacterial spot, as I read on some university extension that it is very susceptible to it. Do you have any experience with bacterial spot?
