I wish I had enough Coe’s Golden Drop for you. It was wonderful plum, i think it could make you forget about any mirabelles.
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On its second year in the ground my Shiro plum had over 40 fruit. The evil squirrels decided to remove them for me. My Cherry tree gave me 3 berries its first year in the ground. That was a treat. My goumi’s produced fruit for the first time. Just a few berries but I like them. I also added 2 4in1 pulots and a 4in1 euro plum. We got taste 2 of the 3 Asian pears but 0 blossoms on the apple. Last but not least, my wife and I welcomed our second child.
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Mirabelles will always come first to ne. Just what I like. 
After 3 to 5 years, I’m starting to get small handfuls from a fair number of trees, but only peaches and sour cherries have produced any kind of quantity. There were at least a dozen or so trees that I harvested 1 to 3 fruits each from. Big winners for me so far are tart cherries (especially Montmorency and Carmine Jewel), Veteran and Madison peaches, Concord-type grapes, Black Velvet gooseberry, Damson plums and strawberries. Got my first sweet cherries, a bowl of Lapins. Very good. No apricots or asian plums yet. Got a few excellent apples (Melrose, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Goldrush) and asian pears. Also got a half dozen various euro plums that were good but PC got all of the others. My tomatoes languished for the first 3 weeks of June. I amended the garden with a yard and a half of leaf compost this spring and I think it didn’t really add any nutrients, so I bit the bullet and fertilized with miracle-gro specifically for tomatoes and sprayed with rot-stop. Had absolutely no end blossom rot for the first time and had a Brandywine tomato plant loaded with a few dozen perfect tomatoes. In the past I’ve only got 1 or 2 from Brandywine. They were awesome, but so was BrandyBoy which seems easier to grow and might be my new go-to tomato. Other tomatoes were hit and miss but we ended up canning 20 quarts of sauce. Carmine red peppers were very good but produced rather late in the summer. No good watermelons for me this year. Honey Orange and Honey Blonde cantaloupe were pretty good, I think they will be a mainstay. SWD was horrible on raspberries and blackberries.
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How would you describe the taste of goumi?
Does your Arctic Star do well in Zone 6? I just ordered one from bay laurel and they warned me from late frost killing its blossoms… I’m in zone 7a in Delaware. Also, what root stock is it on?
I have trouble with black knot also. President plum really does seem immune to it, and the few plums I’ve had have been very good. I think it is a little bit later than Stanley, though.
For those of you suffering from squirrels and birds, I tried this product on my tomatoes and nectarines this year, and they gave very good results:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013OWPEYW/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2FMPUZ42VHJAC&colid=1BJW6L9QE2532
There are different sizes, and they are cheaper from eBay as they can be directly ordered from China.
This is a similar product, yet more suited to fruits with very short stems, like peaches and nectarines (I have not tried it though):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LX5579M/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1O10DH9VTBTXP&colid=1BJW6L9QE2532
Late frost can do damage on stone fruit when the timing is right. So, no guarantee.
Arctic Star bloomed the same time as my other peaches. This year, freezing temp in early March killed all apricot flower buds but spared peaches and nectarine. I’d say most year, you should get fruit. I grafted my on a peach tree.
Bird can be fooled when fruit are covered by white or green color but not squirrels. Squirrels can smell ripening fruit and will rip your fruit, bags and all in no time.
Bags in the 2nd pic look like they could be good against plum curculio and Oriental Fruit Moth. I am just not sure if bags that cost almost $1 a bag are cost effective.
This was generally a good year:
Lots of peaches, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, red currants, plums, apples, sweet (Windsor, Black Tartarian) and sour cherries. A few pears, no apricots, Sungold (late frost)
Black knot attacked a very fine Redheart plum tree, and I couldn’t stop the brown rot on my only nectarine (Oberly White). I pollarded one fine humongous peach tree and will see the results.
I tested seven kinds of bags for bagging apples and peaches from all over the world.
Squirrels are EVERYWHERE.
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Any of the bags worked for you?
What do commercial orchards do to protect their crops from squirrels?
Olpea uses traps. Most use have a heart traps, but Olpea said the skunk traps by Tomahawk are the best
Then into a garbage can filled with water.
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a lot like a sour cherry, only sweeter and more astringent. Under ripe will give you mild cotton mouth feeling like with persimmons. The astringency decreases as the berries ripen, but I only got 2 perfectly ripe berries before the birds and squirrels took everything else. When I got my plants from raintree 2 years ago, they where in bloom in the box. The smell from the box was heavenly. The first year I assume it put most of its energy into root growth. I had zero die back and some moderate above ground growth but very little bud set. The first spring in the ground had nothing like the number of flowers the plant shipped with. Year 2 bud set is phenomenal every single leaf node has one. I am going to have to invest in motion activated sprinklers
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Btomlins,
Did any of your peach trees actually survive the -30F?
You’re right Drew. I’ve had much better success with Tomahawk than Havahart, or any two door trap. As anyone who has seriously grown tree fruit in the face of high squirrel pressure can attest, several squirrels can remove all the fruit from a tree in a short amount of time.
Drew, one thing I’ll note is that the link you posted is not actually the trap I use. That trap is only 20" long, and the one I use is 24".
I think the 4 inches of additional length may be significant, because I’ve seen shorter traps hit the squirrel’s hind end when the door closes, and they back out of the trap without being captured. The one I use is the model 105 (24" length). This is one I use for squirrels, even though it’s supposed to be for skunks:
I only use that trap at the house and bait it with acorns. I place an old door mat under the trap, so grass won’t grow up through it. Put the trap on it and throw a few acorns in it. I have to trap them all year long to protect the fruit because people continually dump squirrels here.
At the farm, I don’t have any squirrels destroying fruit. Squirrels require tall trees and hate tall grass. There are no tall trees close to the fruit trees at the farm. I keep all the fruit trees short enough they don’t offer enough protection for the squirrels.
Coon and possums destroy the most fruit (and sweet corn) at the farm. One coon can destroy literally hundreds of fruit in a very short time. They climb the trees of the ripest fruit and knock down way more fruit than they eat. I don’t sell drops for food safety purposes, so that fruit is wasted. I have the same problem with people dumping animals out there. I’ve actually had a couple customers tell me they drove out near there to dump coons.
I catch about 60 coons/possums a year at the farm orchard.
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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
The bait looks good too! Won’t go rancid!
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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.
Since you are in the north east like me, I may as well ask you about bacterial spot (specially on nectarines & Pluots) and how you deal with it?
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.
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