I tend to agree with @fruitnut. Where I live, our entire summer is foggy and overcast due to the maritime influence, so really not optimal for photosynthesis. But our summers are also completely without precipitation, and on top of that I have extremely well-drained soil (beach sand with a lot of chicken manure mixed in). My stone fruit trees get irrigated a couple of times a week. I’ve had no lack of sugar, even with the poor photosynthesis conditions. So perhaps water plays a greater role than the amount of photosynthesis taking place?
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I think it was Rosanne Rosannadanna who said “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” 
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One of the things found out long ago with tomatoes is that the carotene biopath is also part of the flavonoid biopath. In other words, accumulation of red and orange fruit colors are part and parcel of getting good flavored fruit. For an example, pink fruited tomatoes are from lack of yellow pigment in the skin of the fruit. Red tomatoes get their robust flavor in part because the skin is yellow. For the same reason, pink tomatoes with clear skin tend to get sweeter and lighter flavors.
Just posting this to say there is a reason carotenes and anthocyanins are strongly correlated with flavor.
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Pots are worth a try. I’ve gotten some good fruit on most everything I tried in a pot. But it was always small fruit size and generally not as good as in ground properly grown. With no rain I’ve had to water 20-40 gal every day or every other day. I’m putting everything in ground asap.
One might try the SIPS, self watering containers. They limit water to some degree by design.
My thought about potted watered everyday is that it limits water because the top outgrows the root volume. But it doesn’t allow the long term adjustment by the plant to increasingly dry soil.
Also potted fruit trees bear about two crops and then the vigor drops too low. So it needs repotting. Too much work for an old man.
I respectfully present the other side of the container method.
After about 5 years of grafting apple trees, about 90% of them to bare root rootstocks, definitely over 200 remain alive and remain in pots…out of probably 350 grafts, 300 in pots. A few have gone into the ground, sold maybe a dozen
I do make a few boo-boos, as I lost 10 or more to dryness or to root rot this year in pots.
But, depending if I’m putting the pot in reach of a hose or not, I pick potting media at potting time, and pick shady or protected spots for those I can’t take care of as needed.
That’s just the apples.
I’ve raised a number of cuttings (fruit and ornamental both), seedlings, blueberries, viburnum, currants, gooseberries, butterfly bushes, forsythia, etc. In pots, outdoors, sprinkle some every 5 to 10 days for some, some fend for themselves.
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Thanks. I am sure all of the trees I had can be successfully grown in pots. It does seem to take some time to get the hang of everything - potting media, pot size, water requirement, location, etc. Also, I am in a dry climate which necessitates more strict watering requirements, if not they dry up quite soon. The kiwis are the worst, may be they need a different media. The Michelia x Alba I was babying survived which was a relief. I will plant it right after winter ends next year, so it doesn’t need to stay in a pot any longer than it should.
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Part of my success is being able to ‘park’ potted plants in shade/partial shade. Another part is using some actual ‘soil’ in the potting ingredients.
(Sterile potting mix might be needed for seedlings of finicky plants…but a mix that comes somewhat closer to real earth topsoil is better for woody plants, fruiting shrubs, etc…especially if you can’t water them every day.) I am able to buy such in bags, or by scoop in bulk here. But, I also mix my own combinations quite often (by instinct or using what is available at the moment).
And sometimes, such as this rainy year here, I get some plants die from root rots because not only is watering unnecessary, rainfall gives them too much as I didn’t mix in enough sand or pine fines or perlite.
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That is interesting to me, but I’d like more specific info about location. My sister is north of Eureka, but even there she has been getting more and more sunny days and she can walk to the beach. She also says her Satsuma have gotten sweeter.
You water your trees twice a week. 50 years ago I used to grow pot in S. CA in the chaparral, I only watered plants once every two weeks and the soil was sand- literally, but the plants were well mulched with oak leaf compost and alfalfa hay.
Hi @alan,
If you are familiar with the Sunset climate zones, I’m in zone 17. Sunset’s description:
ZONE 17: Marine effects in Southern Oregon, Northern and Central California
The climate in this zone features mild, wet, almost frostless winters and cool summers with frequent fog or wind. On most days and in most places, the fog tends to come in high and fast, creating a cooling and humidifying blanket between the sun and the earth, reducing the intensity of the light and sunshine. Some heat-loving plants (citrus, hibiscus, gardenia) don’t get enough heat to fruit or flower reliably. In a 20-year period, the lowest winter temperatures in Zone 17 ranged from 36 to 23°F (2 to –5°C). The lowest temperatures on record range from 30 to 20°F (–1 to –7°C).Of further interest in this heat-starved climate are the highs of summer, normally in the 60 to 75°F (16 to 24°C) range. The average highest temperature in Zone 17 is only 97°F (36°C). In all the other adjacent climate zones, average highest temperatures are in the 104 to 116°F (40 to 47°C) range.
To be clear, the reason my fruit trees get watered twice a week is because they are surrounded by other plants that need twice-a-week watering. I have no doubt the trees could get by on less. I’m not a professional fruit grower, and even as a hobbyist the fruit on these particular trees is secondary to their ornamental qualities for me. However, I saw in the thread that you were wondering about what influence lack of sun had, so I thought I would reply.
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Wait, are you right on the beach, all the 17s I see look to be completely coastal. Are you in the coastal redwoods?
The reason I brought up your watering is because you were making the case that restricting water was the key to getting higher brix, but you didn’t seem to be restricting water at all.
Also, when you say your fruit has high brix, I need to know if that is compared to same varieties grown with similar watering grown inland where they get far more sun. CA growers inland can easily get over 25 brix from most varieties of nectarines, and yet if they bought them from a store there that number might be as low as 13, even though it came from orchards in similar areas. So I need to know what you are comparing your fruit too as well.
Please understand that I’m not trying to challenge you, I simply want to learn and when one learns from other people’s anecdotes it is important to know all the details.
It is well known that deficit irrigation increases brix. All I’m suggesting is that so does a steady stream of sunny days as fruit ripens.
I’m pretty close to being right on the beach. I can hear the surf from my house. But I’m not in the redwoods. Further south, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Alan, I don’t have enough data to give you the answers you want. I don’t have a brix meter, so I don’t have an actual brix measurement for you. I just know that the fruit (Red Baron peach and Weeping Santa Rosa plum) tastes very sweet to me, almost to the point of being syrupy. I grew both of these same varieties a few years ago in a much more sunny area miles further inland (Sunset zone 7) and didn’t see a significant difference in sweetness between growing them there vs. here. It could be these two varieties are just widely adapted to different climatic conditions.
As for the sand, it is sugar sand, which retains water very differently than chaparral sand (which I had at my other location). If you’ve ever seen a video of liquid mercury being dropped on a surface, that’s exactly what it looks like when you water the sand here–it actually repels the water. The local nursery recommends working 25 lb. bags of cornstarch into the ground to improve water absorption (which I don’t do). But then once the water is finally absorbed from the surface, I think it pretty much runs straight through to the aquifer. I don’t see much water retention happening in the soil. So even though I water twice a week, the trees are not getting as much water as you might think.
I’m sorry I can’t give you better data. My info is anecdotal at best, and not even very precise anecdotal info at that.
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Biggest thing for me this year is how big of an impact biochar is having on my pie cherries, especially. The Montmorencies are just exploding, and they taste great, are big, and they are disease free. Biochar is a bit of work, but in my situation, it is totally worth it.
JohN S
PDX OR
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You gave me all the answers I want. It allows me to weigh your anecdotes against mine. Like just about everyone, what I believe I see in my own orchard resonates with more weight than what I hear from someone else about theirs. I consciously try not to be to taken in by my own logical leaps based on the limited “data” of my observations. Even controlled experiments often have misleading results, especially because the control is so limited when growing fruit. I have seen same species behave completely differently within a few feet of each other in an orchard. Same soil, same sun, same pest pressure, same clone grafted to same clone…
I am reluctant to ask John S for qualifications about his experiences with biochar. He used it and got a great crop so is giving full faith endorsement to the substance. I would really like this forum to be something more than simply exchanging “blind” anecdotes. It would help to know how trees not given the benefit of biochar did this season where John lives. I know that where I am it was a great season for cherries at all the sites I manage them- best in years.
Something about correlation and causation.
Not that there isn’t researched evidence of the horticultural benefits of biochar. But I don’t believe it accomplishes anything that adding compost or even mulch doesn’t, beyond being much, much more stable. CP, have you considered adding compost to your sandy soil?
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For fungicides, a locally systemic material such as the SIs myclobutanil and Indar, you need about an hour of good drying conditions. A good sticker (nothings better than Tactic IMO) should help with other pesticides, as does some kickback. Assail has some of both qualities.
It’s good to know that it takes over a half inch of rain to wash off even freshly applied pesticide- at least I think I know that. An experienced commercial grower once told me that and my own experiences have not contradicted it. A commercial grower who sprays every couple of weeks to achieve pristine fruit in my region should know.
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And that is exactly as it should be.
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For me I need another spray in early or mid aug I think. This year starting in sept. Coddling moth showed up in later season apples. My Gravensteins were pristine and there usually hit but starting in mid sept. It just got worse and worse. We had an unusually hot summer maybe we had two generations this year.
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Probably one of the more valuable lessons we learned is to be more careful with contact systemic herbicides around young trees.
We had a herbicide accident where we killed 10-15 young peach trees this year. The weeds were as tall as the young peach trees. Despite trying to be careful and stomp weeds down before spraying them, we got some glyphosate overspray on the trees we couldn’t see and killed quite a few.
We’ve had good success with glyphosate, and had some past accidents. This year was more a reminder that one must be very very careful when using it around young trees, especially when the weather is very hot and dry.
It can be hard to be super careful when you have lots and lots of young trees to spray around, and the weeds have gotten too tall. Weed control continues to be a challenge around young trees for us. Non-systemic burn downs work OK, but they have to be applied frequently to keep weeds under control. Nevertheless, we plan to use more non-systemic herbicides around young trees going forward.
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I sometimes put off summer pruning for height control and I’m going to try and do better. This photo reminds me to keep my apples pruned so I can stay off my ladder
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As the weather gets more extreme I think greenhouse growing will become more popular, if not a necessity. It can take only a few days of really bad weather to do in a years crop. The drawback for growing some fruit in greenhouses is the problem of getting good pollination. I wonder if the cherry growers bring in bee hives.