New York and New England region

I did discover an Ayers pear at the orchard with bloom buds that are toast due to the low temps.

My Asian pear flowers were destroyed but the Euro pears look OK. They used fail every third year or so but have been steady for at lest the last decade… until now.


Looks like my redhaven peaches made it through the freeze we got last week and are starting to enter the shuck split phase. Will probably need to spray surround soon.
Got lucky that it didn’t go below 27 in my town and perhaps was a bit warmer in my yard

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Check the interior of a couple for browning.

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Do I just take a scalpel/razor and thinly slice it?
Edit. Looks fairly green

I just use my thumb nail, which I intentionally keep long for this kind of thing (I don’t sharpen it :wink:)- I’m no scientist and not especially experienced at this kind of diagnosis, although I have recognized brown ovule interiors of peaches and plums in the past that validat4ed m y fears of crop loss. This year I’m more confused because I checked apples for the first time and saw most of the ovules having a brown strand running up from the ovule to the pistil that I feared showed crop failure. Now I believe I may have over reacted… I will know soon enough.

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Now that we have a week of warm nights (48 is the low for a few hours overnight then 55+ the next week) I think I’m going to try my hand at peach grafting. Not sure if there would be a better time than this weekend

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I did some peach grafting back in April during that warm spell and had some success. It’s time for round #2 now.

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Yeah I may even try doing some up here. 70s over the weekend and then 80s to near 90 Tue/Wed. It’s time to whip out the pawpaw scions too.

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My redhaven is loaded with fruitlets. Will need to do a lot of thinning. Only its second year In ground and I know a lot of sources say to remove all its fruit but I’m likely moving anyway. I even had a few fruit last year after thinning out most of them and it hasn’t slowed it down. Contender has a lot less. Maybe because it has been suffering from borer damage.

I think I was lucky and suffered no frost damage on peaches or pears. My cherries hardly have any fruit but I don’t think that’s frost related.

Really going to miss this tiny property. Less than 2000 feet from the Hudson and up on a slope so I really did stumble on a good plot for planting at least with regard to minimal late freezes. Never thought I’d have fruit trees when I first bought this house.

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I pulled 8 peach trees yesterday, returning that space to something productive. I had one bloom this spring on China Pearl. Every tree had beautiful root systwms, but they couldn’t get through winter without loosing their fruit buds.

Stone fruit somehow has the power to stretch the tape while apple grafts sometimes are girdled by it.

Hello, new fruit tree grower here. I was wondering what anybody’s experience growing nectarines in New York were? Do you find them much more difficult than peaches?

I’m in zone 7a southern New York and my wife’s favorite fruit is nectarine. I planted a few and keeping my fingers crossed

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I am in Sandy Hook, CT, about 20-30 miles east of you. I have 24 nectarine trees, some are grafted with peaches. The answer is yes, they are harder to grow, but not impossible. Pests like Plum Curculio, OFM and Brown Rot attack nectarines much more readily, probably because of the lack of fuzz. However, with a good spray program, I get excellent productivity, and they are way more tasty than peaches. I tried several peaches, and the only two I kept are June Pride and Stark Saturn.

By the way, nectarines are my wife’s favorite fruit too :blush:. I love them too.

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To add to that, peachtree borers are problematic on my younger peach trees.

Just applied neem oil to the base of the trunks , as per Scott’s recommendation. I may be a bit early with that as I don’t have the lures to tell me when to start applying

Update on our orchard after the 16°F low in April: We don’t expect any plums or peaches. There might be some cherries. It is not Memorial Day yet, so frost season isn’t over, but we might get a better apple and pear crop than last year. Even some earlier apple varieties appear to be ready to produce a decent amount of fruit.

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Noticed these fuckers on my grape vines today. Not a ton so hopefully they’re decreasing.

I’ll need to look into options to reducing their damage. My grapes haven’t bloomed yet though so I may to wait until after they are pollinated so I don’t the bees.

Shop vac if you dont have too many grape vines works. I do it on my raspberry

Interesting. I don’t have a shop vac but have a Sebo vac. Will need to run a long extension cord, hopefully it can handle the energy.

Also my neighbor 3 doors down has a massive stand of ailanthus. I think they hired a guy to cut them to stumps a couple weeks ago :man_facepalming:

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