Photos of a Segentrange at 4 years of age. The fruits are in earliest stage of color change. Based on last year’s immature fruits, these should ripen to a good orange color by end of October/early November. By holding the fruit 2 weeks post harvest, the juice content should increase slightly.
This selection has survived out of doors during recent Winters. The fruit characteristics will be evaluated when the fruit ripens.
Looking good, Kelby! I have a couple Nikita’s Gift grafts done this past spring that are doing well so far. Are those your Bari figs with the persimmons?
Yes, that’s Bari.
For those who just received the remnants of Ian:
Boy I am glad Ian is finally gone. No sun for what was it five days in a row?
I don’t think one storm is going to do in your roots, it takes longer and/or regular spells.
Now you folks talking about our soil. Look back several years. Quite some old trees got toppled by the storms. Reason? Our top soil is so thin. Roots just stay in the top layers. Even those tap roots do not go very deep. It is very hard to break the hardpan soil layer.
Ian dropped around 4" here over 5 days, which was nice. Lack of sun was weird!
The soil is totally saturated, not bad heading into Winter. Time to coil up the garden hose!
Hello everyone,
Novice grower out in the Atlantic City NJ area. Still very much learning the ropes. This forum in general has been a great boon to me and so a regional chat should be very helpful. Is anyone here dealing with very poor soil, great drainage but acidic and very low organic content for me, and more cedar trees than you can shake a stick or branch at?
I’m planning on top dressing the soil a bit at a time over the next couple of years with a half inch per year of composted leaves at a time supplemented with foliar sprays/soil drenches of compost/worm tea from time to time.
As for the cedars, a spring spray schedule of immunox. I missed my spray this past spring and was surprised to find that the fruit, and only the fruit, of my Chestnut Crabapple was hit where I was expecting other more susceptible varieties to take the brunt of it.
Critiques of this plan are appreciated.
Rambling side note, Scott thank you for your updated list of what has worked and what has not. You are near enough for that list to have great value to me.
Welcome! It’s my understanding that dealing with sand is going to require adding huge amounts of organic material to grow most stuff. By huge amounts I mean a foot of compost on top the sand.
I’m sure you know blueberries should do well for you, only a few million along the expressway! I see wild persimmons along the parkway heading to Cape May. What are you looking to grow?
Yes, welcome! Your plan sounds good unless your soil is completely sand. I would follow the liming with pH checks to make sure it is reasonable. You may need to water the young trees more if you have a lot of sand, it dries out much faster.
That is odd that the fruit got hit, maybe it was quince rust? CAR almost never infects any apple fruits but quince rust seems to prefer fruit over leaves in my orchard.
@ampersand You’d think growing up a piney that I’d be all about blueberries and tomatoes but I’ve never had a taste for them. Blueberries are sort of bland to me and tomatoes I don’t want in their raw form. Turn them into salsa, bruschetta, or sauce and I’m all about it. I still grow both for the wife and kids though, and for the smell of tomato plants. Growing up with them makes it nostalgic. We always had an outsized garden growing up and did rather well with minimum fertilizer. But that was annual garden plants which left me less concerned with the soil composition than I should have when I decided to try my hand at fruit trees. Now I’m working backwards trying to improve the soil health in hopes that it will make what I have going a bit more robust against the myriad of pests and disease that you learn about growing tree fruit. I have yet to try a persimmon. When speaking to the local farm stand owner he mentioned that he’s looking to have some available in the next couple of years.
I am trialing quite a bit though. I have a host of apples (granny smith, sundance, crimson crisp, chestnut crab, redlove era, honeycrisp, airlie red flesh, winesap, ashmeads kernel, and a multigraft with unknown varieties that has suffered many indignities but is still living). I’ll be grafting some new varieties in over time. Additionally I have a few peaches (reliance and majestic), a nectarine (arctic glo), a sweet cherry multigraft, and montmorency cherry. That does it for tree fruit.
I’m also giving a few odd things that don’t grow on a tree a shot. Two grapes (Canadice & Lacrosse), hardy kiwi (Issai & september sun), a josta berry, a few filberts (3 seedlings, 1 theta), pomegranate (wonderful and what I believe is surh anor), three maypop varieties, carmine jewel cherry, a few raspberry (crimson night, double gold), blackberry (black satin & baby cakes), currants (Johnkeer Van Tets, Pink Champagne, Lewis) and the aforementioned blueberry which are in a terrible location.
A bunch is more of a trial than anything else. I had 4 pomegranates. Three are/were cold hardy but they didn’t cope with the humidity which is even more present in my microclimate than most. The maypop may or may not freeze to death. This will be their first winter. But the flowers make for a great ornamental and I’ve always enjoyed the flavor of passionfruit so it seems like a risk worth running. I’m a bit obsessed with adding fruiting plants and herbs to my yard.
Now that I’ve embraced my obsession I notice other fruit trees in peoples yards while out driving in my area so I plan to reach out and see what cultivars they are growing, what has worked, and what has not for them.
@scottfsmith I believe that you are correct with the quince rust. My mind automatically went to CAR given that I’ve never noted quince rust on trees in my area but the CAR gals are notable every year. But given the symptom and the tree that was most affected I would put my money on quince. Thankfully both seem to follow a similar pattern and are controllable with immunox.
I’m glad you don’t think I’m without hope on the tree fruit soil. I’ve done a year or two with synthetic fertilizer but that is just junk food which won’t address the root of the issue in the long run. I can build leaf compost over the winter yearly with what others are discarding which seems like a better long term solution and hopefully will make for healthier trees and fruit. This year will be the start of my soil amending venture.
This should help improve my top dress, chipped brush pile that was sitting for about 6 months. The initial chips were done by a tree service so large sized chips and good percentage of branches. I finally got around to shredding it into a more useable form.
I live in suburbia. There are plenty of juniper/cedars within a stones trow of my apple patch. The first May after I put the first one in I learned what is cedar apple rust. Now I too use Immunox. It keep the likes of Ashmeads Kernal and Goldrush foliated. Enterprise one the other hand appears to admit not the existence of CAR (nor of scab nor of Marssonina). The other handful of varieties I have seem to be in the middle. In this last late spring, early summer I sprayed 3 times about 3 weeks apart. That quite kept the rust down. Next spring I will try to see if I can get away with 2 sprays. If that works I may try to back down to 1 but I don’t really expect to be so lucky. Oh, and if it any use to you, I live in Hunterdon. High clay soil, pH~ 6.5.
I had an enterprise in for a bit. The reviews of it were lackluster but the tree itself is supposed to be damn near bulletproof so my plan was to use it as the base for later grafts. Sadly it turns out that if the bullets are deer shaped it doesn’t hold up as well. It was mauled a few times and never truly recovered. Then one winter it went to sleep and never woke up. I still think my plan for it to be a good grafting base was sound though so I may try again if I can find a good spot for it.
I need to get my spray schedule down. Given the pressures in my area and the poor soil I don’t really have a choice. My test came back as “Loamy Sand” with a 4.87(!) pH. That was this past spring but my amendment plan wasn’t viable then. This year I’ll see what strides I can make then have a full test done again the following spring. Thankfully pH can easily be tested on your own so I’ll be testing that a few times in succession. The recommended mediation is 117lbs of limestone for the .15 acres that I’ll be treating, then a test 6 months later another 117lbs if needed.
I’m also low on nitrogen. Unfortunately the application of synthetic nitrogen can exacerbate the acidity so I need to avoid it. That is why I think I’ll lean into foliar sprays to help a bit until the soil health is improved. All of this should have been handled earlier but there is no use in worrying over what is already done.
Hello Neighbors! I am considering adding 2 apricot trees (Harglow and Harcot) to the 2 I’ve had for the last 5 years: the ones I have bloom profusely but too early, so no fruit set at all. Has anyone had any luck with the Hardlow and Harcot in 6B/7A Mid-Atlantic? I am running out of room in my overplanted yard, and would rather graft some apricot on the existing trees, but not sure if I can find the scions of those 2 varieties. Does anyone have these late-blooming 'cots?
Hi,
You may want to read through Scott’s stone fruit thread, which is a fabulous resource.
He lives in the Baltimore area, so not that far from you. He has notes on Harglow.
I’m in Arlington, VA and have Tomcot growing here and Ilona. Scott mentions Tomcot as being a good producer even with a late frost, so that might be worth trying. I’d be happy to send you scion wood when I prune in February.
