That’s very kind, thank you.
With all this snow and just generally being busy with life, I have yet to do any winter pruning and have not started spraying copper or horticultural oil yet. When are you all doing your first copper spray? Additionally, do we think it is too late to do some winter pruning? I didn’t want to prune when we were having all these low temperatures. I am in Northern Virginia.
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I hope it’s not too late for pruning: I’m a little south of NoVa and haven’t done my pruning either. Planning to wait until we get a week of less-wet weather (Assuming that happens before April haha) myself.
I did it last weekend, on Monday. This is my first year spraying copper though.
Sprayed and pruned already
I have a lot of plums and they will bloom likely in the next month
Prunned, haven sprayed. Weather has been uncooperative.
I almost finished my pruning a month and a half ago, then all this snow came along and stopped me in my tracks. I’m going to start up again soon. Pruning is done when you have time for it. Spraying can be done any time before the flowers have opened, I usually do it as late as possible.
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Its super heavy where I am. The tree in front of my door had branches so low they were hitting my door
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It’s the output of Montmorency so much that it’s not worth growing a Romance series (University of Saskatchewan) bush cherry that you can net? Just curious what people think about tree vs bush.
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It depends on how many pies etc you want to make. I get around half a bushel from my Monty so I personally don’t need any more. The main advantage of the bush cherries is convenience, they are lower and easier to net and pick, and you can make a hedge row of them. But for me the deer were wiping them out and that removed that advantage.
I did recently add a Amarena di Pescara since it’s a very different tasting sour cherry. I’ve had various things made with this cherry and it’s fully up to the Monty standard being enough different to be worth growing. Productivity is lower though.
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A lot of buds are beginning to swell here. That’s pretty early makes me paranoid as there is almost always a last second blast of freeze.
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the first of my spring pre-orders have begun to arrive.
Just received; Titan, Krewer, and Vernon Rabbiteye blueberries.
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Some of my honeyberries are slightly cracked open at the base with some green showing, along with 1 it of my gooseberries. We got some snow flurries right now.
Goumi was starting to swell up at my parents house along with some of the black currants
Do any of you have a recommended strawberry type that has worked well in our area? I have a 50’ x 30” raised bed that is only half full with strawberries cuttings from my neighbor, and I wanted to fill it with some more. I assume folks order from Gurney’s. I see they have 16 options and the only one I ever heard of is Jewel.
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Tried and true June bearing varieties for our area would be Earliglo, Chandler and Jewel, ripening generally in that order. If you want a day neutral variety, Albion is good.
They still have most if not all of these available as bare root from Indiana Berry, much better than Gurneys. I didn’t see Chandler available there and I know a lot of people fall plant Chandler as plugs for commercial production so maybe they aren’t carrying them for spring. I’m sure you could find them somewhere else.
If you search the various strawberry threads you’ll find lots of other varieties discussed, but I would consider these to be a good selection of tasty, productive “workhorse” varieites.
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A couple I’ve liked in the 1 year I’ve grown them so far (so take this for what limited an anecdote it is), but I had Mara des Bois go nuts and after planting 10 (losing one immediately to a deer or rabbit) they filled (overcrowded even) a roughly 16’x16’ bed and that is after I thinned out probably 100 daughter plants (i dont even think thats an exageration) in the fall and gave them to neighbors.
So they put out a *ton* of runners for a day neutral variety (averaged 5-7 each the year of planting I estimate) which is good for quickly filling a space and bad in that it means you have more maintenance in needing to prune out all the runners /excess plants as the years go on.
Health wise I haven’t seen any issues (though only growing them for a year that could be simply due to a lack of time for disease and pests to accumulate in the area so hard to say if 5 years from now is the same experience), and berries seem a little less likely To be pecked by birds (I think because they tend to hang down below the creeping foliage on this cultivar which also makes finding them to pick yourself a bit harder). But my other berries got beat up by the birds hard in the spring but MdB was rarely pecked. They did seem to get bit by slugs more than my other varieties though.
The berries are smallish, and soft (do not ship/travel well) and not as sugary sweet as some but have a great floral strawberry flavor and even the small cores are tasty compared to more modern berries.
Another I grew was Tristar and they are medium to large (still fairly soft) with probably our favorite taste overall. Unlike Mara des bois I didn’t get a single runner from my 2 trial plants last year so both less maintenance and more upfront cost to fill a bed with them. They Also didn’t show any disease that I noticed, though slugs occasionally munched them and the berries were less hidden by leaves so bird pecks were an occasional thing too. I like both and plan to keep both varieties.
Currently I’m planning on trialing a junebearing variety or two this year to complete my strawberry wants, but if I can’t find any I like better I may eventually just fill the remaining space with Tristar and the extremely eager MdB.
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Urban farmer, Starks and Burpee have better prices than Gurneys as well. I’ve only grown strawberries for a year, so I won’t offer recommendations just yet. But, I will say that Albion rotten/fried on my full sun, hot deck when they started back up fruiting at the end of summer and through fall. I’m pulling them after the first round of fruiting this spring/summer.
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Any good nurseries worth stopping at in the general Gettysburg area/between DC and there? I’m driving up to Adam’s County Nursery tomorrow and can add stops to peruse…
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Does ACN allow you to shop there or only to pick up your order ?