Good to hear your experience! I tasted the maple sap from neighbor’s spile and the sweetness was very faint.
Btw, when these trees are happy, they can grow to be monsters - 100’ tall with a spread of 50’. Good for epiphytic habitat, massive leaf litter and, when cut, woodworking and firewood. But because of their rapid growth, the trees are also widow (and widower) makers, with brittle limbs that can come crashing down with a gust of wind!
To those of you growing Int’l Dist. loquat scions outside, I’m interested in how they fared this winter. My low was 7F.
My outdoor Int’l Dist. seedling:
looks better than my lights/bag protected Argelino!
Anyone grow named varieties unprotected? What was your low?
No graft of that tree yet for me, and my low was only 17°F, but all three seedlings of the ID tree were fine unprotected, they even pushed a bit of a flush in that warm spell in early January after the worst freeze in December, though that stalled when it got colder again.
The graft of Strawberry that I did in the middle of winter (after the December freeze) still looks fine, despite many hard freezes since then in the 22 to 26° range:
Hopefully that takes, since the scions I saved as backups are looking sad in the crisper.
All my loquats grow outside unprotected except blossoms because I want fruit in summer! They do great if planted in ground.
In pots they struggle when it gets really cold. But they always bounce back fine.
Chinatown graft is growing vigorously but no fruit this year.
Wow! Everything looks good. In a normal (for me) 22F-26F year, I will not need to protect!
As @ramv noted, they seem to mostly be hardy here other than the flowers. Last year (16°F low) and this year (17°F) I didn’t protect the loquat seedlings and they only showed the slightest damage last year and none this year other than the leaves getting a little pale and splotchy (and that could be a nutrient or pathogen issue, not the cold?)
Is your ID loquat not a seedling but grafted onto a planted loquat?
Btw almost all of the grafted fuzzies took! And the rest sprouted as cuttings although don’t know yet about roots.Thanks so much for turning me on to this new adventure!
I don’t have any seedlings other than my own (Argelino/Kanko). Only grafted trees.
Has anyone else tried growing Capsicum pubescens peppers here in the PNW (common names include manzano, rocoto/rukutu, and locoto/luqutu)? With their preference for cooler weather, they seem like a good fit for our climate.
I have one seedling someone gave me last year (I think it was @jsteph00921?), which was started too late to produce last year. It has overwintered in my greenhouse OK, but not great, defoliating a lot and the leaves it did keep were pale and deformed looking, but it is starting to push a spring flush now:
I saw my local Safeway had some yesterday (oddly enough, next to the dragonfruit rather than the peppers), so I grabbed the smallest and largest ones out of the pile to taste them and get some extra seeds. The smaller orange one is quite a bit spicier than the larger yellow one, but they are both definitely “hot peppers”:
Tag said Melissa’s produce. If I manage to get some on my own plant this season, I may plant it in the ground in the greenhouse, to see how big it will get if it keeps successfully overwintering. I’m not a big hot pepper user, but I do like hot sauce, so I may try making my own if this works out.
Here’s a post in a thread with more info on these peppers:
Has anyone tried growing peach leaf curl non-resistant peaches and/or nectarines in our area? I bought a White Lady peach and an Arctic Jay nectarine last year. I wasn’t aware of the disease back then. Am I headed to a long battle against PLC and an eventual loss? If so, I could try to put them in containers to protect them from the winter rain. But the problem is that Lovell is the rootstock used.
I bought a Salish Summer today. Just in case…
Indeed, I brought that plant to your place late last summer. They definitely will produce nice peppers in a cooler region. They do great on the immediate coast in Santa Cruz and San Francisco where summer temps are comparable, if not a little cooler and cloudier than Seattle. They are still frost sensitive and die back to the roots in winter. In the greenhouse down here they didn’t defoliate, but the leaves got pale and they struggled with an aphid infestation recently. But luckily they overcame those difficulties and recently mine too began pushing some good new spring growth. The peppers are fantastic. I learned about them from a gardener in San Francisco who is originally from a cool, cloudy high altitude region of Mexico. He told me his family eats them year round. That region of Mexico has a climate described as primavera eterna so plants tend to produce all year. I like to roast them on the grill and then chop up into a salsa quemada.
They will all eventually get PLC.
best option if you have your heart set on growing peaches and nectarines is to spray copper fungicide in winter with a sticker. Around Jan-Feb is a good time to do it.
I grow nectarines (Hardired and Harcot) and apricots (Harcot and Harglo) under cover in north sound. Had my first crop of nectarines last summer - I thought they were great at 12 brix, although I’m sure they can’t compare to Cali grown. No PLC or brown rot under cover. (Christmas lights just in case temps drop when flowering.)
I battled PLC for years on open-planted peaches, spraying LimeSulfur, Bordeaux Mixture, alternated with Kocide 3000 once a month for 5 months. This was on supposedly PLC-resistant peaches e.g. Q-1-8, Avalon Pride, Nanaimo, Charlotte, Indian Free, Charlotte, Betty, Curl-free . (I tried all the curl-resistant varieties that Raintree or OGW carried!) Even with that spray regimen I still got 20%PLC.
I know that others in the Puget Sound area do not have as much trouble with PLC and can get by with a fall spray of Kocide. and sticker. In my fungal-prone micro-zone, it wasn’t enough.
So last year I finally gave up and went with Ziram. Wow does that work! No PLC. So now I’ve added more non-PLC resistant peaches and nectarines with the intention of spraying Ziram in the fall.
Any copper fungicide (say kocide) will work.
I’ve used a pinene based sticker. I make it extra thick and paint it on instead of spray to avoid wasting.
Black Ice, AU Rosa, Hollywood, Candy Heart, Spice-Z, and Frost peach are showing their first flowers in the white/pink tip phase. The first buds are breaking on White Imperial currant and Prime-Ark Freedom. Taylor’s Gold pear is showing early signs of bud break, but is still behind Bosc.
I have no doubt they will bloom by the end of the week.
I spent some time re-potting some plants today and saw my first slugs of the year. I still have some Sluggo left over from last year and I hope it will last me. Last year was brutal for slugs, aphids, and disease.
It really was, but with the end of La Niña earlier this month, hopefully the weather will catch up soon and we can avoid another spring like that.
My Indian Free peach has had 0 PLC so far after four years. I do spray with “Italian dressing” which is a mixture of olive oil, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide and water in the spring. The Charlotte peach is on its second year here and had no PLC last year. I am also hopeful about my new Salish summer peach which I just planted this winter. My early Elberta peach got ravaged by PLC and was removed after a few years of me fighting it and losing. It still fruited but just not much and was super ugly with naked branches and sickly leaves.
I have grandiose ideas of espalier apricots against my fence with clear white plastic sheets over them in the winter and spring to protect against the rain- kinda like Bob Duncan growing citrus in Victoria BC.
I have a Tlor apricot that seems to be growing well on Krymsk-1. It is going into its third leaf and looks strong. I am hoping that at least one of my many stone fruits will cause it to set fruit. So far, Tlor on Krymsk-1 seems to be flowering at roughly the same time as Flavor Grenade on Krymsk-1. My in-ground Flavor Grenade on Citation is 6ish feet from my Superior plum on citation. I will try to graft some Tlor to Flavor Grenade.
My Rosy Gage on Krymsk-1 looks like it is about to have a serious bloom session in a week or three. White Gold cherry looks as solid as ever. I want a Juliet bush cherry, but can not find it for sale in this region. I would settle for Carmine Jewell, but I still feel like the West coast often gets short-changed on available stone fruits.
I am lucky enough to be on a good slope, with good soil, and great temperatures for Early-mid ripening European plums.
I still have a couple of K-1 rootstocks I need to graft. Maybe I will stool them instead. Krymsk-1 went off patent back in January.
I also have a sucker of Mustang rootstock showing three swollen buds. If I can keep the slugs off of the buds, I will stool them and send them out to interested growers.
