In spite of loosing most of my peaches and nectarines and some plums to a late frost this year, its overall been a really good year for me. I’ve gotten to taste a lot of fruits from my orchard that I’d never before got to taste. I wanted to show some photos I took today in my orchard. Forgive me for the large number of photos, @mrsg47!
Here is my Honey Jar jujube planted in 2017
My Sugar Cain Jujube planted 2017
A Karla Rose Nectarine, planted in 2016 but is small for its age-probably because it only gets about 1/2 day of sun thanks to some nearby giant maple trees
Close-up of the Karla Rose fruit:
A view of my Chiago Hardy, Brown Turkey, and Celeste Figs. These are about 6 years old but everything above ground was killed in winter of 2017-2018 (1.5 years ago). They have come back well and are covered in fruit this year As you can see, this is the roadside row of my small orchard (my orchard is really 2 separate orchards- one on the front side of my house and the other in back of my house). You can also see several of my other fruit trees nearby.
Below is a closeup- and with a shovel to help show size- of one of the Chigago Hardy Figs shown above. It grew from ground up just last summer and lost its tips again this year, but as you see its a pretty big fig for just 1.5 years of growth (of course it had its root structure)
Here you can see a little bit of my Spice Zee Nectaplum, but also the front of my asparagus patch.
Here is one of my Jostaberry plants. Its 4 years old. This was taken about 10 days ago…they are all dark purple now, but I’m not a fan now that I got to try them!
Here is a 5 year old Elliot Blueberry. I wish you could see the fruit better because this thing is LOADED and the berries are huge. Its my best blueberry year ever. Blueberries have been harder for me than most people…I have to keep adding acidifiers constantly but it has finally paid off.
Here is a 5 year old O’neil. Also loaded with really large berries. This is not the same as above photo.
Here are a few of my Pink Lemonade Blueberries from my 6 year old bush (that I forgot to show). There is just something very strange about pink BLUEberries! But I must say, I LOVE the taste of these guys. They are probably my favorite tasting berries. However, my bush isn’t nearly as productive as others.
This below is my June Princess Nectarine- my most dependable, great tasting nectarine. Its 6 years old. I did thin it a lot, but clearly not enough! This great fruit load is in spite of the late frost that killed most of my peaches and nects! Not really sure why this one wasn’t affected because it isn’t a late bloomer.
Here is my 6 year old Bruce Plum. It is an extremely dependable producer that has really large plums. However, I’m not a Huge fan of the taste. They are sweet and many people I share them with love them, but it just has some kind of taste I can’t describe which I’m not thrilled with. It had a very heavy load but most are already gone. Its always my first plum of the year.
Here is a close up of 2 Bruce Plums off the above tree. Many were larger than these.
The photo below is my 5 year old Toka Plum. It, too, is one of my most dependable fruiting plums, but I just don’t like the taste of it either…I like it much less than Bruce. But again, its just a personal taste thing. These won’t be ripe for a while, obviously.
This Red Rome apple tree is one that has been a lot of fun and I’m proud of it. Look closely and you will see that there is an old, old trunk and one large limb comming off it, with one upward growing trunk comming off that large limb. The old trunk is from a old apple tree that was here when I bought my place. I cut the top off and left one nurse limb. I then grafted a Rome Apple onto a upward growing watersprout 6 years ago (my first ever graft). Now it is a very funny looking tree…just a big stump/trunk then a limb comming off it, then what basically looks like a full size apple tree growing up off that limb. This is a heavy producing tree that grows beautiful, delicious Red Rome Apples.
Below is a closeup view of the same Red Rome tree to show how strange it looks! ha
Here is a partial view one of my rows of grape vines. The top wire broke on the far end yesterday!
There are 6 grape plants- each one a different variety- growing side by side. Some purple, red, pink, and green(aka white) and they ripen at different times. Pink reliance are the first to ripen and my favorite taste, but also more suseptable to insects, birds, and other problems.
Here is a closeup of one of the varieties in the row- these are Cawtawba, which I really like a lot. Everyone should grow grapes! They are a fairly easy way that I get a lot of great fruit for several weeks.
The apple tree below is a 6th leaf Yellow Delicious Apple, which you can see is LOADED. This is also a fun photo because you can clearly see, near the center, a limb I grafted on of a red Rome to help pollination. Its always fun seeing 2 different varieties on one tree.
The tree below is supposed to be Red Delicious, but this will be my first fruit. Its 6 years old and this is first time I’ve got good fruit from it. It fruited before but CAR ruined them. This is first year I aggressively sprayed early and often for CAR, and the results have been amazing on several of my apple trees. Also, whatever these apples are, if you look close on the far right you will see some red apples that are on limb I grafted to this tree a few years ago. I think they are red Roman.
This tree below is a Gala. Once again, its 6 years old but the first time I’ll get fruit from it- and it looks loaded. It also has a grafted limb of Enterprise growing straight up the middle but you can’t really discern it in the photo…but the apples on it are a lot more dense (closely packed) than on the Gala tree itself.
Here is one of my favorite fruit trees and probably my vary favorite fruit I grow: Saijo Persimmon. This tree has always been extremely healthy and lush and a heavy producer of incredibly good fruit…man is it good! I like it so much I bought and planted 3 more last year and top worked another persimmon with Saijo. That will be a total of 5 trees and they get fairly big as you see below…but I’m not sure I’ll have enough even then!!! I can’t get enough of these incredible fruit, and its nice because they are always the last fruit of the year for me (except maybe fuyu)
Don’t laugh at this sad looking top worked (sort of) Saijo tree!!! haha. I basically just grafted a saijo scion to the top of a side limb of a Virginiana and cut the main leader off and tied the grafted limb upward. My hope is the “limb” will become a trunk, but as you can see, right now it is very bowed and flemsey and couldn’t support the grafted-on top without the support. We’ll see if it works out. But as you see, the graft is growing like crazy. It was done last spring.
Sorry for the large number of photos. If you took time to go through them all, then I thank you! Its always fun to show off our trees and bushes to people who appreciate and understand them.
kevin
