Just met a man that placed crushed moth balls in the ground in a circle two feet around his peach trees to ward off borers. Any validity to that approach?
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Its a common approach that many believe works, but some here say it hasn’t worked for them, so we’ll see if they chime in.
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I would not give up too fast on last year’s seed. I stratified and planted some apricot seed a year or so back and they did nothing. I stopped paying attention to them and then noticed many months later that there was one growing (might have been more had I been watering them). So there might still be possibilities in those old seeds.
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Mine where not quit yuck but gooseberries where much better so I removed the jostaberry.
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Well, thought I had dodged the bullet of this storm, but when I was doing my AM garden check I found that that dip to just below 32F took out the corn. It also nipped the potato leaves but they will recover; corn probably not but we will see. Squash plants were still in walls-o-water so they came through just fine.
The storm dropped an impressive amount of water (for us) about 1.3". There were a few snow flakes in the mix, but none of it stuck on the ground around here. Problem came from last night’s clearing when the air temps were still cold. Saw some frozen water drops on the windsheilds and BBQ, so must have been below freezing for a bit. At least enough to do in the corn. Oh well, there is always next year.
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As someone else mentioned, it just boggles my mind that there are places right here in the USA that are still experiencing temperatures below 32 degrees, when it is now officially SUMMERTIME!!
Sorry for your losses- I know all to well the pain of seeing plants killed or damaged from frost- though certainly not in late JUNE!!!
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Thanks. Freezes here can (and have) happened every month of the year, but in the last decade or so they seem to have taken a break during the middle growing seasons. I guess this was just a reminder…
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This is a somewhat odd question, but I’m just curious if anyone else ever has any peach (or nectarine) trees that just refuse to spread out very much. I have just maybe 2% of my peach/nects that just won’t co-operate. I feel like I’ve become fairly skilled in the proper way to prune them (not that I don’t have room for improvement) and I basically treat all my trees the same. I start very small, I remove all inward growing growth. I also often cut the tips off, taking them back to an outward facing leaf so that when the tree sends a new tip it will be at the union of the stem and the outward facing leaf- making the new growth point face outwardly and therefore usually grow away from the center of the tree… In some rare cases I even tie down an upward growing scaffold to make it grow more outward than upward.
But in spite of all these techniques, I have a (very) few peach/nect trees that just want to grow back toward the center or, at best, upward. In other words, they behave a lot like a pear tree. Its not the end of the world. They still do ok, I just wind up with a much smaller center. Also, as they get older and larger the upward growing limbs eventually send out new growth on the outside part of the limb which often grow more outwardly than upwardly-but not always. In some cases almost every bit of new growth just goes upward.
I’m probably not doing a good job explaining this, but I’m very curious if anyone else ever has a peach/nect that just doesn’t want to send growth toward the outside-away from the center- and instead keeps sending growth either inward or upward, resulting in a small hollow center instead of a big open area . ???
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As I am waiting for the ladybugs to show up to control the aphids, I found this on my pear tree and it did great job of eating the aphids. But it does not look like a ladybug baby that I know of. I thought the ladybug babies’ body is wider and has more stripes . Do you recognize this?
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Great, I am keeping this one. I also found a green spider in the same area. Not sure it is going to eat aphids or the Syrphid fly larva?
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Crab spiders are ambush predators, probably will not eat either.
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Look up apple tree galls and burr knot. Could be one of them.
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Galls.
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Okay…so… what??? Dig it up and burn it?
Once your tree is infected, it has no cure. If it were me, I’d dig it up and trash or burn it.
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One of my apple varieties was grafted on a rootstock. It took and grew very well in a 15 gal black pot.
It got hot 80’s this past week . By the end of the 2nd 80 F day, it just wilted. We moved it to a shade area. It still looked like a goner so I dug it up for autopsy. Nothing wrong with the roots. Nothing wrong anywhere.
I am very sad too, because it was a new variety that I really wanted. Should have grafted it on an established tree. Oh, well.
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It’s always something and we’re always trying something different. Sorry about your Apple graft! I found I have two apples side by side with galls on the rootstock. It’s really sad when the tree itself looks soo good. So I say farewell to Goldrush and King David. The two apples that are supposedly suited to my climate (Hunge and Reverend Morgan) are so far still okay. And also the Bramley’s (which I think is on a different rootstock) and the Honeycrisp is okay. If I can keep these going I’ll be okay. And I guess I can always put persimmons and jujubes there!! 
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