I wish they require it here, but at least most schools offer them as an elective (non mandatory) course. I don’t know why I took two years of Latin, I’ve forgotten just about all of it. Not to many Romans to talk to, you know.
Your written English is excellent, conversely, I don’t think I could carry a conversation with you in French or German very well at all. Je sais un peu de Français, und ich weiß ein klein Deutsch. You mention your name means liitle apple in Swiss German, but isn’t apple in regular German is Apfel?
Anyway, concerning blackberries, we are growing Prime Ark Freedom and PA Traveler, Osage, Ouachita and Triple Crown, all thornless varieties. All but TC were developed at the university of Arkansas and are somewhat upright. TC is trailing, that is, will lay on the ground without support.
Yes that insect is a big problem here too, we call it Spotted Wing Drosophila or SWD. They infest brambles and other soft fruits. They tend to hit fruit in late summer so a lot of people try to grow earlier bearing varieties.
Yes, talking or at least using a language in some way is the key to keeping it. Some people at my school that took latin had Asterix comics in Latin.
Thank you, I really try to improve my English, reading and writing daily in it helps certainly.
Yes Apfel is apple but in Swiss German it’s pronounced Öpfel and the added -li means something small, young or cute. For example as you know Katze means cat, in Swiss German Chatz, so a kitten is a Chätzli.
Thank you for naming a few varieties, I’ll research them! We call this insect KEV (Kirsch-Essigfliege), meaning cherry-vinegar-fly.
Here the fly seems to peak together with the cherries…
Interesting about the different dialects of German. I think my grandmother talked about how Low or “Dutch” German was spoken where her parents were, and High German in the south. I assume a similar dialect is spoken in Austria? It is very difficult because of all the cases and genders, so my written German probably has the wrong cases of nouns and articles. Verbs are a bit easier, though.
Yeah, I don’t know if those varieties are available in Europe, especially the U of Arkansas berries. Maybe because they are still on patent. I could be wrong, though. Triple Crown has been around for at least 20 years and isn’t on patent now.
I had a limited amount of berries last year from those varieties, but TC had the best flavor, followed by Osage. Freedom had the largest berries, some almost as large as my thumb. TC is the most cold hardy, Freedom the least. Freedom sends up more canes than any of them, it can become a mess if not kept in check. I think I had 15-20 canes come up last year from one plant crown! This year will be the third year of production for all of them, so we should have lots of berries to sample.
Seems like that is earlier than when our SWD strikes, usually in late July? I don’t remember any SWD in our brambles last year, so maybe we got lucky. Or maybe I was so excited about getting berries I didn’t notice eating them.
Das ist gut, I think TC tastes better than any of the other thornless blackberries, and definitely more cold hardy. But, it is also a trailing variety, so you would need to trellis it.
Coming a bit late to this thread … I have this pear (Josephine des Malines au Français, it is a Belgian pear if I recall). My tree is not in a good spot and has not bloomed in 15+ years, but it might finally do something this year. Is it a good pear? It is supposed to have the aroma of rose petals.
Hey Scott, yes for me it’s a good pear. I have to let it hang as long as possible. Last year we picked them on the first of november and they were good to eat in the middle of december. They kept until january in our cellar.
When they are ripe the flesh is melting, mild and very juicy. The skin is a little bit thick with a sour and bitter taste. I like the contrast but if you don’t, you should peel them. What even is the aroma of rose petals? I’m sorry, I’m not very good at describing, but I can’t remember a distinct taste apart from “pear”.
Today I went to a garden and agrarian shop for catfood and I just could not resist the garden part. Guess what I found: Black Jewel Raspberry!!! I’m so happy that I just stumbled over this plant I wanted so much…
And well, then I started looking for other things I could want and I found a Reine Claude d’Oullins, a Reine Claude Verte and a self-fertile self-fertile Mini-kiwi…
But I have to say I stayed sensible I didn’t buy the Gravenstein dwarf or the Summerred…
I believe Reine Claudes are called Gage in English. Keepers Nursery in England has the Reine Claude d’Oullins listed as Oullins Gage: Oullins Gage - Plum - Fruit Trees for sale | Order online
There are comflicting information about the hardiness and health of the these two varieties. But since we have an unknown Reine Claude with delicious fruit I thought the risk was worth it.
Haven’t chatted with you in a while, was wondering how are your trees and berries doing now?
You may have read some other posts of mine, we lost all our peaches, pears, and most of our apples to a 20-24 degree freeze in mid April, so the only fruit we will harvest this year will be berries.
Our raspberries are doing very well, we ought to get a decent crop, plus, there’s lots of new canes coming up. Some of the older canes have small fruit forming now. We should get our first ripe ones in a couple weeks.
Blackberries got hit pretty hard by the freeze, but have sent up a bunch of new blooms, there are a few very small berries now. It may be late June before we get any ripe berries.
Strawberries doing well, I had to cover them during the freeze, we started harvesting a handful a day for the last week or so.
I have been tilling our garden plots the last couple of days, we will be planting a lot of stuff the next few days. Have you started a veggie garden yet?
Hi Bob!
Yes I’ve read about your bad luck with the freezes.
I’m happy for you that you’ll get berries at least and glad that your raspberries are thriving, that’s good to hear.
Overall we’ve had good luck until now. Pears look very good, they had wonderful weather for their bloom. We’ll propably get Bonne Louise, Beurre Hardy, Pastorenbirne, Clapps, Precoce du Trevoux, Red Williams ( Bartlett), Beurre Giffard, Triomphe de Vienne, Muotathaler Heulampe and Schafbirne and Hosui. For the last 4 pears will be my first time tasting them. As you can guess I’m very exited!
For the apples it looks less rosy because just as they wanted to start their bloom, there was 3 weeks of rain, rain and rain again. Because of this their bloom time got very elongated and didn’t overlap enough for pollination. But it looks like we’ll get some Piros, Pfirsichroter Sommerapfel, Red Astrachan, Berner Rosen, James Grieve, Golden Noble and Resista.
Of these, I’ve never tasted James Grieve and Astrachan.
Our unknown gage has very much fruitlets (for a gage) this year and it looks like maybe there will be some cherries…
So overall I’m really happy.
Yes, my mother and I have a veggie garden this year: we have potatoes, some cauliflower, red cabbage and savoy, leek and different salads. Last week we started bush and runner beans.
I forgot to mention that right now we have a beetle pest that is eating apple leaves ( and other things, but they love apple leaves). But since there won’t be many apples anyway it’s not that tragic. Nevertheless, I ordered traps, because the grubs are very bad for the grass.
Here is a twig of Chestnut crab apple that they attacked.
Glad to hear you’ll be getting a lot of tree fruit, especially pears for the first time. We have two apple trees wih some fruit on them, but they’ve been hit by insects. I waited too long to spray and now they’re infested.
Are your berry plants producing anything yet?
We will be planting some veggies today, mostly sweet corn, pole beans, cucumbers, squashes, cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower). We’ll be setting out our tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes later in the week.
Very warm here today, almost 90 again, so will prob wait until the sun gets lower in the sky before starting any planting.
Meanwhile, I’ve been doing laundry, and hanging it outside on the clothesline to dry, only takes about an hour for the heat and wind to dry them. Because of the line, we rarely use our electric clothes dryer in the summer.
Looks like your trees are getting hit by some kind of beetle, we have a horrible time with Japanese beetles, they attack my pluots, cherries, blackberries and some apples. Ours look more green than the ones you have, but may be a similar species.
Probably it won’t be a lot of fruit but I’ll be happy to try some new ones…Bummer about your apples. Could you not spray because of the weather?
Nope, no berries until now. Strawberries are still blooming and the raspberries are a fall bearing variety. Well, at least there are wild strawberries.
Good luck then planting your veggies! This year seems to be quite late for you…Do you plant the corn directly outside?
Yes, we have a clothesline outside too and it’s heavenly how good the clothes smell after!
I’ve read already here on the forum about the terrible japanese beetle you have and they do look similar to ours… Ours attack mainly apples, roses and sorbus species.
The scientific name of ours is Phyllopertha horticola.
Yeah, mostly because of weather, we had a lot of rain in May, so the stuff I use (Surround) would get washed off, so I waited too long for it to dry out.
Late, yes, because of the weather again. The ground was too wet to plow and till, so I didn’t plow until early May, disked a couple weeks ago, and tilled this week. In the last three years, we have usually planted out in late May, so we are a week or so later than usual.
Yes, we direct sow corn, beans, cukes, okra, lettuce, squashes, the ground is warm enough now. I start tomatoes and peppers indoors in April, transplant to cups, then plant out after I harden them off. I also have various varieties of basil growing indoors, too. Tried to get some cabbage and spinach to go, but not a lot of sprouts. It’s been a bad year trying to get things to grow!
I hope we can get a good tomato, corn, bean and potato harvest this year, think times may get bad (or worse than now), so need to stock up. We preserve (pressure canning) a lot of our veggies every year. Make lots of pickles, too. We keep them in a cellar, been doing it for the last 6 years.
Scott, I’d thought I’d update you on Josefine. Sadly it seems that it tends to go biennial. If flowered somewhat less than last year and has now lost all but two pears. So if you get fruitlets I’d thin them.
