Thing I’m removing this fall:
Pawpaws: I’ve got 4 trees with a couple different grafts on each. They’ve grown like crazy, at least 15’ tall now and make hundreds of fruit every year with no effort at all from me. Problem is I just don’t care for them. This year I ate 1 and no desire for another. I’ll probably keep 1 around as a specimen just because I love interesting trees, and pawpaws are nothing if not interesting.
Peaches / nectarines: I’ve got a bit of PTSD about peaches, I’ve worked so hard on them the last 5 years and gotten either none or very modest harvests. It’s just too much effort. In the last 5 years I’ve defeated peach borers, plum curculio, leaf curl, deer, and varmits of all types, but I’m still struggling against birds, japanese beetles, and worst of all brown rot. Even with all the controls I have in place, brown rot took half my harvest and birds damaged the rest. There’s a small time orchard about 10 miles away, I’m just going to buy from them from now on.
Natchez blackberry: The berries were huge and incredible production but they never tasted great. I always thought they needed to hang longer, but birds would take them if they hung too long. This year I covered the whole thing in bird netting on a PVC scaffold and they were much improved, but even the best of them wasn’t as good as an average Triple Crown. Letting them hang so long also led to a huge SWD outbreak. I’m going to replace with either Ponco or Prime Ark Freedom in hopes of an earlier, better flavored berry.
Gurney’s Whopper Strawberries: Far and away the biggest and prettiest strawberries I’ve ever grown. However, they taste like water and get the worst rot I’ve ever seen. I think the berries are so heavy it crushes the flesh when it touches the ground, almost every berry in contact with the ground will develop rot. Going to replace with another June bearing type, open to suggestions on that…