Review of 2018 - What will you do differently this year? What will remain the same?

General Fruit Growing
#1

Saw this type of thread on another fruit forum and thought it would be interesting to get peoples perspectives here. What WILL you be doing again this year, and what WONT you be doing again this year? Also, what is something new you are trying in 2019?

Admittedly, I’m only 3 years into growing fruit so I don’t have the biggest depth of experience but that just means that other newbies can better learn from my relatable mistakes. :grin:

Will do again:

  • More fig trees! They are by far the easiest and lowest maintenance fruit I grow in zone 7a.
  • More melons! I don’t have much space but I already have plans to try growing 4-6 melon plants this year because of how amazing they tasted last year. Might have to figure out how to better train them to one or two stem but my method of having them grow vertically up rebar mesh worked really well last year.
  • Use 3-6 month slow release fertilizer for container plants & trees and in-ground flowers. I picked up a huge bag of Florikan 18-5-12 140 Day which is very similar to the Osmocote I used last year but a lot cheaper. Saw great success with it, and it more or less eliminated the worry of fertilization for me.
  • Be better on my timing and persistance with limb spreading and tree pruning

Wont do:

  • Plant peach or apricot trees. I really love them but they are a pain to grow and I only get like 10% of the fruit because they are squirrel magnets.
  • Zone pushing without any research. I’m better at this than I was the prior year but my currants are just barely making it.
  • Trust squirrels. Going to be very diligent about deterring them and protecting fruit from them, had a lot of losses due to them in 2018.

New in 2019:

  • Grafting! Will try my hand at grafting on some new varieties on my pears and peach trees. Also trying tomato and melon grafting.
  • Trying a fig tree low cordon espalier in the area against the south of my house where the ground is consistently 10-15°F higher than everywhere else
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#2

This year I’ll …

… be replacing codling moth lures more frequently. I nearly missed the second flight in 2018.

… be maintaining good relations with my outlet for live squirrels.

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#3

I’ll be using inorganic fertilizers for the first few weeks- organics, especially nitrogen, can’t go to work quickly enough when it’s cold.

And I’ll be spraying my apple and pear with triazicide at least once, maybe more, since I seem to have trouble nailing the timing with spinosad.

And I’ll probably plant more garlic! Seems like the more I have the more I use. This year I bought a nice braid at the farmers’ market for insurance, and I think I’m not going to make it even with that.

#4

I will not bag apples this year. It didn’t help and a lot of them were worse.

I will put out yellow jacket traps starting in March. Last year I did not. They destroyed about 99% of my breba fig crop and about 75% of my main fig crop. I was very discouraged. I had an exterminator remove the only nest I could find but there had to be others. I trapped thousands and by late summer / early fall their numbers were much less. Now, I want to get them while it’s early and maybe get most of the queens. An interesting side note, I’ve caught 5 queens inside my house this winter, They are very sluggish. I can’t find their entrance location. Must be somewhere inside the walls, or in the firewood. Maybe put a trap in the kitchen, just in case!

The garden beds most distant from my well faucet will be dry tolerant plants now - annual flowers (zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, wildflower mix), irises, and potatoes (done before watering needs ramp up). Physically I can’t haul around the hoses so much. Also, I already tore out half of my raised beds, so now I can cut grass between them, using riding mower. Future fruit tree spacing and pruning will also allow riding mower.

Maybe get some cheap hoses to lay out all summer long so I dont have to haul them as much. Our grass goes dormant when rains stop, so there isnt much mowing after that until rains begin.

Grow hot peppers in containers instead of raised bed, so critters dont eat the roots.

See which fruit trees are tall enough that I can de-cage them. For most, that means no leaves below 6 feet. Maintenance is easier with no cage. Conversely, anything new gets a deer / rabbit cage and vole screening immediately on planting.

I’m enlarging a kitchen garden bed, to make up for the ones I’m losing due to watering issue (and an easement I feel uneasy about there). That will be fenced. One end may get the start of a trellis for a sunnier blackberry location. I also planted garlic, and will grow onions, in an entirely fenced in bed this year. Finally, I got the message. My deer and rabbits are gourmets. I should not plant what I am not prepared to protect.

A lot of this is really two issues - water and herbivores. It’s an ongoing lesson.

2 Likes
#5

@Bear_with_me.

“I should not plant what I am not prepared to protect.”

Words to live by. I’m amazed more people dont use this as the first rule of home gardening.

5 Likes
#6

I’m not growing potato’s anymore, going to focus a little more on things like leafy greens and zucchini. When I harvest potato’s I eat them all the time and gain ten pounds . . . no more

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#7

I’m new to grafting and had several failures last year. I’m going to pre-soak my scions prior to grafting and paint the whole graft with white paint. Hopefully this ups my success rate.

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#8

Excellent post @dimitri_7a! This year I will:

  1. Have 5-6 squirrel traps (last year I mostly used two, and that was very inadequate).
  2. Try planting watermelons for the first time. @dimitri_7a I appreciate any advice from you, as I am space-limited too and we live near each other.
  3. Expand on figs too, same reasons as Dimitri.
  4. Do a lot of grafting. Last year was my first, and I hade close to 90% success rate.
  5. Plant three nectarine trees and one apricot.
  6. Not spray copper on my cots and pluots after leafing— last year I did and I lost significant amount of their crop.
  7. Not fertilize my fruit trees. I think I have enough fertilizer in the ground and my trees grew like weeds last year.
  8. Get rid of my potted blue berries. They are not worth my time. Figs are much better.
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#9

I wrap the scions with parafilm.
I also triedother grafting film to wrap the scions. Work, too. But you need to unwrap the scions after they take.
It’s a pain for me.
If the scions are fresh, rehydration is not necessary.
If your scions are too dry, soak them until looking-like fresh.
Once I received very dry scions, I can let you see what responses I got when I showed the dried scions here. But I got 100% taken.

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#10

Put up electric fence around veg garden - maybe

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#11

Several things.

  • Remember NOT to put Nufilm in with Surround. I wanted to try white apricots and white peaches but not that unwashable white.

  • Do not accidentally fertilize Nikita’s Gift persimmon. Witnessing all fruit drops was painful.

  • Grow watermelons again. Beginner’s luck last year. The ease of growing them is encouraging.

  • Grafting more jujubes. Easy to grow, precocious and tasty. What not to like?

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#12

Yeah you can pretty easily fit cucumbers and melons in a 1 x 4 or 1 x 6 ft space with some pruning if you go vertical. Haven’t tried any watermelons yet though - that’s something I’m also planning to do this year. Some people like @ross go even tighter with just 1 x 3 space or even 1 x 1 ft with single stem up a pole.

Here is how I grew two melons + a cucumber in a 1 x 10 ft space. This is in early August shortly before they got taken out by what I think was Fusarium wilt.

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Here is two cukes plants growing vertically (red arrows show where they are planted). Me and my wife were swimming in cucumbers once they hit full production. 2 plants is plenty for 2-3 people.

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#13

I have grown cucumbers vertically before and they hit 12’ high. They could have even grown higher, yet they died of bacterial wilt, which I think is what killed yours too (This is a disease that gets transmitted via the cucumber beetle, there is no cure for it. Only way to combat it is to kill the beetle very early with insecticide treatment or to plant resistant varieties.)

What kind of melons did you grow vertically? I can’t imagine doing that with watermelons because they are very heavy.

#14

I looked up the difference between fusarium and bacterial wilt and I’m leaning towards fusarium because the fruit was unaffected and the disease progressed from older to newer leaves… but who knows.

This year I am growing Savor Melon, New Orchid Watermelon, Sugar Cube Melon and Otome Watermelon on Tetsukabuto squash rootstock. Last year the Savor melon was big winner so I would strongly recommend trying that one.

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#15

You’re right, probably not bacterial wilt. How big are the fruits of savor melon? Does it have the texture/taste of a cantaloupe?

#16

Mine were 5-6" in diameter. Very sweet and unbelievably fragrant when picked at peak ripeness, texture is the same as a cantaloupe - maybe a tad softer. To give you some perspective I hate cantaloupes and think of them as bland filler material in fruit salads. The Sugar Cube melon is my last attempt at giving common cantaloupes a chance before writing them off completely.

Wish I could tell you how any days to perfect ripeness but I didn’t track it last year. I do have this photo of one that was picked a bit too early by about a week or two, so just look for this kind of appearance and add another 10 days:

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#17

Getting rid of blueberries. Sick of trying to amend the soil. Also pulling heritage raspberry. Caroline produces much better and more fruit.

More garlic, more squirrel traps

Going to try this grafting melon onto squash thing.

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#18

Definitely do that. Three heights of wire work fairly well, or woven wire even better.

#19

Not sure how you get into the garden, tho, with all the fence in

#20

Look great indeed… Can they hang from a trellised tree, without breaking off? Also, how do you determine peak ripeness?