We thought of you. My husband said to tell you it was “refreshing” 
We also think you would like it. I could not taste anything else after the tartness hit my taste buds.
Both had brix at 17 which was very high for a peach from my yard. Any peaches with brix at 15 is very good for us.
Still harvesting. Here are the week’s highlights.
This is wild (I think) pawpaw I found near a river in my area. It’s at the edge of someone’s property line, so it could have been planted purposefully too. But I’m thinking no because it’s just me and the squirrels harvesting the fruit. The flavor is exactly like eating pineapple, but with the texture of custard.
Here are some cold hardy cactus fruits from the seven or so potted plants I have. These have survived outside and unprotected for the past few winters. I mostly just ignore them because the fruit isn’t what I’d hoped it would be and tiny thorns are super annoying. I really like the cactus pears I sometimes see at grocery stores, but there aren’t very similar at all.
My hybrid persimmon seedling is ripening more fruit. The 100-46 and Geneva Long are for size comparison. You can tell that the American persimmon genetics are mostly dominant in this one, but it does lose astringency early and completely, which is a plus.
Norella and Blanche de Deux Saisons produced the top figs of the week.
Oh, man. Those figs and 'simmons look great!
I don’t know if it helps you much, but you can eat these small prickly pear fruits skin and all, once you take the spines off. On the upside, it drastically improves the seed-to-pulp ratio. On the downside, it dilutes the flavor of the center pulp.
That’s an interesting idea’r of a cross. H-118 (x) (Honan Red x Rosseyanka). I don’t know why but that’s quite an idea, so, I agree!
Be aware that green pawpaws are poisonous/not good for you. That ‘Overleese’ looks way too green.
Great job!
Thank you so much!
Winding it down.
This one wasn’t as star-shaped as I’d like, but Api Etoile is still a pretty tasty apple. It needs some time to mellow in the fridge though.
My first year harvesting Sung Hu. This is an astringent persimmon that looks like it would be non-astringent. The tree is dwarf, which is nice for keeping it protected, and produces a lot of fruit. The nice thing about this persimmon is how smooth the flesh is. It’s not at all stringy, like hachiya can be.
Sweet Joy was the best fig of the week – honey and maple flavored.
This is my last update on this thread for the season. It was a pretty good year in the orchard. I got to taste a lot of fruits for the first time, and I got to see how a lot of fruits improved as they became more established. Some lessons learned and mistakes made. Drought and windfall. Looking forward to what next year brings.
A bucket of hybrid persimmons.
I’d ordered this “Suruga” persimmon a few years back from Martha’s Secrets since they were the only place I could find it. Bad call. These look more like Saijo to me.
Prok is excellent. Good size, top notch flavor, and good texture. I prefer hybrid persimmons more than either of their parents these days. But still, Prok is tough to beat.
The forecast has us getting a hard frost later this week, so here are my last few figs of the year.
With temp predict at 33F on Thurs and 23 F on Fri, I will be busy strpping my Fuji and Gold Rush and will pick my Prok and Nikita’s Gift, too.
Not sure where I will keep all those apples.
How close are your Nikita’s Gifts to being ripe?
Lots of really nice fruit trees you have and great quality and varieties!
The pics look amazing, like a professional photographer.
Thanks for sharing with us
Thanks for following along!
I’m curious about the cactus fruits. Do you dislike them mainly because of the thorns, or are they just meh. Would any of them grow in zone 3/4? If so, what are the names of the varieties?
They’re much tinier than I thought they’d be. I got a bunch of them because I really enjoy the flavor of prickly pear cactus fruits and figured these would be similar. But all the ones I have are very small, very seedy, and kind of mucus-like in texture and flavor. And the thorns are definitely annoying and hard to avoid.
I’m not sure if they’d work in your zone. I ordered mine from this place and I think they list hardiness within their descriptions.
I’ll probably keep mine around for another year or two just to see how it goes. Hopefully then end up surprising me.
Thanks for the reply. For a couple years now I had been toying with the idea of getting some to put in an out of the way spot of poor soil just as a sort of emergency survival food, but sounds like it would have to be quite an emergency for one to break down and eat them. I guess I’ll save my money for something more productive. If you ever decide to get rid of them, I would be happy to take them off your hands just to experiment with, though probably not successfully.
They root pretty easily from the pads. Just shoot me a pm this winter and I’ll send you some.
I find it interesting that the flavor of yours is uninspiring. My experience is that the flavor is far superior to the big prickly pears, but the smalll size and high seed to pulp ratio make it harder to use as anything more than a novelty.
@northwoodswis4 the young pads also make a good food, not just for survival. They also have the glochids (tiny spines), but you can either scrape them off or char them off fairly easily. Zone 4 might be pushing it for hardiness, though.
Not sure how I missed this thread, gorgeous pictures!!! Lovely orchard!
This is truly amazing stuff, Steven! Please let me know when you’re open for tours in your orchard wonderland!
Did you grow Dark Star in 2023? With heavy rains this year mine had worst than average splitting problems.
Yep. It’s become an every-year tomato for me. I tend to grow about 30 varieties each year, usually 10 regulars and 20 new ones. Unfortunately this year has been extremely rainy for me too – I think it’s currently ranked as the 4th wettest summer on record in the Boston area – and so none of the tomatoes have handled it all that well. Kind of a bummer. Squash, though, that’s a whole other story…
