For some reason the birds here have left my cherries alone. they’ve been fruiting going on 4 years now and , knock on wood, not a peck. they will lightly target my bush fruit but have left the cherries alone and i have 6 trees within 50ft. of each other. blossom blight killed off the center of 3 of them in June so now they have a nice open center to land in and have easy access to the fruit and they still have left them alone, again, knock on wood.
Have had a few peaches fall off tree that were soft. Flavor is fine, but not a huge fan of white fleshed peaches. Plan on giving these away. The tree will get hacked back and grafted over from some of my other seedlings i have going.
I’ll give that a try. Never did soil testing either. Should probably check that one of these years to see where I’m at.
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Ya, if your soil is acidic you would be better off going with calcitic lime instead of gypsum. Gypsum doesn’t impact soil ph, but does provide a good amount of calcium. If you need a ph increase, you may as well address both ph and calcium.
Honeycrisp needs a lot of calcium
I’ve tested ph and we are around 7 so I’ll try some gypsim
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Time to keep an eye on store bought peaches. I see the Hyvee here has Colorado peaches. I’ll be on the lookout for Michigan and Illinois grown…most of the time they sell them right out of the box they were put in at the orchard and they are labeled with the variety. Eat the fruit, store the seed in moist peat moss or something until fall (at room temp/or outside) and put in refrigerator and you’ll have trees growing in late winter.
Monarch caterpillar munching away. I don’t grow milkweed, but some comes up every year so i just leave a few go.
Tree frogs hanging in my raspberries. They really like hanging in these plants. See them every year. Another reason to grow raspberries.
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Altai Mountains crabs are ripe. Another week or so and they’ll be getting mealy. Tasty little devils
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Had my first Toka plum. Those things are delicious. Im surprised they aren’t sold in stores.
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Lookit all that poop!
that’s a fine-looking crab!
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I wish i still had my plums. I really enjoyed Superior.
I’ve given away about half the peaches so far.
2 tree frogs in the raspberries yesterday. Tired from a long night of eating bugs.
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I grabbed a Zestar on my way thru my smaller orchard today. I was a bit surprised to find it fully ripe. Sweet, crispy, juicy, flesh not dense (light?), seeds dark brown.
I should pick them all and freeze a bunch for cider later in the fall. Too bad our chest freezer is chock full of chickens and veggies…
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So tiny!
I need to clear out the storage refrigerator for this year’s crop of apples, coming in early
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Was up in Door County for a few days. Lots of apple trees in that area of the state. Tried a few off some old tree–not bad…lots of insect/disease issues on the trees i saw, but they were more or less wild at this point. I know they grow a lot of sour cherries and even sweet cherries north of Sturgeon Bay. Too late for that stuff. Water is very pretty on the Lake Michigan side//but cold.
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Door County in the spring is beautiful to see. All the naturalized daffodils popping up everywhere, as well as the cherry and apple trees blossoming. I don’t much care for that part of WI from Memorial Day through Labor Day however.
I’ve never been up there. I’ve never swam in Lake Michigan until the other day. I was surprised how many rocks there are on the beaches. Smooth, but very rocky. Pretty water. Those lakes are like oceans.
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I’m jealous. Any other stonefruit?
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