I had to look it up— i had Williams Pride. From what i remember it was an excellent apple outside being a bird magnet. Big fruit from what i can recall for being so early.
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My Lodi are getting there. I had one the other day and it was still a little tart. Hoping to get some ripper. They get a lot of pest pressure as they are the first to rippen, and everybody wants one.
Not my favorite apple but nice for July.
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You should try Monark apples there. I am in SW Ohio. I had a Lodi tree but was not really impressed with the quality of it and the fact it did not last long before better mushy, at least for me here. Monark is a very nice big apple and stays crisp a LOT longer than the Lodi. Lodi, for me , was more of a cooking apple than a true eating/dessert apple.
I’ll have to check it out.
Yeah Lodi isn’t that great of an eating apple just as you described. Unfortunately I have 3 of them. I thought about re working one of them, never got around to it.
Where did you get your scion wood.
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I believe I got it at “ Fruits to Nuts Nursery” in Gays Mill, WI
The catbirds (2 adults/baby) have been eating good this year. They’ve been stripping the blueberries and I saw the baby had a large gold raspberry in its beak the other day. They are probably like this guy is awesome. He even keeps the bird bath full to clean off after stripping his plants clean.
The tomatoes on black plastic=disaster. They are cooking like a steak. Lots of sunscald and internal issues. Just too hot. Next year i’d leave more soil exposed. Also annoying to water==the pros put drip tape under it–now i know why. I would have had better luck just not using plastic. My old method of cardboard+woodchips worked far better. Kept temps down and weeds to a min. oh well. live and learn. The
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I’ve used woven black landscape fabric with success. Black plastic is probably more of a heat trap, as you mentioned.
It’s in a very hot space to begin with because the back of the garage is right there and its dark green siding and it just bakes back there all day (south facing)/plus a fence. I have other plants in another spot that are doing fine so no big deal.
I’m not in the city but for residents the city of La Crosse now offers human waste fertilizer…i’m assuming it’s basically milorganite for free. A guy i know had a few tubs of it he was going to try on some deer food plots. The city just did a huge upgrade to their waste plant where they used to have farmers come take the solids and dump them on fields–they aren’t do that anymore. Just thought that was interesting.
Slowly the past month i’ve been researching how in the past they would overwinter peaches in the far north (Minnesota/Iowa) and it would appear one method that worked is bending trees over and covering them. It sounds like they would cut the roots on one side of the tree to bend it to the ground. Some had issues if they buried the tree in soil it would kill it so some would use hay/etc. Maybe leaves would work or even a tarp? A pic i found in one of the journals. I have a dozen peach seedlings and need to figure out what to do with them.
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if you use black plastic, buy clearance white paint from menards for $9/gallon, mix it 2 to 1 with water and put it in a backpack sprayer and spray the plastic, at least around the plants, then it wont get so hot but still works fine. If you need, you can put on a couple coats, but it will last a few years and is a cheap way to keep it from getting so hot under the sun.
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Thanks. I’ll do something in the future. I was just looking at an article about the college in St Cloud, MN that is growing some new tomato variety and i noticed they grow them thru plastic but cover the plastic in woodchips. I think the other issue is they were so rootbound when i planted them..that they already had fruit and didn’t put enough energy into leaves and didn’t have the roots to really grow the plant (although i could be 100% wrong in my thinking). Next year I won’t start them so early. Maybe just a few for the greenhouse. I still have plenty of tomatoes.
I kind of find milkweed annoying but i do like monarchs. Saw this guy today.
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