I’ve not noticed an unusual number of galls on nearby cedars this year… I have however torn out about 5X as many tent caterpillar nests than I typically do.
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Worked on my thornless blackberry row yesterday, weeding, and cutting out dead floricanes. To my dismay, I had to cut out probably 90% of my PrimeArk Freedom canes. The winter kill was that bad this year, other years it’s been about 50-75% kill rate. So, I think it’s safe to say Freedom doesn’t do well here. Thankfully these are primocane bearers too, so we ought to get some berries in late summer/early fall.
My PrimeArk Traveler canes didn’t fare a whole lot better, I probably pruned out about 75% of the canes.
Osage did the best, over half the canes survived, and Ouachita did similarly, although the canes aren’t as thick as Osage.
I still have to tend to my 25ft long Triple Crown row, but I imagine it fared better.
BTW, sunny and 70 already, so need to get outside, still have lots of mowing to do.
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I have 5 acres to mow. When I bought my riding mower 20 years ago I opted for the 60" mowing deck. It came with 48" deck. I am glad I opted for the larger cutting deck. That does not sound like much of a difference. When you figure with every strip you mow that is an extra foot of cutting. It save me many, many hours of riding that mower every year and over the last 20+ years. I get all mine done in about
2 1/2-3 hours- plus or minus about half an hour. It depends on how high the grass is. Spring time takes longer- lots of rain and periods of where it is too wet to mow and times you have to go over the areas of heavy grass and those clumps of grass you just cut. Late August - not much rain and it takes a shorter time , less high grass.
My peaches were all blooming and we had two 32 degree nights during their blooming time. I have two pear trees that the blooms are open as well. We will see what, if any, peaches I get this year. My apples are just starting to bloom out. A few have blossoms open and most of the rest have the pink bud clusters showing. With this 70 degree plus next few days they should probably open up. I sprayed them today, the ones that were not already open.
I have 6 new apple trees to plant in the next couple of days. They just arrived this week. I have to take two out this year. They are just not producing any fruit and I have given them plenty of time to show what they are worth. I hate taking out fruit trees. Just the fact they should produce fruit and I wasted all that time waiting for them to do just that, produce fruit. I could have had other fruit trees planted in their spots and they could be producing fruit. That’s the part I hate.
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Let’s see…last time I used a grass cutting machine…about 19 years ago in North Carolina in Cleveland County. I prefer houses that have forest for a yard, or else one that has a landlord.
My red fleshed apples have mostly had petal fall, except just starting to fall on Odysso.
All other apples full bloom, or slightly past full bloom… I can see fruit set in some cases.
Pears partially survived all nature could dish.
I mow more than 5 acres. I agree. I got 60 inch deck and the 28? Horsepower motor. I would have even gone 72 inch but I tote it on a trailer and the 72 requires a special trailer. High acreage mowing can be very time consuming and using a tractor with mower that’s even a finishing mower is very cumbersome compared to a zero turn with even a smaller width deck.
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I made a mistake with my last post here. I have the 6’ deck on mine.It normally was standard with the 60" deck. They had it in their showroom because someone ordered it with the 72" and then changed their mind and bough a Zero Turn model instead.He said they could put the smaller 60" deck back on it. I told them leave the bigger deck on it. Mine only as a 16 HP motor.
I cannot use one mower repair shop because they cannot put the mower on their truck to take it into their shop. The one I do use complains because the deck is so big they have to put other mowers outdoors to get my mower inside the shop.
I have too many hills to use a zero turn mower. I have to use a lawn tractor.
You are right, it does take a lot of time to mow that much land. I do not have enough land to use a true tractor with the PTO mower behind it.
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Why not gray those non-producing trees into sme multi-variety trees?
What kind of apples? My nine were planted last month, all but a couple have already leafed out, the others have swelling buds, so I guess they survived transplanting. One of them is a Goldrush, which is good because my 6 year old GR is about dead.
It took me another 2 hours to mow the rest of our property yesterday, but still have weed eating and spot mowing to do.
We have a lot of dead timber laying around, so I broke out the Stihl chainsaw for the first time this year, and did a bit of clean up. Took a while to figure out how to get the chainsaw to work right, may still need to sharpen the chain, as it struggled with some stuff. Pretty exhausted after all that last night.
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Plums in our area: from what I have read on the forum is that Japanese Plums bloom early with frost damage, bacterial canker and other disease and pest issues. European Plums bloom late but have Black Knot problem and take 7-10 years to fruit.
I am doing a trial of Japanese, European, Hybrid, Interspecifics and anything else in between. Japanese plums have been in ground for 4 years. European 3 years. Chicasaw plums this year and and wild plums to be grafted with everything this year.
Santa Rosa Plum Bloom March 21st
Santa Rosa Fruitlets April 24th
Green Gage bloom April 24th
Few observation on good note, there is a solid one month difference between bloom time of Japanese and European blooms and trunks and branches on European plums show no sign of splitting, canker etc. They just look more healthy than their asian counterparts 
Can I get some input on what kind of plums have done well or not in our area, I do not see much written about European plums or hybrids here.
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My three pluots are always the first to bloom, around first or second week of March, and my wild plum blooms a couple weeks later.
Needless to say, my pluots bloom too early, so I doubt I’ll ever get any fruit from them. They’re actually just about all leafed out by now, where the other fruit trees are just starting to show leaves.
I looked at the wild plum, and it looks like quite a few of the blooms are bad, as in freeze damaged, but we didn’t have a real bad freeze when it bloomed.
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That is very early for pluots to bloom, hence I am planting root stock on a north facing slope and valley to try to delay blooming as much as possible. Any one used KDL for frost protection for blooms. Bob from Purvis Nursery suggested using it.
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I’m surprised you can get Santa Rosa to fruit here, you’d think it would bloom too early as well.
I will say my pluots are very vigorous growers, they seem to be pretty healthy. Two are on Myrobalan and the other is Citation. Since they probably won’t produce much, if any pluots, I ought to see if I could graft some peach scions on them.
Oh, also they are Japanese beetle magnets, they just shred them, more than any other fruit tree. I got some bags of milky spore on the cheap last year, I need to get that into the ground soon.
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Was outside a lot yesterday, finally got my garden plots plowed. Apple trees are in full bloom here now. My Macoun apple has as many blooms on that I’ve seen on any of my trees.
I planted 9 apples in the front yard last month, and noticed that 3 of them haven’t leafed out like the others. Unfortunately, two of them failed the scratch test, just brown underneath the bark. So looks like they didn’t make it. 
About 4 years ago I planted 2 bare root prune plums…last week I noticed them in full bloom over the top of a wooden backyard fence
by looking from the street.
This for a paying customer.
The ones that are non producing are runted and not growing. One is only 38" tall and has not grown any since 2018. So I took that one out today. It only had one small main root and no small hair roots.
Anjeerfarmer, I have had great luck with J-plums. They graft easy and produce in two to three years. I have had issues with black knot and if you don’t keep it under control it can really get away. I try to only have trees with strong resistance. As such there are some great plums and pluots that I would stay away from; methley, spring satin, dapple dandy, sprite, and delight.
I have not had any black knot in my E-plums. I have a Stanley, Imperial Empinuse sp?, And Bevay that are 10 years old and this will be the first year I get fruit. I have a Parfume de September that is five years old that may give me fruit. I’m disappointed in my plouts as a whole since they blossom so early. My current favorite plums are Ozark Premier and Howard miracle.
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Thanks a bunch, let me ask you few more questions to have a better understanding.
Which ones ? Kindly name some Japanese Plum varieties.
I have fruitlets on Santa Rosa, AU Rosa and AU producer at the moment, do not know how they will fare moving forwards. Satsuma died and Methley has very few flowers but no fruitlet.
Why ? Early bloom with frost kill, Disease or pest pressure or other reasons
source please or can i get some scions from you ?
Anyone else have dried up blackberry canes this year? Usually they are blooming like crazy right now. Instead, this year some are dead, and some are dried for most of the cane and only green right near the base at the ground.
Was the weather too dry? Do i need to be watering them?
Well, a lot of mine dried up because they died from the freezing temps. I lost about 90% from my Freedom plant, and about 75% of my Traveler canes. Usually about half of them survive the winters, but for some reason this year was particularly bad.
In my case I doubt it was because it was too dry here, may have been because they woke up too early and then got hit by a hard freeze(s). The floricanes typically fruit in May, so maybe they just wake up too early.
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3 of my Ouachita blackberry canes died over winter… not sure why… wimpy I think…
All my illini made just fine as usual. 20 years and still going strong.
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