I learned that I need to spray my trees early in the season and do it at a regular pace, regardless of it is going to rain or not. We had a weird spring with rain every other day or so. I waited until I could get a few days of dry weather before spraying.It was not a good outcome. Lots of bug damage. I hate to spray more than when I think I should spray. If I do not then I get fruit that looks horrible and is hard to use. After cutting out all the bad spots there is about half left of the fruit.
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I don’t know what to tell you…city folks keep feeding the squirrels and trying to restrict use of guns…so we reap the consequences. Sorry for all your lost harvests. One year bears got all my apples one Saturday night. It hurts. But, don’t quit completely, you’ll find something they don’t like and grow it.
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I learned from @barkslip how much easier and more productive summer grafting can be, Thanks Bark! The green scions and chip buds conform so easily to grafting cuts that matching the cambium is much easier and certainly more forgiving than using dormant scions and buds. I learned from @mamuang about the need for a thicker Surround slurry to achieve first coats! And from many others, thanks for your insight!
Dennis
Kent, wa
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I can empathize. Squirrels are a bane on fruit trees, especially in a drought year. I’ve studied how to address the problem and it seems it is a lot of money or time. I have read of falconry, but that is even more time and money.
The main thing I’ve learned is that it comes down to numbers. Commercial orchards win by just having so much fruit that something like a squirrel is not even noticed. They also have lots of open ground away from larger trees, and squirrels get nervous in the open. I don’t have room or time for more trees, so the fight goes on.
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I happened to try that this year with grapes. It works!
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Not smaller ones. On bad years squirrels can have a very bad economic impact- I’ve heard some complaints. At least my customers can pay for protection by having me erect baffles on trees shaped with over 4’ of straight trunk before first branches. Squirrels have been brutal this season without this protection but I’ve only lost fruit where I failed to recoat my baffles with grease. At some sites I’ve also had to use nets to stop thirsty birds. We’ve had the worst drought in at least a decade.
You can see some photos of my baffles here- DIY Squirrel Baffle ideas? - #24 by alan
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I learned that a very early frost can damage ovaries and lead to deformed peaches. The frost was in the last week of March and killed the ovaries of all my nectarine, plum (almost all) and pears but didn’t damage the blossoms- all bloomed beautifully to the thrill of my bees. This much had happened before, but I always assumed that frost damage to fruit came after bloom and pollination.
Neither has ever been brought up in any literature I’ve encountered.
My Encore peaches have very little sugar and I don’t know if it’s related to the frost but probably is the result of better placed flower buds being destroyed and peaches all forming below the canopy instead of above- however, it didn’t hurt the quality of my other varieties nearly so much and my freezer is full of wedges of Messina peaches which handled the frost exceptionally well in spite of many deformities. Unfortunately my Autumn Star crop was meager (small, young tree) and pilfered. It is a better quality peach that always has higher brix than Encore. But Encore is amazingly productive.
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Yes, there must be somewhere on the size scale where the pests get the upper hand. But I think the drought drives many pests to be more desperate still. In the last bad drought (we had a year with normal rain in between) the nut trees were uniformly barren. I watched squirrels coming out of the woods to cross a road and get corn out of a farm field. Most managed to lug the whole ear home, but some even dragged the stalks. This year it didn’t seem to matter how large the fruit had gotten, and none anywhere near ripe when the rodents started in. I guess your clients really want fruit to pay for all the custom work with the baffles. Good job on those.
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I live less than an hour from Manhattan and most of my clients are closer and very, very rich. What they pay me is like change in their pockets for them. They don’t usually even ask me what a service will cost.
My helper does most of the baffle work and he’s crazy quick. When he lived in Ecuador he made shoes in a factory, he knows what it is to work fast and precisely.
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You have managed to create a great business, and I’m sure it didn’t happen overnight. What were you doing when you got the idea of being a private contractor / fruit specialist?
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There is little consistency with my fruit with a few exceptions. Asian pears are fairly reliable. My pawpaws always come through, both wild and domestic. We picked some giants today.
Gooseberries, elderberries, and blueberries always manage a crop.
However, that danged aronia thrives no matter what.
Asparagus has been very consistent until this year. We harvested barely a third of our average, and the quality declined. It’s dying out throughout our region.
Invasive plant species are thriving.
Total retirement is looking more attractive all the time.
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I learned what huge difference a DIY hoop house can make in avoiding cold snaps and winter kill of berry canes and grape vines. Denver, Zone 5
…and that slip skin grapes are weird.
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Not fruits or vegetables, but I did get to learn which of my drought tolerant plants really mean it. I have a dry sandy site, and we were in extreme drought in our corner of New Hampshire. Some things came as no surprise: cactus, yucca, Sedum, and Texas sage were completely unfazed. Also unfazed were beach plum, bayberrry, sweet goldenrod, New York aster, purple coneflower, most of the Mediterranean herbs, sweetfern, and Baptisia australis. Plants that did pretty well, but did need some watering, were wild bergamot, anise hyssop, Solomon’s seal, and horseradish. The already pretty spotty lawn was pretty well toast; I plan to seed it over to tall fescue and clover this weekend which should be much better.
I did learn that even with fairly regular watering, my melons, gourds, and luffas were still unproductive and undersized. On a site like mine and a year like this, they probably needed a good soaking every day or two, which I did not give them. It’s also made me adjust my concept of what I can consider an “established” tree. My persimmons have been in the ground over a year and I would have considered them established. However, they clearly weren’t tapped in well enough to manage this year’s drought without supplemental watering. In a normal year they would have been fine, but it was a good reminder that they are really just semi-established until they size up substantially.
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It can be too hot and dry for okra…No one’s okra started to grow until about August this year, after we started getting rain again.
But the lavender loved it.
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I learned how easy it is to grow seedlings (for root stocks or other) in a storage bin. I used one 14 inches deep for Chestnuts and Hazelnuts, and a 16 inch deep one for Pecans. Not only do the roots have room to stretch, but also the plants are easy to separate after turning out the whole bin. Beats digging and less root damage. I look for a heavy duty one like the black ones from Home Depot, but the best are bins I can buy from the waste recycling program here for 5 bucks each.
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great idea! im planning to grow out a bunch of apple seedlings for rootstocks. ill just bury the totes in the ground so they dont freeze.
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If you want to save the burying step you can stratify the seeds in the fridge in a plastic bag and then plant them in spring. Just put them in a plastic bag with some moist peat moss or coir, close tight, and put them in the regular fridge area (no freezer) and store for spring. I regularly find stuff in the back that I forgot about until much later, so I keep a list of what’s ‘cooking’ on the fridge door. Or wait fro my wife to remind me. I’ve found the fridge is safer from rodents, but some seeds get anxious and sprout early so it’s a good idea to check about March. On the other hand, some seeds seem to like the gradual wake up outside. You can do both and double your odds, and possibly your plants.
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1… That black raspberries make awesome jam.
2… 50 ft of double row’d okra will feed 4 every other day for 3 months or more… and give you extra to can and freeze and give to friends and family.
3… I dont care much for Lang jujube. Ordered a Shanxi Li in 2020 from OGW… it fruited this year… but based on the fruit shape… it is Lang… and the fruit is much like trying to eat a piece of Styrofoam that has been soaked in corn syrup.
Never grafted jujube before… but sure need to top work that thing.
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Don’t water newly germinated seedlings with my well water 
Need to support any plants grown next to the hardneck garlic because they aren’t acclimated to support themselves once the garlic is harvested
Cattle panel trellises are a treasure!
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Graft 100 JT-02 persimmon and don’t grafting anything else. I’ll sell out in a week vs. a few years.
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