This is my first time adding a picture so I hope I do this right, I’m quite the luddite.
Proud to show the first of my peaches, along with some berries. The white stuff on the peaches is Surround. I ended up with about 50 of these so far and there are another 30 or so on the tree. After a few years of failure, Scott’s organic program worked incredibly well.
I don’t know what kind of peaches they are, but they are delicious. I bought the tree for $1 from Home Depot years ago. If anyone has any guesses to the variety, please let me know.
Of my 49 fruit trees, I’ve only been able to harvest 2 Independence nectarines from my greenhouse tree. I should be able to eat some Puget Gold Apricots in another week or two, then some outdoors Independence nectarines and eventually Frost peaches and HardiRed nectarines. Today though we harvested our first batch of Triple Crown thornless blackberries, which ripened several days sooner than expected.
Here are some of the stone fruit I’m impatiently waiting to ripen.
I got rid of Laxton’s Giant several years ago, before I ever got Titania. So, I can’t give a direct comparison, but LG was a very sparse producer for me, with above average sized fruit. Flavor was too strong for fresh eating.
While my Titania is still young, it seems to be a fast growing, strong producing bush with decent berry size.
Ate two medium Kieffer pears today. These two bloomed late and escaped the cold weather. They also ripened late. They were crunchy and sweet with very little grit.
I actually got to try a pretty ripe strawberry from the backyard patch. It was an Earliglow and very tasty, and sweet enough.
I picked a few more this morning, but they weren’t as sweet. So we should have a really good crop in a couple weeks. It’s nice that we didn’t get a late freeze, so we’re rewarded with an early crop.
They’re pretty good. The one I measured was 24 brix and still had a lot of acid. This is the first ones I’ve tried that I thought were ripe. The other two stone fruits have been 20-23 brix. I like Tasty Rich better than Flavorella. TR has a better flavor.
Just adding my two cents to what Bob said…I’m sure just about any black currant would make excellent jam…and therefore if production and other considerations rather than taste straight off the bush is the deciding factor, I would also consider Crandall (Clove currant/ Buffalo Currant). the currant sawflies seem uninterested in the leaves while they went after my black currants and gooseberries right next to them . They hardly taste at all like a black currant off the bush, until they are made into jam and the distinct ‘black currant’ flavour comes right out…and they are larger (berries)and quite productive. The plant is vigorous. The little flower remnant at the end of the berry, unless you want to individually remove them( as they don’t separate easily),will necessarily be part of the jam (extra fibre) and is not noticeable in the jam, besides, the skins are thicker and add a nice chewiness, if you like that kind of thing. Until I made jam from these, I wasn’t sure of the value of growing them, but now they seem a more trouble free alternative. The large berries are single rather than in clusters which cuts down on rot from moisture…and they are not hiding under a canopy of leaves when you go to pick them…the thing I dislike most about black currants, ironically, is the harvesting !
