Bird pecks! My husband helped ,me net trees all afternoon. Tomorrow another day of it. My orchard looks like halloween. I can’t wait until I can take pictures of my ripening fruit. That Pluot is a killer!
I haven’t posted in a while, here’s what I’m currently eating;
The last of the Flavor Supreme pluots
sweet treat pluerry
splash pluot
emerald drop pluot
freckle face nectarine
just starting to eat red haven peach
atomic red nectarine
…one of each makes for a great breakfast…and yes, I am “regular” with all that fiber!!!
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White Winter Pearmain Apple.
Today I had several more Bluecrop blueberries and black raspberries. Erp!
Prelude raspberry looks so good but there are better tasting raspberries.
Amazing how fast my Illinois Everbearing mulberry has grown. Year three and it’s loaded with delicious fruit. I planted it to keep the birds happy but now that I’ve tasted it I want it all for myself. Needs heavy pruning to control growth.
Poorman Gooseberry, a little 6 inch plant in 2013 and already a 4 ft wide shrub loaded with fruit. This variety has nasty thorns but large quantity of nice fruit.
It will be a long time before the peaches, plums and plouts are ripe.
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The last of my Southmoon blueberries are trickling in. This is the first year I have let them produce fruit–they are now three years in the ground. We eat a lot of blubes so I had also bought some organic blueberries from TJs a week ago. The ones I bought were so good that I thought, uh-oh, mine may not be good by comparison. NOPE! Mine still tasted exponentially better! Sweeter! Better texture! And Southmoon have a wonderful slightly spicy taste as if they already had a few Christmas-y spices added in. YUMMERS!
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There are better tasting raspberries (Anne and Caroline), but Prelude isn’t the worst either. For example, Royalty is pretty bland for me (but a good producer). Prelude is solidly in the middle from a flavor perspective and is nice and early with decent production.
Yes, it’s the first ripe raspberry for me and I do enjoy them, then even tastier ones ripen. That works out nicely.
I am one of those, I prefer Latham over Caroline and Kiwi Gold over Anne, as a result this fall I will remove both. Replacing them in the spring with a combination of 2 of these 3, Brandywine, Cascade Gold or one of the Crimson series.
I went with Kiwi Gold over Anne because of vigor. Anne was just so sadly spindly compared to my other raspberries, and one just coughed and died outright in pretty perfect conditions. Kiwi has been a much stronger plant, though this year will be my first fall crop from my plants so I won’t be sampling Anne at all.
I have Crimson Night too. Have high hopes for the taste.
I agree 100%.
Also the the Berries from Kiwi Gold are twice the size of Anne, with very similar soluble sugars and same apricot flavor, not to mention the vigor, which I concur with at my location. Anne just isn’t worth growing, gets gobbled up by the primocanes, and when the new floricanes appear they are small and spindly.
They must be the size of plums, as Anne has some good sized berries. Here are some of my Anne from last August. I haven’t tried Kiwi Gold before, but it sounds like I should get some.
I’ve actually gotten rid of Caroline due to poor production and extreme SWD susceptibility. Anne seems to hold up much better. And if worst comes to worst, they can be picked early and still taste good (unlike a lot of raspberries).
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Love your description of Kiwi Gold, Moley. Gives me hope for a good yet vigorous yellow raspberry. I gave mine fish/kelp emulsion this week.
Picked some blues for pancakes today. Patriot is putting out some massive berries, the large one near the dime for reference in this pic is a Patriot. The teeny ones are North Country (which I have been eating every day since last week…!). And I’m grateful my blues are such producers - this is the tip of the iceberg, many many thousands more still light blue so a later harvest than I expected.
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Nice looking berries Bob. I got my Anne’s from HF (not generally great, I know) and they were real weaklings. The rest of the raspberries I got from them are going like gangbusters.
Your plants must be doing well to push out berries like that. Good for you!
Strange as it is, the Anne plant in the picture was purchased at a grocery store (Whole Foods). That one plant is now covering quite a bit of territory. In fall of the same year (2010), I also got 3 Anne plants from Backyard Berry Bushes (expensive online source). Of those 3, 2 of them didn’t make it through the next year.
So Anne was a bit tricky to get started. By now, the 1 plant that did survive has spread through the entire area I initially planted the 3 over, so it all worked out. But they are a touchy plant to get started. At this point, I don’t see any issues with them and they are a strong grower.
Harvested my 1st ever Clayton peaches and Easternglo nectarines today to go along with some Williams Pride apples. The Clayton peach were great as Scott suggests, the Easternglo were great as well, a little on the acidic side which I liked. These were some of the survivors from my late spring freeze that wiped out 90% of my stone fruit crop. Out of my 12 peach/nectarine trees, it was surprising that the Easternglo along with the Challenger peach produced the most fruit. The Williams Pride fought of my major fireblight outbreak to produce a nice crop as well.
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Chris. I have been considering adding Williams Pride to my small orchard. It is a nice looking apple and early ripening. Is there a place near you that sells the tree or is this one you had to order online. Thanks, Bill
Chris, that’s some beautiful homegrown Southern fruit! The light played well on the apples and nectarines and gave them a waxed and polished look. Nice going! It can be a real challenge to grow such good looking backyard fruit down here.
How do the pluerries taste? Last year mine were not too exciting - good sugar but low flavor. Since it got very bad black knot I am going to remove it if it doesn’t make some good fruits soon!
I’m up to my eyeballs in apricots now, I am finally getting a lot of them and most varieties have a similar harvest window.
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