Today I bagged some plums and the peach on my Hale Haven. That’s right. One peach. Made trying bagging for peaches super easy. I also bagged the three on my tiny Reliance peach, and a thought occurred to me.
I have no idea when to expect these fruit to be ripe. They usually bloom up to three months later in the year. They are quarter sized now, anyone want to take guesses on when to expect fruit from Hale Haven and Reliance Peaches, and Excelsor, Bruce and Beauty Plums, given that the fruit set in first week of March and not later April?
Beauty Plum is supposed to be ready in later June; I wonder if mine may be ripening by mid May. That would be lovely, even if it’s going to be the only fruit I get this year!
I have some cherries that look nice this year as well. I am planning on netting the entire tree; I need to research at what point to do that.
Topworked my Enterprise apple with Fuji. What a mess. I am a crappy grafter.
At least I didn’t cut off my thumb.
I’m with you. Not sure any of my grafts will take. I would be happy with a 25% take rate.
Did my peach grafts yesterday. Felt less good about it than apples.
I don’t spring graft. Maybe some day if i get into apples more. I don’t trust doing stonefruit this time of year…this weather is all over the place…one day its shorts and tshirt…one day its snow flakes (tonite maybe). Summer budding works better for me…much longer time frame and if i do enough of them…something takes!
All the summer budding I tried last summer failed - so now I’m working on failing spring grafts again.
My observation based on budding last fall: many takes for my own scions vs no takes for mailed scions. This was with apricots and apples. I even had takes on budsticks that were stored in the fridge for a few days but not subjected to USPS handling.
Makes me wonder how ARS does it?
I managed to fail last year with both my own budsticks and wood sent thru the mail
Years back Scott sent me an assortment of things and i had takes on just about everything. That was during 90F weather. I think there may have been 1 variety that i didn’t get takes on. My Lavina, Spring Satin, Honey peach, Hesse, WP apple, Satsuma were all from him and have been fruiting for a few years.
My buds from last summer haven’t woken up quite yet on my trees, but i’ll post a few pics when stuff gets moving.
Just place a lot of buds and hope a few take.
Here are some buds that look good. Most are “back ups” … Most are on K1, K86 or my FrankenCot–
buds placed in summer 2016
Lt’s Aprium
Another Lt’s Aprium
this was a bud place in summer 2015
Most of my orchard is waking up. Still have to count on good weather.
I may have not lost anything to the weather we’ll see.
I bought a new mower but not to be delivered until Thursday. I can’t wait.
My first Zero turn. I measured the orchard and I have some trees I can’t get though in the rows but think I’ll be able to get though all of the aisles.
This will be year 5 for my orchard. I really need a good crop to keep my spirits up.
Yesterday while shopping at Lowes I noticed they had a giant rain gauge (like 3 ft tall and 3 inches diameter) that I thought would be fun to put up to measure rainfall. But here is the thing. It was a standard cylinder shape, but at the top it had a big funnel-type attachment that was about 3-4 times wider than the cylinder itself. Wouldn’t this make the whole gauge completely inaccurate? I mean, if it has a big wide funnel to catch rain from a much larger distance than the gauge itself, seems like the result would be that it would catch much more rain and then funnel it into the cylinder, resulting in it collecting more rain than it should.
So…what is the story? I always thought a rain gauge had to be a straight cylinder, so that whatever rain falls into it would accurately reflect the volume of rain in the general area. Having a big rain-catcher on top would seem to render the gauge useless??? If the shape of the cylinder was different/graduated to offset the funnel on top it might make sense, but the cylinder was perfectly uniform from top to bottom (picture a 3 ft piece of 3 inch clear PVC pipe with the bottom sealed and the top open with a funnel mounted on it.
The only thing I can figure is that perhaps the measurement numbers are different to reflect the added water??
@warmwxrules and others, I know its a silly thing to worry about, but I’m curious and interested to hear opinions. Thanks
My guess is that the measurements on the gauge aren’t in true inches to take the funnel diameter into account. Stick a tape measure up against the rain gauge and I bet they are different.
I actually just edited my original post and mentioned that is the only possibility I can think of…great mind’s think alike! 
It should compensate. The official ones (NWS) i believe use a funnel at the top…
I use just a couple dollar acurite cheapy.
You could add another one in another spot of your yard and avg the difference.
Well, after waiting for it to dry out for a couple weeks, I finally got the yard mowed, or most of it anyway. I originally was going to do it yesterday, but the rider wouldn’t start. Apparently the battery, which is on its fourth season, decided to poop out over the winter. But, it had enough juice in it to allow a charge overnight. So today it started no problem.
Didn’t get it all done, but I just have the orchard and back yard left. Now that we have more fruit trees there’s more to mow, especially down by the barn. Think I started at about 3, and stopped at 6. I was wondering how much we have to mow, and figured that its a little over two acres, so quite a bit.
I got sidetracked by having to fix the chainsaw, my wife was walking up the hill with the chain just hanging off it. She was using it to cut up some undergrowth in the front yard. Guess she doesn’t know that the chain gets looser the more you use it. She said it has an automatic chain tightener, and I said yes, but you still have to adjust it as you go. Took me a while to figure that out, but got it fixed, no big deal.
So, tomorrow, there’s lots to do, finish mowing, and plant the rest of the fruit trees, and plants. Still got a pear, peach tree, three tart cherry bushes, and four gooseberry bushes. This weekend I think it’s going to finally be dry enough to plow, AND, argh, got to do the taxes, glad they’re not due until the 18th.
Some pics from around the farm, things are waking up, apples and pears are blooming, grass is greening up. The air is fragrant with the newly cut grass, blossoms, and freshly dug soil. A beautiful time of the year.
Cherry blossoms from a volunteer cherry sapling in the front yard
Cherry blossoms, with Adam’s Apple bush blossoms in background.
Moonglow pear blooms
Milam apple blossoms
The back yard orchard with 2 year old apples in foreground, an old Milam apple tree blooming in the background.
Pear (Pineapple?) waking up with lots of leaves
Redhaven Peach showing some leaves
Pristine apple leafing out
Paid it forward today.
Took the last of my smaller semi standard stock out of the nursery and planted them at my cousins. He had a box store Macintosh already so we planted the 4 next to it.
Gift my 4 remaining semi dwarf trees to a cousin with a few kids.
Roxbury Russet (G30)
Pinova (G30)
Zestar! (G30)
King David (sweet crab/malus coronaria)
