What's happening today - 2018 edition

picked my first apricot this year. Nice apricot flavor, not very sweet. we got a lot of rain recently.
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Nice color!

@mrsg47

The same hapenned to me here in 5b.

My Calville was loaded with blooms and the post polination buds looked just like all the other apples.

But only ONE apple developed and that was on a spur that developed on the trunk of all places.

All others just… didn’t.

Mike

Looks great!!!

It’s been so dry here. Blackberries are showing lots of white druplet because of the heat, 100F yesterday and almost that hot today. Too hot and dry for sweet corn to do any good either.

Peach trees are fine, so far. Weed control is easier because of the hot/dry weather. Here’s a pic of a couple rows of younger trees in a newer section.

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Sorry to hear about the heat, it’s supposed to be in the 90s over the next week here, with only a small chance of rain on Monday. Above average temps for here, but after all the rain we’ve had, I’m not complaining too much.

At least with the heat, your peaches ought to get really sweet! Do have an irrigation system in place in case it gets too dry?

That’s a good question. I don’t have an irrigation system because I don’t like the way water dilutes the flavor. We generally get too much rain here. In 2012 it was very very dry and hot and peach size was smaller but not terrible. The flavor was nice.

Maybe this year I will finally measure brix, just for curiosity. I’m sure it won’t approach Fruitnut’s numbers, but it might be interesting to see how natural water deprivation compares to Fruitnut’s highly managed water deprivation. How bout it Steve, can you tell me again what refractometer you use? @fruitnut

I remember in 2011, we were still in Dallas then. I think that was the year we had 70 straight days of highs of at least at 100. Yikes.

Ok. I imagine all that mulch keeps them somewhat cooler. I guess it’s still too early for any peaches to be ready, yes? But, the blackberries ought to be getting ripe by now?

Subdood,

I got rid of all my super early peaches. Now the earliest we have is Earlystar, Harrow Diamond, and Spring Snow. All of those ripen about -21.

This year the spring was really late in coming, so it pushed everything back. But this heat is advancing things forward a bit. So most of the earliest peaches are about a week away from first picking.

We do have one tree of Harrow Diamond on a K1 rootstock. It always ripens about a week to 10 days before the other Harrow Diamonds. I have been picking fruit off it the last few days. I just tasted one fruit and it was good. A customer who bought some the day before, called yesterday to tell me the peaches were very good.

We’ve been starting to sell some Navaho blackberries. They ripen a little before our Apache and Triple Crown. There was a very good berry set, but the berries are getting sunburn because of the intense heat/sun and I see a lot of white druplet this year because of the heat.

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This year it was dry in early spring and my berries were coming out small, and not that tasty. Since the heavy rains here the crop is producing bigger and sweeter berries. Really really nice actually. So it seems for brambles not always the best to have low water. Maybe other factors too, like temps. It seems I could not water enough.
I pulled most of my blackberries but boysen and tayberries are ripe now, kept them. The Tayberries are so good, and super sweet. My daughter says they taste like super sweet blackberries. To me they carry a lot of raspberry and blackberry flavor making them taste rather unique. I look forward to them every year. Wyeberries taste like boysen but twice as big, make the best jam ever. I kept New Berry as it is my favorite blackberry, I don’t care for the thornless types. To me they have a strange after taste, especially when not ripe. When fully ripe it’s gone. Plus they produce so many I could not consume them all, so eliminated the thornless in favor of flavors I like better. Boysen, tayberry, and wyeberry never have white drupes. Well now that I said that I probably will see some!

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Someone mentioned how the weeds seem to be bad this year. Our tomato patch seemed to have exploded in weeds over the last couple weeks. It could be all the rain plus the heat. I was going to mow them down and then till it, but just ended up taking the tiller thru it. It’s kind of a tight space in there, but having the plants 4ft apart helped. I’m going to have to reapply some mulch as some got covered, plus the plants are bigger.

Looks a lot better now, but as the plants get wider and bushier, I may run out of space. A lot of the plants are well over 3ft tall now and are starting to sprawl even after adding more stakes.

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my spring was dry like yours but my primocane fruiting raspberries only produce in the fall when its dry . i think thats why the flavor is better with them than the florocane producing ones that fruit during or wet season. tradeoff of that is in our short growing season you only get berries until mid sept frost kills them. i add 3in of new mulch around all my plants every spring and rarely have to water. its alot of work but saves me from watering and i think the broken down mulch feeds the plants over time so you don’t need to fertilize as much.

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with the rain we’ve been getting lately lambs quarters been comming up in droves. even in the green chip mulch! been a weeding fool!

Lots of bird parents doing lessons today.
White mulberries are in and they are oh so fab. Taste like honey.
My Bee’s Acre is coming along. Not an acre but a nice patch. Im hoping if my nearby bees primarily feed here they wont be going to other trees n bringing FB back
I dont ‘keep’ bees but we have a bumble colony under the porch

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I grafted a couple whites this year. Maybe I’ll get a taste next year? In the meantime, how about white blueberries?

These are pink popcorn, more like white popcorn! They may not be ripe, but they are very sweet, and very good, have a “different” yet, blueberry flavor. The birds are puzzled?

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Those r cool - any way to make birds not notice is good. Activate cloaking device
The white mulls i have are much firmer and drier than blacks. More concentrated taste. I hope u like them when yrs starts fruiting

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My catahoula found a newborn rabbit in the grass and the friend I was with kept getting it (now dead) away from her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. He finally stopped trying, and all she wanted was to bring it to me as a gift, lol! That was very sweet of her, proud as she was of her little hunting session.

I saw another one that I kept her from being near and I hope mama bunny was still somewhere nearby. I’d rather it go quickly if it’s going to die too :frowning:

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My wabbits take care of my bug culled apples. They eat them. Its a very satisfying thought, those grubby worms getting all munched up

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Plum harvest is beginning to accelerate.

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Beautiful

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