Sorry to hear that. Yes, it’s 30 something apples, but it’s still your home grown fruit. Is this your first year to get apples? I thought your fence was electrified? I hope they didn’t damage the trees too bad.
We’ve been lucky so far this year regarding deer. My main garden doesn’t have any kind of fence around, so far, just a few leaves nipped off. I took off the fencing from my two big pear trees, thinking they won’t mess with them like the apples.
I know I’m tempting fate, but kinda want to see if i can get away with it. Sort of like playing Russian roulette with deer…
Hope they turn out good for you. I must say you are doing some heavy duty limb weighting! It looks good, how old is it?
I did a little bit of that with my Contender tree today, not with rocks, but tied some of them down to the edge of the cage i have around it. But, they’re eventually going to have to be pulled down more than they are.
Finally finished with my weeding and mulching of the barn orchard, looks so much better now. Since a lot of the trees are expanding out more, I’m going to have to widen out their cages.
I had to stop after the first one today as another squall rolled through and dumped another half inch on us. I’ve got water standing in the okra part of the garden, so I had to do some bailing out of that plot. That makes 4" now, with more chances over the next couple of days. Enough already…
Now, I’ll have to do the same with the back orchard, but that should go a bit faster as those trees aren’t as big.
Thanks @subdood_ky_z6b. I planted that tree fall of 2015. After seeing pictures here of Olpea’s peach trees, I thought mine needed a lot more bending to achieve that open vase shape. I need to do that with my apricots too but need to find some good hefty rocks to tie to. It takes a
Heavy rock to hold those limbsg in place.
Apples have been the slowest producing fruit in my orchard and yes this was the first year I’ve had any fruit set at all. My orchard fence is built as electric fence but due to it’s distance from my house I’ve not taken the time to run electric to it. I don’t know for sure if it was dear taking the fruit but that is my suspicion. I’ve seen deer in the neighborhood recently with fawns. I reset my game cam in a new location in order to have a better chance of seeing what going on.
AU Rubrum upper left, Weeping Santa Rosa lower left, Shiro, and Purple Heart.
The Purple Hearts are quite extraordinary, very flavorful! Weeping Santa Rosa are also great, but are a little more watery than usual due to all the rains we are in now. The Shiro are good as usual, but this year the birds are on to them and most are getting pecked. Usually the yellow color tricks the birds. The AU Rubrum are fine, though low on sugar and flavor for me. On the upside they are not sour at all. They also ripen over a long period. The Purple Heart are the opposite, they are all ripening together now. They are small, but I don’t care, its worth it!
I find Purple Heart to be the most important variety taken from your list of plums you grow. I’m liking it as much as any good stone fruit I grow and I grow many. It’s one plum that I highly recommend, even in the deep south. Really powerful and excellent flavor
OK, you convinced me to try this one, I’ll look for wood this winter. Speaking of scion, I grafted a Spring Satin and it didn’t grow that well, but did produce a couple fruit. Very good, love it, a keeper for me. I feel one has to try the fruit. I have found my tastes differ a lot from others. Fruit called boring I loved it, and fruit suggested as high quality, I didn’t like at all. So one never knows…
Thanks, I tried to give them plenty of room. I have the apples about 15’ apart, and the pears, peaches and pluots get about 18’.
We also have a garden down here this year, but it’s smaller than previous years, because of adding in the pluots. That made the garden about a third smaller.
Lavina. They have a very strong tropical fruit flavor when fully ripe and soft, not sure what it is but its passion fruit or guava or related (I confess the tropical flavors all blend together in my head). Its another truly fantastic plum, completely different from Purple Heart but just as yummy. Assuming you like tropical fruit flavors, that is.
Its amazing eating these two plums side by side, both amazing yet completely different flavors. Purple Heart is cherry plus cloves, thats very far from passion fruit or guava!
Note these ones the the ones I didn’t eat yet, they are not quite ripe (all the ripe ones are in my stomach now). In my climate they need to be a bit darker than this before they are ripe.
Sounds great!
I added one last year, it didn’t flower this year, but grew like crazy, almost a whole scaffold at this point. You are a few weeks ahead of me. I only harvested Spring Satin. Nadia is dark but rock hard.
Weeping Santa Rosa is turning color as is satsuma. Superior is still green as are the pluots, New this year is Flavor Grenade, and Honey Punch. I added other plums this year like Hollywood, and Inca, and others too like Rosemary.
Spring Satin and mine feels fuzzy, unlike rayrose.
No tartness at all, a little over ripe. Size is small, but it is on an 8 inch stick. Hopefully it will grow out more this year. i thought it had a wonderful flavor with hints of Apricot. It’s on Nadia, if Nadia pollinated it the seed should be interesting if grown out.
Sounds intriguing. Is Lavina patented? If not, I might try to graft some wood on to my wild plum. (Not asking for any scions! (Yet)). Are plums (or pluots) relatively easy to graft?
