Nice to see all of your plums getting ripe Scott! There are so many varieties and so many descriptions out there. It’s nice to get some first hand comparisons. Thanks!
Picked an Alvaro (charentais) melon today. I read they are supposed to go from green-grey to tan-yellow fairly quickly when they are ripe. Here is an unripe Alvaro above the ripe one. They are supposed to be small, 2-3 lbs, but this one was over 4 lbs. The others that have set seem like they will be smaller. Brix was 14 near the middle, 12 near the rind. Not sure if it was perefectly ripe, but it was very good. I picked a Dove Ananas melon (from Fedco) yesterday, but they are supposed to sit for a few days to develop certain hints of flavors, so I’ll wait. I took a chance and planted these melons the second week of May and we ended up escaping frost, otherwise this would be too early to harvest melons around here.
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I Thought I ‘d try it. My biggest enemy this summer is squirrels. With my dog there are fewer., black knot has been my worst fungus!
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Yes both, more forgiving than peaches. I have wood too if you need it.
I think Flavor Queen has a tropical taste too. More of a coconut type flavor. It doesn’t bear as well, although this year I have a lot of them. Much bigger than many plums too. many do not like it, i could eat them all day. Next year I will have fruit from a lot of plums I put on in 2017.
Ok, thanks. I might hit you up for some Lavina wood next year. Are grafts onto existing branches usually simple splice grafts, or do most folks do whip and tongue?
I was curious to hear how your Dapple Dandy and Flavor King are doing this year. My three new pluots (those two and Geo Pride), have put on some modest growth in the four months they’ve been in the ground.
Man, did the J beetles get after my little DD tree. But it looks like it’s sending out some new sprigs. JB’s also shredded quite a few of my apples, but have mostly left my pears and peaches alone.
I know, I know…I didn’t thin these enough!!! But darn, they sized up really well, no broken branches (yet) so I may have gotten away with it. And I promise I really did throw away a TON of peaches each of the 10 times I thinned this tree! ha These are all from the same tree, btw.
And in case you are wondering, I don’t have a private tennis court. As some of you may remember, I planted a small orchard in the City Park and I spray and care for them.
Oh…this is a contender peach. Let this also be STRONG evidence of how good contender is for areas like mine with frequent late frosts. I have MANY peach trees that don’t have a single fruit this year thanks to a late freeze this spring that killed all the blooms on many trees. Yet this tree obviously wasn’t the least bit affected. And boy are they good!
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The fruit look big, very nice. My peaches are quite small, so far.
What a nice city manager you are for planting real edible landscaping for your city Folks. You are welcome to run my town anytime 
Why thank you, Tippy! This has been a fun project for me, but of course hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped. The idea was the citizens could enjoy seeing the fruit grow, and everyone could pick a piece or two when it gets ripe as they are enjoying the park. It’s beside a playground so I hoped maybe the kids would get a piece or two of fruit as well. So far whenever something gets ripe (blackberries and plums so far) one person comes in and picks the whole tree clean!!! How selfish!!! I even think I know who it is- they live across the street and by no means are they low-income or in “need” of free fruit. Oh well…its a work in progress and I’m not giving up. I’m thinking about putting up a small, nice looking, polite sign that says something like “please enjoy a few pieces of fresh fruit, just remember this park, this tree, and this fruit belongs to all of us so don’t take more than your share so others can have some too”. I don’t know…that’s too long. Open to suggestions to this free rider problem!!!
Kevin,
“…so don’t take more than your share” is up to interpretation and some selfish people, the whole tree is not more than your share.
The sign is a good idea but you need to be less polite and more direct. Also you should add that there is a surveillance camera or something like that to keep those people on their toes.
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That’s definitely a ripe Alvaro. Charentais generally, even hybrids like Alvaro, are prone to splitting, so it’s best to pick them as soon as they color.
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I do wedge and whip, usually no tongue. I prefer wedge as I can see the graft union better, rather ugly, but helps when pruning! Whip grafts can be invisible! Both work well, wedge is easier. You have to have it tied tight though!
Lesson learned, do very heavy thinning on young peach trees.
This one is not much bigger than a golf ball.
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I thought I did heavy thinning. It still looks like not enough. I thinned off thousands in several rounds.
However, I’ve noticed that peaches can stay small for a while and all of a sudden, they size up toward ripening time. It happened in the past, I hope it will happen again. We do not have a drought this year. Small size because of lack of water is not a factor where I am.
Same weather pattern here, Long Island. There had been such constant wet weather I never bothered to set up my drip irrigation. With so much wet weather I’ve noticed there had been very little splitting after heavy rain.
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The nects on my young tree are not even golfball sized. I left only four, but maybe should have pulled those, too
The ones that split the most are A pears esp. 20th Century.
Birds totally got the entire Shiro plum crop, as well as the sweet and sour cherries, including the Gold cherries.
Birds have been very very active this year.
They’re getting into the blueberry and grape cages somehow.
They should be recruited for CIA.
Fire Blight continues to be a big problem for the Flemish Beauty pear.
Even the Asian pears and apples show some spotty Fire Blight.
Early on I thought it was going to be a good year but noooooo.
I no longer believe birds will ignore fruits that aren’t red
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Im so glad to hear someone else has that experience! haha. The jokes about the fruit fairies who come at night and put thinned fruit back on the tree are so funny because they are so true!!! haha.
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Absolutely agree.
Also, I thought the Shiros would be too large but they didn’t just peck at 'em … they must’ve carried them away.
No pits on the ground at all. Unless they knocked 'em off the tree and the groundhogs and deer took 'em home.
But … color … you are so right. The gold cherries vanished within a couple of days.
And another myth is that they don’t care for tart cherries.
And they won’t leave the blackberries alone either … at any stage of ripeness.