2 of my blueberries (same variety) and exhibiting the problem shown, anyone know what this is?
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I spent about two hours thinning out pears last night while listening to the Phillies blow it. This is the first year where I have the potential to get a lot of pears from my Bartlett, Hosui, and mislabeled not New Century pears. There is an amazing amount of little fruitlets on these trees with each cluster of flowers having what appears to be multiple properly pollinated pears. I know a lot can happen between now and harvest, but it is nice to feel real good about all the hard work I’ve done over the past five years.
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I’m kind of cross again! Last year my pollination was totally rained on! This spring its a bit better but not much. Rain pretty much all week with all apricots in full bloom and peaches half way there. It’s supposed to stop tonight. But I still need sun, just plain sun!!
And these pics are for Mark in Mt.
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On Wednesday, I plowed the last garden plot, then mowed the backyard and the back orchard for the first time this year. It looks a lot better than it did just a few days ago.
Since my raspberry run had so many weeds I decided to finish up weeding it over the last few days. The canes look like they really responded well to the weeding. Yesterday, I got out there and gave the raspberries some Hollytone fertilizer. Over the last few days the canes have put on a lot of leaves, and even a few fruit buds. After I finished up with that patch, I gave the thornless blackberries some triple 10 fertilizer, after I weeded them. Other than the PAF, the BB’s haven’t put up a bunch of new canes.
After I mulched them, I went ahead and mowed around the big fruit trees, and put down a new layer of mulch. I did a few pears, a couple apples and a pluot. I gave a couple of the trees some fertilizer, because I thought they needed it, but the others seem to be doing well so I left those alone. They seem to be quite vigorous in that rich soil below the barn. It’s starting to look better, but I still have a lot of trees to do.
It rained a bit overnight, but not a lot, I thought that would be good to water in the fertilizer. But this morning, it rained pretty hard for a couple hours and it’s raining now around noon time. So I hope the fert doesn’t get washed away. It seems we can’t get just a little shower around here, we get a few days of nice weather and then we get 1-2 in of rain, and it just makes things messy again. So, no outside work today, it’s really cooled off, only 50 degrees.
I fertilized my gooseberries a couple weeks ago, and they’re already showing results of that, they have a lot of new green leaves, and my big plant has lots of fruit blossoms on them. So we could have quite a few berries off that plant this year. Our strawberry patch is looking good also, there are a lot of fruits on some of the plants, some are about thumbnail size already. So, if I can keep the deer and rabbits out, we ought to have a pretty good crop in about a month. My order of Flavorfest strawbs are in now, so I need to go pick those up at the county ag office. Probably won’t be able to plant those until Monday.
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Well, this is from yesterday, as today is covered in snow and i probably won’t be going outside. This asparagus was planted last year.
I also noticed that my blackcurrant is about to bloom. There was a swarm of small bees and an occassional bumble bee all over it all yesterday. They must be able to smell it already?
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How many years have you had them in the ground?
And sorry about your team, I’m from Minnesota so I am familiar with how that feels. 
happens every year!
Edit, oops, missed the last line saying 5 yrs
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Hey Katie, somehow I missed your message. Yeah, 5 years. The Hosui produced about 20 pears last year. The Not New Century grew 3 pears last year and about 8 the year before.
I received my package from Nourse Berries last night and was able to put the Bristol Black Raspberries and MacDonald rhubarb in the ground. I hope to put the Jewel and Earliglow strawberries in tonight. All the plants looked healthy and good with plenty of roots.
It seems my attempts to hand pollinate my paw paws did not work this year, so far. I did the same thing I did last year using a neighbors paw paw pollen, but there doesn’t seem to be any baby fruit growing. Had 6 last year. I went over and got some more pollen last night and tried again, and noticed there were still a few flowers not opened so I’ll try again this weekend too.
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Cedar rust galls are all orange jelly now - I’d spray if it would stop raining
Checked out my small quince tree. It’s developing buds from the bottom up, which is weird. I’m wondering if the top of the tree sustained cold damage… scratch tests are green all the way up, though. 
With what?
I use immunox - for both rust and scab at this time
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An orchard miracle!
I had bought my Bartlett pear tree from Stark Bro 5 years ago. Was one of the first trees I bought when I didn’t know what I was doing (compare to now, when I still don’t know what I’m doing.) It was supposed to be a combo tree of Bartlett and Red Sensation pear. For four years the tree looked the same so I just figured they either send me the wrong tree or I pruned off the graft when the tree was young.
Saturday night I was out doing some thinning when I noticed a branch that had red pears and leafs that had a red tinge to them. At first I was confused, but remembered that this was the combo tree. I don’t know where it came from. I need to remove a branch of Bartlett to make some room for it. That puts me up to 14 pear varieties I believe.
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So cool! I had a new graft of Magness this year whose tiny leaf tips turned black quickly. I didn’t bother to look at it for several days after that. Well, it’s pushed and green now. No idea how, lol.
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I grafted Magness this year too. So far it seems all my pear grafts have taken. One would think that all cells want to survive so even if something goes wrong, they have the ability to survive if they can.
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Finally, SUN!
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I can’t say that i’ve ever had birch syrup. I have made hickory syrup from the bark of the tree.
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Bought a cordless battery operated weed eater. I love it!!
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Being a Stihl and Echo fan my whole life I never would’ve thought I’d agree with that statement but I do. A few weeks back I bought a Milwaukee Fuel cordless strong trimmer and it is awesome! I have several Milwaukee tools and batteries so I took a chance and gave it a try. It cuts wonderfully. It is no fuss. You just pick it up and start weed whacking. It has enough battery capacity to trim everything on my property. I still have my trusty Echo but I keep a blade on it and will use it for greenbrier and saplings at my property line. But for trimming my trees, garden boxes, and around the house the Milwaukee can’t be beat.
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