I recently bought some Mulberry cuttings from a place in Florida.He has some videos on YouTube.One is about the Apple Cactus and the guy says the flavor is better than Dragon Fruit,although people have said the yellow variety is better than red,which I tried,in the store,but wasn’t impressed.bb
I always have trouble with squirrels digging up recently planted seedlings, but today a larger mammal seemed to be joining in. My poor fig Preto was dug up out of its 10 gallon pot and this raw hide was buried in the soil. This fig has been struggling and was weakly rooted, so was easy to evict. A dog right? Or might a raccoon did this?
I’m sorry for your loss but this is hilarious
something my dogs do in my raspberry patch. they then dig them up once they’re all nice and green ripe. 
Contender peach trees grow very upright compared to other varieties. They can be challenging to shape and control their height.
Thanks for that info, it is pretty upright, but again, that’s probably more on my bad branch trsining. A couple more questions, my Contender blooms are pale pink, not real showy, and almost white. Is that normal for this variety?
My Blushingstar has vibrant pink blooms on it, yet is supposed to be a white peach. So, I’m also wondering if that’s normal as well. I don’t know if you grow Blushingstar, though. If not, maybe @olpea could comment?
I hadn’t heard of the apple cactus. The flesh looks very similar to a white dragon fruit. I’ve been tempted by prickly pear but put off by the prickly part. I’ll need to see if I can find an apple cactus locally, the description sounds good.
Also discovered that dragon fruit is an epiphyte, weird
My dog doesn’t dig up any raspberry plants… But she certainly picks and eats the (ripe) berries! 
I found this place in Southern California,but not sure what city.bb
they don’t dig them up just bury in the mulch around them.
Thanks for the link! Looks like they are outside of Escondido. I’m also in Ca so they should be able to ship to me. Prices look reasonable too
Subdood,
That is entirely normal. I don’t grow Blushingstar anymore, but from my notes, it has a non-showy blossom. About the only peaches which have white blooms are one or two couple flat peaches I grow.
Here is something I posted about it a couple weeks ago:
"You can’t tell much about a peach from the bloom. You can tell if the peach is white fleshed or yellow fleshed from the bloom, but in most cases that’s about it. There are some very unique blooms of a few peach cultivars, but those are few and far between.
If you tear apart the bloom, the color of the inner lining (called the hypanthium) is indicative of the eventual color of the flesh of the peach. A yellow fleshed peach will have an orange hypanthium. A white fleshed peach will have a more yellow colored hypanthium."
I too have found Contender to have a very upright growing pattern. I’ve learned to manage those (Earlystar is another one which wants to grow to the moon) and can keep them fairly horizontal.
How do you do this? By tying a weight to the branches to pull them down? Asking because I planted a Contender last year. Loving the tree so far because it gave me few fruits last Year and now covered with about to pop open flower buds. I think I’ll have to thin this year for sure.
I’m confused by your answer. My apparent Blushingstar has pink, showy blooms (at least it looks like that to me), you say they aren’t in your experience. But, based on your explanation on telling what the flesh may be, I’ll try to dissect one to make sure.
What does Contender blooms look like in your experience?
I posted some pics that I took a couple days ago. Could you also comment on my Redhaven and Coralstar blooms? They’re in this thread. Thanks!
I looked at all your blooms of blushingstar. If they are open all the way, I might classify them as non-showy (because they don’t lay flat). I don’t have any old pics of my blushingstar trees, just notes they are non-showy.
You’re Redhaven blooms look like mine.
Contender blooms look a little different than mine, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference in hues from pictures. Plus yours have more rounded petals, so I’m wondering if you have a mislabel there?
Showy blooms have bigger petals and lay more flat, whereas non-showy blooms don’t look like they open all the way (i.e. they don’t lay flat). There is still room for interpretation. In other words, just how open does a flower have to be to be a showy flower? And how large do petals have to be to be a showy petal? How pink must it be to be showy (since virtually all peach flowers are somewhat pink)?
Most of the time it’s pretty easy to tell showy from non-showy blooms at a glance, but sometimes the attributes overlap enough, it makes it hard to classify. For example, TangOs II I’ve classified in my notes as showy sometimes, and non-showy others. They are kind of right in the middle of the spectrum, so I supposed I’ve classified them more by my moods, than by objective criteria.
I think your pics of your presumed Blushingstar blooms fall in that category for me. The petals are small for showy blooms, but large for non-showy blooms. They don’t seem to lay completely flat. They aren’t super pink so I think I’d classify them as non-showy. But overall, they are sort of close to what I’d call a showy bloom, so not an easy classification.
Here is a pic last year of some of my Contender peach blooms with yours below it. I’m almost positive my Contenders are not mislabels because they fit the description of Contender in every respect.
I’ll let you be the judge.
Here is yours below:
Congrats Susu on the peach flower show. Hopefully the tree will follow through with a bountiful harvest. I’m pretty sure you are in for lots of years of more Contender peaches than you can eat.
I don’t tie any branches down anymore, because I don’t have time to do it. I used to do it and it works. I never used to like to tie weights on tree branches because with the wind we have, the extra weight can swing hard enough to break branches. We used to tie branches down with string and stakes.
Now we just keep pruning the upright wood. With upright varieties like Contender, that turns into a lot more pruning. Fortunately the variety throws out enough renewal wood, even after a heavy pruning there is still plenty of mostly horizontal wood to give the tree a full crop. In fact, Contender wants to put on so many fruit, it’s hard to get them thinned down enough. And they take forever to thin, because so many fruit have to be removed.
One of the hardest trees to train is Earlystar. Not only does it grow upright, but it doesn’t want to put out a lot of renewal wood. So we have to leave stub cuts to try to keep renewal wood on these trees. Even then, we have a problem with too much blind wood on the scaffolds as the trees get older. On Earlystar we have to leave some vertical shoots, otherwise we are cutting off too much wood. We just try to leave the smallest/weakest vertical shoots when we prune, then prune a lot of them back to a stub again, once the season is over. It ends up that you sort of alternate vertical stubs. Some you cut back to a stub at the end of the season. Other small ones you leave to fruit the next season.
We try to prune some throughout the season too. Sometimes we are more successful getting that done than others.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess I should let more of them open up. Regarding their color, they are pink, but pale, much more so than Blushingstar’s. Of that one, do you suppose it is that variety?
If we’re lucky enough to get fruit off them I guess when they’re harvested might help ID them.
If you don’t think they’re Contender what do you think the blooms look like? I realize this may be near impossible to determine now.
Sounds like your definition of non showy is a bloom that is like bowl shaped, as opposed to a plate for showy, and not super pink?
Any opinion on my Coralstar pics?
The pic in your avatar, is that considered showy?
Sorry for all the questions, just curious, especially since this could be our first crop.
I think your Blushingstar could be a Blushingstar, but I don’t have any pics of my Blushingstar blooms. And I can’t recall from memory just how mine looked.
Your Coralstar pic looks like it might not be opened all the way. If that’s the case, it looks like it might be showy. Coralstar had non-showy blooms for me.
Last year, Spud and I had some discussion about showy vs. non-showy blooms.
Here’s what I wrote, “Most of the blooms are fairly straightforward on being either showy or non showy. That is, a typical non showy bloom will have smaller redder petals which don’t lay flat. Or a typical showy bloom will have large pinkish petals which lay flat.”
My avatar is a picture of the Redskin peach bloom. Yes, it would be considered showy.
The dogwoods are already starting to drop their petals, spring is well on it’s way in North Florida.
Citrus blooming 
native bumblebee helping them along 
Thanks again. Great, sounds like I might have two mislabelled trees. But, just hope we get some fruit regardless. Beggars can’t be choosers!
