What's happening today 2020

Speaking of peaches, I was planting a vegetable bed today, and noticed some resin oozing from the base of my Intrepid peach. I went to dig up the soil around the base and noticed some dead tissue. Clearing away said dead tissue revealed 2 borer larvae! Needless to say, they were summarily crushed and permethrin was dumped around the trunk and root flare to hopefully kill any others.

I’m glad this forum exists. I wouldn’t have known that the oozing resin was a dangerous sign without having read about peach tree borers on here. The 2 borers did damage to perhaps 1/4 of the base. Hopefully, the tree recovers. It’s covered with flower buds. I’d hate to lose it before I even get to taste the fruit, having only planted it 2 years ago.

@PharmerDrewee,
I hope you dug around and poke any hole you could find at the base of the tree. I had to use a wire to get them out of the holes.

No, I did not use a wire to poke around. The 2 larvae were revealed just by removing decaying tissue, 2 holes and 2 borers. Do borers normally attack a tree in large numbers? I will poke around more later in the week when I’m home from work.

This was my first peach. It did not last very long before being attacked. I think the eggs must have been laid last year since the larvae were so big.

Their number varies. Checking them thoroughly is the key. Maybe, the permethrin you soaked the base of the tree will be sufficient.

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I am not an expert but if you are seeing peach tree borers in your trees now on the east coast they would be borers that bored into your tree last fall and are becoming active in the spring. I lost a nice contender peach tree to borers a couple of springs ago before I knew better.

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@olpea, I remember a publication done by UK on types of peaches and their ratings of them. I think I may have posted the link in a previous post to you. In it, in additiom to hardiness, flavor, size and yield ratings, it also had a chart showing what kind of blooms (showy, non showy, large, etc), and type of glands under the leaves.

So, that might be able to tell me what my varieties actually are. But, a lot of varieties can have similar leaf characteristics, so it won’t be a definitive tool.

I guess the real proof will be when the fruit is harvested and what color it is.

Here is a link to the study-

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/ho/ho6/ho6.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjV04Odt7HoAhWJQs0KHbI2BMcQFjADegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0Lu6k0yfXxciKLH-LvqOM-

Hi Bob! Well, I got me some seed potatoes. Fellow that sold to me said cut them up to let them cure a few days before I plant them… Too muddy in my spot right now anyway.

Now what did you say about the moon? :thinking:

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Planting them between the new and full moon will result in more sunburned potatoes.

Hey, Sam. I plant my seed taters in the 3rd or 4th quarter moon. Unfortunately, the new moon starts tomorrow, so you’ll need to wait a couple weeks until after the full moon. Hopefully it’ll be dry enough then to plant them. What varieties did you get?

We can’t plant or do much of anything here with the soil, it’s still way too wet.

Guess I can wait 2 weeks. Can’t wait too long though because the fellow said potatoes don’t do so good in hot weather.

The fellow had two boxes of supposedly red potatoes. He had their names written on them but I did not pay any attention to the names because I thought all red potatoes were just red potatoes. One box had a little redder potatoes then the other though. I got 5 pounds mixed.

What is the name of the red potatoes that you plant?

We like Pontiac for red potatoes, when we can get them to grow. For white varieties we usually try Kennebec or Irish Cobbler. Another red variety we’ve tried was Red Norland, but never got any to harvest, they rotted in our wet soil.

We were going to get some seed taters last week, but the store we usually get them at (Southern States) had closed down! Very surprised to see that. But, we’re in no hurry since I can’t do anything in the gardens yet, way too wet.

I just saw your pics of all your peach blossoms in the “stone fruit blossoms” thread. I think I’m getting an idea of what showy and non showy blooms look like.

For reference, here’s the pic of my ‘Coralstar’ bloom.

Judging by your criteria, my Coralstar looks to be showy, which is opposite what you’ve seen with yours. One more question, do showy bloom petals tend to be more pointy as opposed to more rounded? Thanks.

Your flowers looked like non-showey to me. They looked small. Showey flowers are much larger with rounder petals.

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I think I’ve seen it before. In their description of flowers, they use more terms than showy or non-showy. Probably a good idea because as I’ve mentioned, there is some overlap on a few of these blooms from various cultivars. I’ve found the leaf gland type very helpful also in identifying cultivars (along with flower type and days ± Redhaven).

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It looks like the petals will uncurl a little more, so I would probably classify the petals as showy. They also look like they are laying pretty flat.

As Tippy alludes, they are quite as showy as some showy flowers (like Autumnstar) but I would still classify them as showy, I think.

Unfortunately, most cases are black and white (i.e. easy to classify showy vs. non-showy). But there are some cases where it’s grey.

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From my experience there should be a third type bloom, semi-showy. A lot of flowers kind of fall in between and can be hard to tell sometimes.

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Ok, thanks. This is what it said about Coralstar and Contender-

Coralstar-
+10 to +19 days after Redhaven;
med showy flower;
Kidney shape leaf gland, 2-3 per leaf;
Freestone;
80% red in a mottled striping pattern over orange-yellow

Contender-
+16 to +20 days after RH;
non-showy flower;
Kidney shaped leaf gland, 1-4 per leaf;
Freestone;
80% crimson red over scarlet-yellow

So, maybe my CS is the right variety.

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If you want my moon/sign planting method, see post 32 in this thread.

Along that line, my wife planted some tomato seeds in little plastic cups on Sunday, and put them in the window sill for light and warmth.

The sign she planted in was Pisces, which is a good sign for tomatoes, but Sunday was also in the 4th quarter moon, so we’ll see how they turn out.

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Not sure if this will help, below are two pics from my Coralstar peach. The tree came from Cummins in 2016. It produced last year and matched the characteristics of a Coralstar Peach.

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Uncovered my strawberries, sprayed oil for aphids and magnolia scale, gonna do copper spray next on the nects.

I’ve got a lot of last year’s potatoes sprouting, think I’ll try putting them in the ground, see how they get on

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