That guy milled my wood in twenty minutes and charged $40 - $60 per trip. The hickory throws that bark everywhere when it’s getting milled.
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Starting to bag the apples today. The Fujis all have such short stems it’s a job of work to get the bag on.
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My grafts are looking good after some rain last night, and I picked off all the blooms that were abundant on the Geneva scion. Also noticed what looked like tiny tent caterpillars and some type of fly, so I’ll spray Captan and Imidan tomorrow since everything is done blooming.
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We have this bad bug called the spotted lanternfly invading. No natural predators huh? No one told that to this lacewing larva that’s sucking this ugly pest dry.
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8 of my 9 pear scions i put on my mountain ash are leafing out. i was hoping for at least 4! almost all of the tips of the branches on this tree have been grafted over to pears.
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What varieties of Pear are you grafting? Interested what hardy varieties you have chosen.
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i don’t remember all of them so i will have to go check the tags. got them through fedco. stacyville , patten are 2 i remember. I’ve had very good luck grafting to this tree when I’ve had less success with my apple and crabapple. its growing on a raised rotten tree stump in a wet spot near the ditch. maybe thats why its so vigorous .
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Mountain ash is so tough it really opens up more areas for pear growing, the one in my yard is 1ft from a mature columbnar aspen, have also seen them growing in very wet spots and in cracks in solid bedrock!
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they’re weeds here as well. 2 yrs. after we cut down a big black spruce i noticed a little mountain ash seedling was growing out of the crack in the stump so i covered around it with a little compost. 5 yrs later its 8ft tall. i have probably 15 20 fters surrounding the property. i have dozens of volunteers popping up everywhere.
THe way I feel now, I think cherries may well be the first fruit I ever just completely give up on growing. I’m just so disgusted. I have 7 varieties of cherries and 5 of them produced very nice fruit this year, but I just cannot win the battle against the birds. I bought the big expensive nets this year but I end up knocking most of the fruit off when I put them up, and its almost impossible to seal my trees 100%, so every time I come back there is a bird or two inside the net and all the red cherries are gone. I’ve tried fake snakes, fake owls, pie pans, tying my dog up under the tree, shooting countless birds, playing a radio 24/7, tying fishing line inside the trees, and more. None of it works at all. Netting is the only thing that has any impact at all, but they are expensive, incredibly frustrating to put up, destroy as much fruit as they save, and almost always get a hole somewhere that the birds find and exploit. Somehow this is more frustrating than complicated diseases or weather or other things i can’t understand or control. You would think i could outsmart a bird, but I cannot. I am about to surrender.
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I have the same problem with black raspberries. Birds like them, fruits are small and poke through the net. I knock as many off covering and uncovering as the birds probably would have got. I needed a finer net. Got some of the blue “big bug netting” from American Netting, it is much easier to work with for small fruits. Only drawback is max width of 16 feet. For my peach trees I use the tree netting and have a couple of long poles I can lift the nets and pull up and over the trees. Helps prevent snagging. I am also careful to not prune in such a way as to leave something sticking up that a net could snag on. Hope some of this is helpful.
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It is helpful, Kevin. Thank-you. ANd perhaps great minds think alike…this afternoon I had already come up with the idea of using some long poles I had to lift the nets up and over the trees, and it absolutely did help some. Part of my problem, I concede, is that I’ve let my montmorency trees get too large. I should have kept them pruned back a lot more. My Romance cherries are considerably smaller and much easier to deal with. After I’m done feeding the birds this year I am going to give my bigger trees a serious haircut!
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Sounds good. I wish you the best of luck with your cherries!
I know what you mean. It can be really frustrating growing cherries, and even fruit in general. It seems like every year I try something new or more to protect them. Plus every year it seems like there is a new fungus or disease to fight. The sad thing is you have to wait one more year to try out the next trick. You should try keeping a thousand chipmunks out of your trees. I might surrender and just figure I grow fruit for the looks of the trees and to feed the wildlife to get a piece of mind.
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Kevin and Kevin,
I use the bags below for my tomatoes and pluots and they are very effective keeping the birds away. At the beginning of every season birds try pecking through them, but soon they figure that they can’t get much so they just stay away from anything that’s covered with them. Before using them, I used to loose about half my tomatoes to birds. You may want to try them with your cherries or other fruits, note that they come in different sizes.
Good luck!
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I feel your pain. It is so frustrating. I am using netting - heavy ‘deer’ netting. It is not as difficult to work with as the thin bird netting. I was at Home Depot and one lone roll was standing by the fencing materials. I took it as ‘a sign’ - that it was left ‘just for me’! 
However it got there . . . I was glad to have it. The other netting is such a pain in the butt to use!#$%^!!
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Love the bouquets!
Thanks for the great suggestions and most of all for all your understanding and moral support!!! Obviously when I made that post I had just come in from trying to put up a net while at the same time watching birds carry off my cherries from the trees I had already netted and I just about lost it! haha Frustration was at an all time high so I needed to vent very badly. Non-fruit growers don’t get it at all. They think it shouldn’t be hard to keep birds away (next time someone tells me to just hang a few pie pans I may loose my mind). Also, non fruit growers just think its no big deal if birds do eat the fruit, because they have no idea how much work and time it takes to get trees to the point of production.
So you fruit growers had to endure my pain and complaints- thanks for that. It was nice seeing that you all did understand!
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Evans cherry is looking good so far this year for me. Last year rot destroyed the crop. 
good luck to you sir and to all of us trying to get some dang cherries!
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Redlove Calypso planted two days ago in the chicken run
A baby bavay green gage plum
Persimmon appears to be leafing out from the bottom up and very late. Is this normal?
Some gooseberries
Honey berry coloring up. Don’t let it fool you into eating it this early though.
Waiting for peonies
First sign of elder flowers
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