David,
I am so sorry to see the damage.
Think positive. No one got hurt. Still, I am upset for you. Nature has not given you a lot of break.
Will you be able to those almost ripened apples for drying. I read somewhere someone slice them up, add a bit of salt (or sugar) and dehydrate them for snacks.
Thanks but no worries. Everyone is fine and I still have plenty of fruit :).
Biggest pain will be trying to get a roofer out here to replace some shingles on my garage. It has a 12/12 pitch which is far to steep for a fat guy like me.
Sorry to hear that. It must devastate to see this happens when the fruits are ripping or start to ripen.
Very thankful that everyone is fine.
That looks like the work of a tornado! Glad that you and your family are safe…
We had strong winds rip thru our neighborhood too North of Pittsburgh around 4pm. Bradford pears across the street were broken off close to the ground. My peach tree has a large limb broken off.
We put a 30x30 foot net from American netting over the Methley plum.
Plenty of organic plums that look great. The tree also has plums fr grafts of shiro, purple heart, satsuma and Superior. I was hoping for a more even distribution of these plums but the grafts have been slow to grow. I have had to chop out some black knot, but not as much as I’ve seen some of you guys have.
Oh my gosh, I would call that a disaster,. I hope you are all safe, trees can be replanted. Please take care. Mrs. G
Wonder if you could use those close to ripe apples for cider or apple sauce or something like that.
Colored up nicely already…and clean fruits too!
I don’t know when they ripen. Not much info for Texas out there. 
I found this in Kuffel Creek site but sure doesn’t look like it would go that long here.
A fine quality apple that ripens in late October here in Southern California, where the quality was outstanding.
It’s not just that the curcs ruin my apricots and the squirrels steal them, now it’s the earwigs into them!
I installed 4 wasp traps in my trees yesterday. One Pic trap, one Victor, and two of the solar traps from Amazon. The victor trap came with bait while the other three required you to make your own. I mixed a spoonful of plum jam with a little water and some smashed strawberries. They all did really well except for the Victor. The supplied bait must not be very attractive to the wasps. It only caught one wasp. The other have caught anywhere between 20-50.
Pic trap
Victor trap
Looks like Yellow Jackets, which are of course a type of wasp. I found YJ nest number 5 today, found the first nest only 11 days ago. To be fair that first one “found me”, popped me on the arm while I was string trimming along the driveway. The last 3 have all been found in my ~half acre orchard. Luckily they were all spotted without any “unfortunate incidents” occurring.
Next spring I plan to double down on traps/baits to try and eliminate more queens. A queen dead early is a nest of probably thousands of stinging SOBs that never happens. We only managed to kill “by hand” 14 queens this spring. My wife and I are both attuned to the sound and flight pattern and aggressively go after them if we spot one out foraging. We’re outdoors a lot and whether doing yard work, strolling through the orchard, or working in flowers we simply stay vigilant.
A queen come out of hibernation and ventures outside the nest for a month or so, until she lays/hatches enough eggs that workers can hunt and bring food back to her. So that’s the best opportunity to stop a new nest dead in it’s tracks, kill that queen.
Yeah yeah, some of you are probably thinking I’m (at least a little) crazy. Year before last we killed 86 queen Yellow Jackets in the front and back yards and orchard area. Would you be willing to come and walk through my yard if we hadn’t done so? 
Spent this week on future orchard/land improvements:
Improved water drainage
Also reclaimed one of the overgrown field edges (that was last bushhogged in the 60’s, pasture long before that), we gained another 1/4 acre of good growing space as well as providing lots more evening sun to the future orchard plot:
Even “rescued” a few wild apple trees from the shaded understory. You better believe these will be pruned and grafted to in the spring!
Very thankful to have access to the machinery and family that has experience running it.
Just found YJ nest number 6 in the backyard, at the base of a tree I have a hammock tied to. Well to be fair a (probably) skunk found it and dealt with it for us.
Not a great fruit year with the cicadas damaging trees and more deer and squirrel problems than I remember, but the veggies are working to make up for it. Between the giant kikinda bottle gourd I harvested today that could feed a family of 10 and the tomatoes, beans, cukes and even bitter melons piling up on the table there is plenty for me and the neighbors. Blight, septoria, cucumber beetles and other garden ills may be right around the corner, but for now the daily harvest keeps me smiling.
Our first real Apple. (I’ve had a couple of pretend apples ) I don’t know if it was “ripe” but it fell from the tree. Very crisp, juicy with sweet and tart that actually was a pretty good balance I thought. Enjoyable eating. Well my husband thought it should be ripened more but I was happy with it.
Reverend Morgan from a graft on a Gold Rush tree.
