I have never had to spray my fig… when the fig fruit first show ripe color I put on a tightly tied organza bag… then a few days later when fully ripe get the most perfect fig fruits. Figs have replaced peaches as my fav fruit now. My CH Fig tree ripens figs for over 3 months Aug-Nov.
Mulberries… another good fruit, dependable producer and no spray.
The older I get… the more important low maintenance, low fuss fruit becomes.
Honey jar might make fruit the very first year of grafting. It would be more for eating though. I think Tony freezes some too. Not sure if anyone makes juice out of jujube ever?
I just checked my two Jujube trees… found 30 or so fruit set on Shanxi Li… and 2 so far on GA866.
They are both still blooming so not done yet.
I looked up the Shanxi Li description on OGW website and found this…
…
Easily the largest of any jujube that we’ve seen! Shanx Li is also known as the pear jujube and its fruits can reach over 2 inches long. Very crisp and sweet and great for fresh eating or dehydrating.
…
Are they known as “pear” jujube because of the shape ? or taste ?
Or is that just nursery hype ? They have a picture of one and it is not pear shaped. It does look to be Large to Med Egg sized.
TNHunter
People will makes teas out of dried jujube. They generally basically put water and cinnamon in with the dried jujube and it takes kind of like a apple cider from what I hear. Never done it myself. My jujube trees are only on their first year. Your energy bill will be high though because you end up cooking it on simmer for 4 hours.
I thought about growing asian pears after looking up the taste profile but thinking I would like it. I looked up a YouTube video of it and the YouTube guy said they were also known as apple pears. I can’t comment on home grown pears but the ones I bought at Costco were grissely and did not have a good taste assuming the guy was right and the apple pears are the same thing as asian pears. I could not finish one pear. I have a sweet tooth and like smooth stuff like peaches, euro pears, pluots, Fuji and Honeycrisp apples, nectarines, oranges, clementines , raspberries, blackberries etc. Raspberries and blackberries have chewy seeds but are not the same texture of asian pears. Asian pears are like the texture of a fatty steak. That is also what I meant by grissely earlier.
I like the diversity and yes I have the same issues. As for me, I’m thinking of taking out my plums. I never get fruit and black knot has hit one this past year. I have two lonely plums ripening. One on Ozark premier and one on damson. The Ozark premier tree is massive. I’m tempted to give up too but they keep pulling me back.
I don’t know the variety of asian pear I tasted but will say the asian pear I tasted was not even close to edible. I could not finish the pear it was so bad. I love European pears but after I learned that the apple pear from Costco was a asian pear I would just say I would rather not grow one. Like I mentioned maybe they are better at home but I would rather have another euro pear.
It’s like judging apples after eating a store bought red delicious. Asian pears can be very good.
I can grow pears and apples, but it takes a consistent application of pesticides. I have people tell me all the time I should grow organically. I ignore them. As the scientists at the Alison Smith Center in
Winchester say, you cannot be a commercial and an organic grower - too much rain, heat, fungi, bacteria (like Fireblight) in Virginia. We get the cold days in the Valley, but---- Just harvested Yellow Transparents, My Mennonite neighbor knows what to do with them, Pristines next, then Ginger Golds probably, which look super right now. Our Asian and Olympics still look small, the Bartletts look fine and the Moonglow really do not bear, even though they are 8 years old - just a few on the trees. As for a Firebligh magnet, I would agree that Bartletts are such and that Moonglows not really. Big problem is if you get to many blossoms and you cannot hit them with Harbour or you miss earlier with Cuprofix. My farmer friends think that Orchardists are nuts - too much work, only dairy farming is harder they say.
Many organic growers don’t have your location I agree. Some places will have no crop when they attempt to grow things organically.
There is a reason people make fun of those pure organic people. They end up spending a lot more and losing their entire crop because they cared too much about pesticides. They forget that pesticides and fungicides have been so watered down now that to even kill a bug you need 100 gallons of the stuff put on one bug it seems these days. Every time my mother has people spray for bugs like aphids my grandma tries to cover all my trees and annuals that produce fruit. I have had to tell my mother explicitly to have my grandma not do that and stop her from doing that since my mom is the only one that would be home other than my grandma since she is a teacher. One time my grandma even killed my plant because she was trying to protect from pesticide but put a rock of the plant. The surprising part is she was surprised when I asked her to pay for the dead plant. Those are the organic gardeners. The ones who protect against pesticides even to the point of killing plants or no harvest. I remember watching a video and this guy bites into a fruit and flies come out. They then say that is just what you have to deal with when you do organic gardening. Yeah I think you just made a case to go non organic to the average person when flies are coming out of your fruit when you eat it no offense.
But how can I resist a few more pears…maybe a plum or two…and I still need figs
“Are you seeing anybody for that?”
:-)M
Not yet, no one is willing to come to my garden for it.
Well, I started removing apples today. It’s frustrating to see the time and money spent on them be pulled up, but if I am not getting any fruit there’s no point to sinking more into them. Restarting will allow me to remedy some spacing mistakes I made in the past.
I’m looking to plant Magness and Potomac to go with the existing Harrow Sweet, and planting Korean Giant, Hosui, and Shin Li.
Can’t go wrong with magness. It is disease resistant and super sweet having comice parentage
Or you could collect a couple bushels of black walnuts and dump them in your apple orchard. The squirrels dig the holes & plant them for you. Next year they come up everywhere. They kill the apples. Then you harvest valuable nut crops, and also grow valuable walnut logs.
Might be more profitable and less trouble. Just thinking out loud.
Kelby,
Sorry to hear your luck with insects, sometimes you just have to bend with nature, cannot always defeat it! I realized 5 years ago that my sweet cherries were never going to give me fruit in spite of my spraying to control insects. These trees were so healthy and full of infected fruits that only squirrels and crows would eat, so even if a fruit was healthy chances are the crows would get there first! After 20 years of trying to defeat nature, I finally gave up. I noticed that for some reason my plums were doing fine and did not attract all the same issues, so I decided to convert these 20 year old cherry trees to plum. I read many articles about Prunus to Prunus grafts but none specifically told me that plums cannot graft compatibly to cherry. So I top worked all 3 trees with plum scions only to see 100% failure. Again nature won! Finally one day I stumbled across an article about a cherry plum named Adara. I was able to find a supplier for Adara scions that can serve as inter-stems bridge the incompatibility gap, after that my progress to convert each year since has been going very well. Now this year I began to graft various plum varieties to each inter stem branch and I am happy with the results so far.
I wish I could suggest something other than pear, maybe quince would be good for you, with a quince rootstock you can either grow the fruit which is nice in salads and very healthy, or you can graft any pear variety to it for a multiple variety tree. I think quinces are not well known but gaining popularity among those who are health conscious.
Good luck, I wish I could have scions of your apple varieties, but it’s too late to ask!
Dennis
Kent, wa
Kelby i have similar problems here. Some apples do ok but they are not easy to raise here. Pears are challenging in different ways. To be successful callery and bet rootstocks are what i need to use.