Bumper crop for blueberries, including pink lemonade which are a perfect mix of flavor for me. All berries tasted superb. I added a smidge of urea in spring. Much more leaf density, so im assuming better sugars
First grapes ever … pink reliance, not exotic, they were pretty small but off the vine grapes were amazing. Just so good.
I tasted Anne raspberries for the first time, and they were good. My young trees put on some good growth, I cleared space for a rows of jujubes, persimmons, and pluots. Seedling persimmons are planted already in their row. Got another 100 foot of dwarf apple trellises built. My greenhouse is almost finished. I got to see the first apple blossoms on my young apple trees. All in all a very productive year, even if a few raspberries were all the fruit I actually got.
Best success was IE mulberry couldnt keeps kids off them also first homegrown peaches were awesome! Otherwise berries continue to provide more every year… planted crandall currant, a saskatoon a couple blr berry bushes and apple trees and a hazelnut overall a good year as orchard starts coming into production and i keep tinkering and adding
My biggest success this year was completely unexpected. There is a small creek behind our backyard, so our property has a chain-link fence and a wooden one after that. In the summer, my wife accidentally noticed that there is a grape vine growing behind our fence with little fruits on it. We patiently waited until they turned ripe and opened up a few fence boards, jumped behind and harvested a ton of grapes (likely thompson seedless). I couldn’t believe it - didn’t plant it, no water, no fertilizer, no thinning and with very easy access to all the birds. Still so productive and tasty! On a related note, I planted 3 vines and did all of the care above and I think 2 of them likely died, go figure! 
@ztom When do your Castleton and Early Laxton ripen? And how do you rate Early Laxton compared to the other Euros that you have?
@Ahmad Early Laxton was July 17th last year. Castleton mid to late August. Early Laxton has averaged 14-15 brix for the last two years, most of my Euros get closer to 20 (or more). I’d grade Early Laxton a B, Castleton an A-. Early Laxton is worth grafting, it set an abundance of fruit for me last year. Here’s some Early Laxton pics: What fruits did you eat today? - #2068 by ztom
@Ahmad, how did your Geo Pride, Flavor King and Dapple Dandy trees did in 2019. You planted yours the same year I did (2017), and was wondering how they’ve grown and if they’ve produced any fruit last year.
We got no fruit on ours, but the trees didn’t bloom, though. They’ve put on decent growth, but deer have damaged some branches, and Japanese beetles shredded a lot of the leaves.
All three trees are growing very well and are kept at ~12’ high by pruning. DD is the most vigorous, followed by GeoPride followed by FK. All had a very nice bloom last year, however the fruit set didn’t match it. FK and GeoPride each ripened ~25 fruits and DD ~15. All dropped a lot of fruitlets in June, which I think is because of shading (I followed 2-3’ spacing as per Dave Wilson’s high density schemes). Taste-wise, all three are great and are definitely worth keeping. I am keeping my fingers crossed for a bigger crop this year.
Thanks, sounds like your trees are doing very well. Wow, 12ft is a lot taller than mine, they are mostly about 7-8ft, and they’re about 15ft apart. Like you, DD has grown the most, then GP. My DD and FK are on Myro and GP are on Citation. Is that what yours are on? Have you shaped them like peaches/nects? How did your other pluots do?
Hopefully, this year the pluots and peaches will produce some fruit. That is, if we can get the blooms thru late freezes.
Yes, I got mine from Bay Laurel and all are on Citation. I planted them in 1’ high raised beds that are 4’ wide. I religiously weed the beds and I fertilized them with 10:10:10 in the first couple of years. I also actively prune through the growing season, removing all unwanted growth early on and allowing the trees to focus their energies on growing the right scaffolds/branches.
DD is trained to a Y shape and the other two were originally meant to have modified central leader patterns, but they ended up with two additional scaffolds growing vertically, parallel to the central leader taking the shape of a three-pronged fork.
My Flavor Grenade is the fourth successful pluot; great bloom and ripened 30+ fruits. Taste is very good, but a bit less flavor than the above three. Splash (on Myro) had a meager bloom, but every single blossom produced a fruit, I ended up with about a dozen. Flavor is some what similar to GeoPride, but the latter’s is more to intense. Flavor Supreme held to its reputation of having a fantastic flavor, but poor fruit set and cracking were major problems (I’ll probably give it one more year, and then top-work it). Emerald Drop was my biggest regret: poor bloom, poor fruit set and every single fruit cracked about a month before ripeness…
Top to bottom: Flavor Supreme, GeoPride, Flavor King, Dapple Dandy.
Those look very tasty. Thanks for the pics and the info. How did Flavor King compare in flavor to the others?
Still can’t see how you can grow 12ft trees together being only 3ft apart, maybe the Y training helps keep them separated better? By Y training, you mean just two major scaffolds, and the trees’ scaffolds are parallel with each other?
I’ve heard pluots bloom very early, I guess you avoided the late freezes somehow? Though, last year here was somewhat normal in the spring, there was a gradual warmup, and no killing freezes later. Which was disappointing for me because I should have had my first peach crop, but my trees didn’t bloom at all. Guess the fruit buds got fried somehow.
Flavor King is the one I miss most, but all four pictured in the above post are great and I would greatly enjoy eating any. Note that for the best flavor, you need to leave the fruits on the tree until they either fall on their own or fall in your hand with the gentlest pull.
The Y training is just like you said, I think it is professionally referred to as V, but to me it is more like a Y 
. Regarding spring freezes, we get them in Wilmington, DE but they are usually mild and blooms survive, which is due to our weather moderation by virtue of the Atlantic Ocean, the Delaware river and our low altitude. We have numerous peach/ stone fruit orchards in our area (DE, NJ, MD, SE PA) and I don’t remember a year where a peach crop was lost to freeze.
For your location, I would definitely plant a few Euro plums, as they bloom later and have better bud survival rate (there are several threads that discuss the various Euoro varieties). I am actually planting a couple this spring and plan to graft a few more on them next year.
Thanks, that’s how I thought the training worked. I had seen a vid similar to it with a peach orchard. I think I shared it with @Olpea a couple years ago. Actually it’s called “Quad V” training.
Sounds like you’re in an ideal location for growing stone fruit. Ours, not so much. Last year was the exception, not the norm when it comes to spring weather.
We do have a wild, or American plum that I transplanted three years ago, not too far from these pluots. It has grown very well, and fruited the last couple years. Alas, apparently squirrels got most of the fruit last year.
After toying with the idea of growing plums I finally bought one on sale from Raintree. Ersinger is described as having splendid, excellent or sublime flavor. Since it’s a good idea to have two of anything to promote seed set, I also bought two Mariana 2624 root stocks and tried dormant bud grafts of Mt. Royal and another plum. I forget what the other was - it failed. Above the dormant bud graft of Mt. Royal I also put a whip-&-tongue graft. A couple weeks later when looking to see if the T&G graft had callused, it was dead, while buds had broken along the scion including the dormant bud graft! Would discount such a claim had I not seen it myself.
Am pretty stoked about the possibilities of these two plums. Both should easily overlap bloom times, set seed and offer fruit in August. (Well, August of 2024 or so.) Ersinger will probably ripen the first half of August & Mt. Royal a week or 10 days later. I hope to make jam, prunes & plum wine now & then.
Hi Mark. Glad for your successes. Could you please describe the flavor of the Cox’s Orange Pippin. I haven’t gotten any fruit off of mine yet…
Thanks a lot.
Hmmm … sweet-sharp, somewhat spicy and floral to the nose, firm, crisp, juicy, fairly close-grained, maybe a little pear flavored, maybe a hint of raspberry in the background? Hard to say, really. Lingers on the palate a bit. Very complex, intriguing flavors.
Now I wish I had one to sample to help me out here! But The Orange Pippin has a better description, mentioning melon and mango, among others:
https://www.orangepippin.com/varieties/apples/coxs-orange-pippin
Best of luck with your crop. Mine bore respectably on the third leaf from a graft, so you might not have too long to wait.
By far the best success of 2019 was the Catawba and Concord grapes. We smiled and ate grapes “almost” 'till we were sick of them. We also got our first Niagara grapes. (delicious). Poorman and Hinnimaki Red Gooseberries did real well also. Poorman is a “slightly” tarter berry than the Hinnomaki, but the Poorman flavor is consistent where as the Hinnomaki can be easily eaten even before they are actually ripe, but the flavor becomes a bit boring as they “over-ripen”. Crandall Currants again did very well and there were some late ripening bushes that were hidden from the birds that still had berries in late October. We also harvested a nice Cannabis plant (legal here) that yielded good quality buds and got enough to last us for a year.
Getting the last of the pines down in the orchard site was the most satisfying accomplishment of the year. We took out a small stand of black locust as well which I hope will be controlled by mowing. The wet fall kept our excavator behind on schedule and the stumps haven’t yet been pulled. Hopefully that will happen early in spring and I can still begin planting out trees this year, but that will depend on if we decide to cover crop the field.
Ahmad, happy new year.
your list made me soo jealous. I didn’t see peach blossoms, apricot blossoms , grape due to very cold last winter. I did have some plums and pears but plums (wrapped) were taken by the resident squirrel and the pears was damaged by the stink bugs. I think the stink bug damage on fruits getting more and more serious each year.
Anyway, I am looking forward to have a good fruit growing year this year.
