Your Favorite Orchard Successes of 2019?

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.

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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.

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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 :blush:. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I do spray for bugs and disease, and I also do trap squirrels, so it isn’t very easy to get the crop that I got. By the way, these two activities are my least favorite yard activities! Best of luck for you in 2020!

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I had trapped skunks, raccoons, possum but squirrels

I finally enjoyed my haskaaps when they were ripe enough to taste sweet. I was able to share them with neighbors as well. I had my first backyard apples… Elstar, Freedom and one or two liberty. They were awesome ! Grafted my first pluots and apples this year as well.

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I had a great year for my orchard! I got several muscadines from 3 different vines that I planted from seeds 6 or so years back. I got a decent crop of peaches from a few different trees that I planted from pits about 7 years ago. I had the best harvest of Concord seedless grapes this year. I had a Keiffer pear loaded with pears for the first time this past year. I had several apples on a few different trees and I moved several cherry tree sprouts from a non grafted sour cherry I have as well as several apple tree sprouts from an ungrafted small sour green apple tree from my father in law. It had been a great year in my orchard in 2019 and I am hoping that 2020 is an even better year. This is a great thread and has been a great and uplifting thread to read from many like minded fruit growers!

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I finally had some good success grafting apples, after dismal results the first year I tried it. I now have a whole frankenorchard! I also finally got a couple buckets of honeyberries, after starting a bed of them in a new location and transplanting a bunch, plus buying many new varieties. Today we had a honeyberry flip made from some frozen ones. Oh, my! It reminded me of the black raspberry pies we used to have from my grandma’s berries. I’m not that wild about raw haskaps, but the flip was absolutely fabulous, plus no seeds or peelings to contend with and so easy to make. It exceeded my wildest dreams of what honeyberries could be.

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2019- First fruit on persimmons and chestnut grown from seed, first flowers on seed grown pawpaws and hybrid hazelnuts. Added 10 new varieties of apples ( 5 trees, rest on a frankentree) 2 new varieties of pear, planted 2 seedling apples, 8 oak trees, 2 new figs. First ever excellent blueberry harvest after 10 years of fighting deer.

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Now that’s definitely an excellent blueberry harvest! I have 3 puny blue berry plants that struggle for life and don’t produce anything. I’m hoping for a better year for them in 2020.

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My favorite memory is seeing my daughter (shes 36 ) walking through my fruit trees, leaning over and reading tags, and gathering fruit. I’m the only person who really spends time in that part of the yard. Seeing her there through the kitchen window when she didnt know I was looking was special somehow. I had some really beautiful Belle of Georgia peaches and red delicious apples this year (finally!)

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First success grafting, one pear tree down. Got our first red and pink currants, and a few apples. I also think I have filled all of the fillable spaces in my yard with fruit trees, so now it’s time to sit back and wait. And plant more flowers. :slight_smile:

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