Mid-June fruit garden updates
A few bummers to report, but so much fruit to come!!
Ribes:
I was hoping for a strong white currant harvest this year. Last year I had an awful infestation of box elder bugs, which sucked the juices from the berries and rendered them inedible. I had read that box elder bugs have years they are an occasional problem, implying that the problem goes away. I have not seen any on my currants this year.
Alas, this year the problem seems to be birds. Both of my 2 varieties of white currants are completely stripped, as are the Gloire De Sablons pink currant. The black Swedish Currant was doing ok, but seems the birds found those as well. My Belaruskaja currant still has developing berries, but the plant doesn’t look all that happy from my moving it last fall. We will see but I don’t have high hopes.
Such a bummer. Birds are the main reason I gave up on growing blueberries (other than the fact that they don’t seem to like my site). The birds don’t seem to go for the currants every year, so perhaps next year will be different.
But… gooseberries - evidently the birds don’t have a taste for those? I might be speaking too early, but it seems I’ll finally get a sizable taste from them. Maybe the birds just haven’t found a taste for them yet? Oh please don’t let that be the case.
Last year the chickens plucked off all the developing berries, but this year I’ve got them safely tucked into their summer yard, to keep my crops safe from their nibbling and scratching.
A few fruit tree bummers
Last fall I planted a grafted Seigyoku Asian pear, and the scion decided to die off. Normally I’ve had quite good luck with trees grafted from this site, so I’m sure it was a one-off. The good news is that the rootstock is now growing, so I guess I’m going to have to put some grafting skills to the test. I may decide I have plenty of Asian pear trees (8 total - including several young trees) - but I don’t yet have a good winter euro storage pear. I’m considering Conference. Or Bosc. Recommendations welcome.
This year I ordered an Early Bird Mulberry from One Green World, which came in a 1 gallon pot. It has failed to leaf out, and scratch test doesn’t look so good. Guess I’ll need to report the failure on this one and get my money back.
And last spring I planted a Noir of Spain Mulberry that is growing really fast. I was super excited to see it fruit this year. But come June, the fruits decided to fall off.
A couple of other trees that aren’t so young flowered for their first time this year, but did not set any fruit. Bummer! Guess I won’t be tasting Hosui Asian pear and Orcas this year. Must be a young pear tree thing - they had plenty of flowering partners nearby. Anyone else have this experience?
Pruning for stone fruits and Asian pears is coming soon
My Methley plum growth is enormous this year. I swear this mature tree doubled in size in just a few months. Harvesting and pruning is going to be awfully interesting in this tangled mess.
Both of my mature stone fruit trees set incredibly well this year. Luckily this Methley has stout branches, so I didn’t worry too much about the need to thin. Lee Reich - fruit tree expert - said in one of his blogs recently that thinning doesn’t have much effect on small stone fruit anyway.
But these splash pluot tree branches are way too young to support this much fruit.
Soon when the weather gets warm, I’ll need to spend some time in the Asian pear and plum trees pruning them. Most pruning of fruit trees gets done in the winter, but stone and Asian pears are susceptible to pseudomonas or bacterial canker infections. It’s the same pathogen that infects both trees - not sure why they are called differing names. The pathogen spreads much more readily when it is moist and mild outside, so I’ll wait for hotter dry periods to begin putting these trees back within bounds.
One other mild bummer to report: the six inch Columbia Giant blackberry I planted last year is barely growing, so I don’t know when or if I will ever get any harvests. Bummer because I really like this variety - and it is one of the first fruits to ripen in the season. I can’t recall why I had only planted a 6” start - perhaps it was all that was available. The two other blackberries I planted last year - both from gallon pots - are growing very well and flowering.
Almost everything else is doing quite well at this time. Raspberries seem to be making a comeback from a phytopthora infection (I will report more detail soon), and a new backup planting seems to be taking off. All of my apple trees have set fruit. Illinois Everbearing Mulberry is loaded, Aronia is loaded, my mature Asian pears are fully loaded. My mature grape vine has set massive loads of fruit, and new grape plantings are taking off. All other infant-small and adolescent fruit trees are growing well. It seems this year will be the first for a very impressive harvest of my European pear - normally the harvests are a bit wimpy so this is exciting. All of that mulching last year must have made some difference.
What’s happening in your fruit gardens?
Updates on the habitat garden coming soon.
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