A Look Into Our Fruit Trees And Orchard
Hey everyone! Well, the other day I did an update on several of the plants in our garden. So, today I thought I would give a little look at a couple of our fruit trees and vineyard. Some are looking good and others are not going to produce this year.
Some of the trees that are looking good are the pear trees. These last 2 or 3 years, the pear trees have started to pick up production and hopefully this year it looks like we might be able to can some. We have never had more than enough to eat, so I think it would be interesting to try to can some pears. Now, we just hope we can continue to get some rain for them to fully develop.
Next up are the apple trees. These are still relatively young compared to some of the others and are just starting to produce some fruit. One tree in particular has several apples on it and is going to be the most promising prospect this year. Unfortunately, some of the other apple trees have been heavily attacked by the Japanese beetles over the last couple of weeks, so we are not expecting much fruit from them this year. Similarly, our peach trees did not produce any fruit this year, but we are hoping for a better year next year. Last year, we got quite a few peaches and we were not expecting too many this year.
Finally, there is our orchard. Our blackberries and blueberries have not got ripe fruits to pick yet, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks. It looks like our grapes might be one of the better producers amongst all our fruit this year. They appear to have lots of little grapes and if we can get the Japanese beetles under control, then I think we will be able to put some up.
I know we will can some grape juice and will take a few to make some delicious grape jam. One other thing we might try if we can find the time is to take our first shot at making some grape wine. I am looking forward to trying some different ways of preserving our food to make it a little more diverse.
Thanks for reading and stopping by!
Nice looking fruit trees.
Thanks @liberyworms!
There's some promise in the orchard!!! Now it's the holding-your-breath time to see if the fruit can get to harvest.
Ack, Japanese beetles...the bane of the fruit orchard. Every year they attack our cherry trees and just decimate them. The sweet cherries in particular.
Our peaches and our apples dropped their fruit this year - I'm thinking there was a combination of drought during the time they were really setting the fruit plus just not enough nutrients in the soil to sustain a good crop. Calcium in particular - everything seems to be getting some form of blossom end rot once the rain started again. I'm basically putting calcium everywhere right now trying to bring the soil level up.
Fruit is hard to get!
We are really holding our breath for a good year and keeping our fingers crossed! Like you mentioned, our cherry trees were getting absolutely destroyed and its a shame, but we will have to prepare better next year.
Some of our trees did something similar a year or so ago when we were lacking a lot of rain and it can be very hard to get it sometimes. One question I have for you is concerning your experience with blossom end rot. Are you specifically talking about fruit? We have had blossom rot with tomatoes and we always thought it was because of water, but that is interesting it maybe a calcium deficiency.
Yes, the fruit on the cherries specifically got blossom end rot - the ends of the cherries turned brown and mushy just like what happens with the tomatoes and then the whole cherry would mold overnight. We lost about half of them in a few days before I figured out what was going on and got enough calcium into the ground to save the other half. I didn't know it was going to be a problem until we got a couple days of lots of rain and then it was all over.
Nice to see you here @lturner! I've missed your posts. We had the same problem with dropping fruit. We've also had some really bad winds blowing blossoms of fruit trees (plus all 40 olive trees last year) So we are really struggling with most (but not all).
Your fruit trees are looking good @knowledge-seeker our climate despite really cold winters' is not cold enough for apples. We've tried so hard to grow them. I'm sure you will have a bountiful crop of fruit
The wind was so bad it blew all your blossoms off the olives? Yikes-a-roni!!!
What's funny is our apple tree is the one we've struggled with the least but it just refuses to bear fruit for us. The tree isn't unhealthy...just isn't producing.
Aw, thank you and I apologize! We are in the middle of some major business renovation and I have been putting all my spare time into working on that and trying to do some curating so I can at least see what everyone's up to.
I have some ideas for posts and want to get back both to some of my stored up thoughts from the front lines and the origins of CPS project that I still am slowly reading through all the research tabs on my computer from.
Hope it's not too stressful? Looking forward to reading your posts, whenever you get back into the swing of things.
Shabbat Shalom!
Ack, some days it's been hair-raising...but it's exciting too. And time consuming.
I hope this is an important cross-roads for us - we've been in transition for almost four years and I'm so hoping we can at least get on a road going specifically somewhere!
Shame @lturner! I sympathise with you. I wonder why we (ABBA?) sometimes seem to be at cross-roads for so long.
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