garden plans, records, results, hopes.....

May Lotito wrote:How do you protect fruits from pests? I found PC scars on apples. I heard that unlike stone fruits, pome fruits will crush the eggs. I don't know if that's true or not. I bagged one hundred undamaged apples today for prevention.

I feel like I've spent way too much time in the past trying to do just that and have all but given up any kind of maintenance other than a bit of pruning and cutting grasses around the base!

Right now I just keep planting more trees from seed or cuttings.
Peaches particularly, starting more from seed when ever we get a crop in order to replace those dead from borers.

I wish we had put more effort here ten years ago into elderberries, persimmons, muscadines, mulberries and serviceberries but have been going that direction the past few years.

Steve spent a lot of time for a few years now trying to keep ahead of the apple borer, organically and mostly mechanical methods but both trees died last year.  We still have my started from seed apple but I'm not even looking for damage on it.

Borers seem to do the worst damage here and actually kill the trees and blackberry canes...I am doing a totally unresearched experiment and planting more flowers rather than fighting insects.

After being so excited about finally getting a pear crop our asian pears are showing fireblight damage...I can hardly stand to look at them

They have never been bothered before but we think the cicada damage on all of the fruit trees has weakened them and made more openings for disease.

Finished drying in the dehydrator and jarred up ten pints dried rose petals today.  They had been drying in the room with the dehumidifier for several days first
...these brown glass jar lids are getting worn but I like the jars for rose petals.
Not exactly like putting up food but they sure smell good!

The rain in April probably made plants more susceptible too. I have only one pear and six peaches for this year so some extra protection work is worth it. My problem with peach tree is different than yours: majority of the flower buds die over the winter. I figured out it is due to boron deficiency and fixed that accordingly, so hopefully next year I will have better results. In retrospect, my plants had been showing typical boron deficiency but I didn't realize. The strawberry plants already showed symptoms three years ago ( deformed fruits) and declined afterwards with zero fruiting; my grapes had the "hen-and-chicks" clusters; kales had hollow stems and brittle petioles, concentric cracking of certain tomatoes. I already see a come back of healthy strawberry plants and normal fruits after adding borax. Next I will see how the grape and tomato fare out. So if you have multiple non native species showing same type of defect, it could be related to the nature of local soil.

May, how did you know how much borax to add? as a spray or sprinkled dry?

I don't doubt we have some deficiencies but the symptoms you listed for boron don't seem familiar.

I'll have to do some research...thanks!

I have always wanted to try muscadines, after reading about them in a novel many years ago, we can't get them around here.  What do they taste like?

Riona Abhainn wrote:I have always wanted to try muscadines, after reading about them in a novel many years ago, we can't get them around here.  What do they taste like?

Hi Riona!
I've been trying to think how best to describe their taste....there is a really tart flavorful first burst taste when biting into one and then a bit sweeter juicy pulp and then of course the seeds to spit as they are somewhat astringent.
We found they need to be almost black to be fully flavorful but we would usually pick at dark purple and put them on trays to finish ripening in the house...the aroma was wonderful!

We found them everywhere on our last property and were able to prune and trellis some vines in order to get an abundance rather than shaking a very few down from 30' feet up a tree.

There is also a scuppernong that some grow here that is much sweeter...related but not wild I think?


...and congratulations on your prospective home

Dario Cortese wrote a series of elements important in plant health including: Sulfur, calcium, Boron, Silicon

My soil is low in Ca and plant symptoms indicated S and B as most limiting, so I add the minerals of gypsum and borax accordingly. It's good if you don't see Boron deficiency, you don't have to worry about it for now as boron has a narrow range between deficiency and toxicity. How about calcium? Any end rot on tomato or pepper? Apple bitter pit? Brown edges on new leaves etc? For lack of sulfur, new growth will appear lime green, fruits lack of flavor and flowers paler in color. Test small scale with more soluble salts such as water hardness increaser (CaCl2), or Epsom salt to see if there's any improvement.

thank you May!

I need to pay more attention to those things.

Right now my phone is making everything a bad yellow green that is not accurate but I have not found a way to correct.

'going to seed' starts!

one of the black peanuts, some of the mixed flowers, beets, amaranth, carrots