Gardens 2021

[Amish Heart]

I bought and planted 4 apple trees last spring, two varieties. Can't seem to find any now for fall planting, and I do not want bare root. So I'll wait till spring and see what is available. One nursery had a few apple that were massive, but they wanted $140 each and I don't need any more apple.

 

[Robinjopo1]

The other fruit trees I have are plums and mulberry. The plums always have worms or are eaten by squirrels and the mulberry trees are too tall to pick so they are also squirrel food.

We are having a bumper crop of crop of walnuts it seems. Sign of bad winter (?).

 

[DirtDiva]

The other fruit trees I have are plums and mulberry. The plums always have worms or are eaten by squirrels and the mulberry trees are too tall to pick so they are also squirrel food.

We are having a bumper crop of crop of walnuts it seems. Sign of bad winter (?).

We have owned mulberries on other properties and have small mulberry trees here that are just starting to bear. Our native plums do wonderful here in TN with much less pressure from worms. Try beach plums or Choctaw plums. Blueberries for us are super prolific and after about 3 years we tend to get bumper crops most years with very little pest or disease problem. Same with blackberries we grow a primocane variety along fences for support and harvest way more than we can eat with no spraying of any kind. Figs are marginal for us and do freeze down to the ground some years but always bounce back and we reliably harvest fruit. Gooseberries may take over the place with no pest or disease issues here at all. The only traditional stone fruit I grow are peaches and it is a native. Most years it blooms but is very susceptible to late frosts so a dependable crop is a crapshoot. I have planted a couple young pear and a hardy apricot but time will tell....

 

[Robinjopo1]

My blackberries are overrun with mulberry weed (see pic in prior post) I can't transplant berries the way I am doing the strawberries. It's going to hard to get the weed under control. They can reproduce up to 4 times per season.

 

[GaRp58]

Have your temperatures been excessively hot or cooler than normal.

Been unusually hot and dry this year, water daily and sometimes twice. They just did not do anything, bloom, bees and bumblebees are in the blooms but nothing happened. I do have 6-7 pumpkins now growing but still green.
We canned about 15 lbs. of tomato today and made juice from them, I wanted to try and dry some but was too late. Helena had already run them through the blender and separated the seeds out for canning...

 

[DirtDiva]

Been unusually hot and dry this year, water daily and sometimes twice. They just did not do anything, bloom, bees and bumblebees are in the blooms but nothing happened. I do have 6-7 pumpkins now growing but still green.
We canned about 15 lbs. of tomato today and made juice from them, I wanted to try and dry some but was too late. Helena had already run them through the blender and separated the seeds out for canning...
View attachment 13776

3 half gallons of plum brandy and one half gallon of blackberry brandy

 

[GaRp58]

Love it DD, I have five containers of about 5 gallons each that are ready to be distilled into moonshine this weekend. Pears, Apricots, Grapes. The neighbor gypsy distilled 30 liters of mash and got 10 liters of moonshine back. I have about twice as much mash as he did...GP

 

[Arcticdude]

I consider myself very fortunate that I have gotten my fruit and berry plantings in long before all this happened. Have you seen the price on new fruit trees. Geez! I have more planted than we will ever be able to eat. I strongly suggest if you are buying fruit trees or seeds to order them way early or you probably won't get them.

I've got room in the orchard for about 5 more fruit trees. Maybe 12 if we expand the orchard some. We're going to add a couple more rows of blackberries and grapes this spring.

 

[Dracos]

I grew 4 watermelons this year the size of soccer balls. Never ripened up, just white inside. Out in the orchard The pears did really well so did the apples and plums. Gave away hundreds of pounds to friends and family. I planted full size fruit starting about 40 years ago. If I had it to do over again I would plant dwarf or simi dwarf. Most are just too big to harvest all the fruit. Funny how short our lives are. Make just 1 mistake 40 years ago and its too late to start over. Oh well, I have grandchildren. I planted 2 garlics with every tomato. That does a really good job of keeping the bugs off. I never fertilize garlic. They just taste stronger if they are never coddled. I planted mint last spring. They thrived. My son says to watch out for mint. Its like chives and will take over the world if you let them.

 

[bill harrell]

Sqeezed

out 80 gallons of sugar cane juice . Planning on making syrup next week. Had to squeeze the first 15 gallons by hand, too much work for an old man. But, for all it's worth, mules get a lot more likable the more tired you get.

 

[Robinjopo1]

Anyone have any uses for old flour. Can it be used to dust plants to smother bugs or will it clog the leaves etc? I have 20 lbs that I hate to just toss.

 

[Dracos]

Old flour is great for growing mushrooms. Just like pizza. If you forget to put mushrooms on when you cook it don't worry, in a few weeks they will appear all by themselves. Ha Ha.

 

[DirtDiva]

I grew 4 watermelons this year the size of soccer balls. Never ripened up, just white inside. Out in the orchard The pears did really well so did the apples and plums. Gave away hundreds of pounds to friends and family. I planted full size fruit starting about 40 years ago. If I had it to do over again I would plant dwarf or simi dwarf. Most are just too big to harvest all the fruit. Funny how short our lives are. Make just 1 mistake 40 years ago and its too late to start over. Oh well, I have grandchildren. I planted 2 garlics with every tomato. That does a really good job of keeping the bugs off. I never fertilize garlic. They just taste stronger if they are never coddled. I planted mint last spring. They thrived. My son says to watch out for mint. Its like chives and will take over the world if you let them.

Draco while semi dwarf and dwarf are a good option they also tend to not live as long so not necessarily a mistake. Have you tried the fruit picker with the telescopic pole . They work pretty good. Mine has a 10 foot pole.
Cost about $50 at Lowes.

 

[Amish Heart]

Old flour, old cornmeal....if you have chickens: add a few eggs, crush the shells fine, a little baking powder and cook it up for the chickens. I'd cook up anything buggy or anything that went "flat" for them.

 

[Dracos]

Draco while semi dwarf and dwarf are a good option they also tend to not live as long so not necessarily a mistake. Have you tried the fruit picker with the telescopic pole . They work pretty good. Mine has a 10 foot pole.
Cost about $50 at Lowes.

Wow that is inflation! I bought mine 30 years ago for about $10.00 Now I need the pole and a 12 foot ladder and still can't get a quarter of the fruit on the big cherry and pears. Thank you for the information.

 

[Robinjopo1]

Old flour is great for growing mushrooms. Just like pizza. If you forget to put mushrooms on when you cook it don't worry, in a few weeks they will appear all by themselves. Ha Ha.

Thanks I'll look that us.

 

[DirtDiva]

Wow that is inflation! I bought mine 30 years ago for about $10.00 Now I need the pole and a 12 foot ladder and still can't get a quarter of the fruit on the big cherry and pears. Thank you for the information.

Wow how tall are your trees?

 

[Amish Heart]

We just stick a grandkid in the tractor bucket and raise it up. Picked our pears that way. Painted the pitch of our add on that way.

 

[EastenerWesterner]

We just stick a grandkid in the tractor bucket and raise it up. Picked our pears that way. Painted the pitch of our add on that way.

I put the pallet forks on and lift the wife up on a pallet to trim the Wisteria over the barn doors a couple times a year.

 

[Robinjopo1]

I'm dehydrating banana chips and had temp on 135°. Somehow the dehydrator got really hot and warped the plastic trays. Obviously, the thermostat or whatever it's called on a dehydrator, stopped monitoring the temp and got hot enough to warp plastic.

This is not a good time for me to buy a new one, but I will.