Fruit harvest 2018

[Socalman]

Seems this entire thread has been about as active as a cemetary at 0300.

We have had an interesting year with our fruit here in So. Calif. Last year a bear got into our fairly young peach and apricot trees and badly damaged them, breaking many branches and bending others to an extreme. Followng the advice of a local nursery I brought them back. Our peach gave what would have been a huge crop, too much for the small tree so I thinned it aggresively this year. Great fruit, though we did not put more then about a gallon away as frozen peaches. The apricot did not set much fruit and I had to fight the local squirrel population for it. If only my neighbors house was farther away. So often I could have taken a couple of those guys out with my .22LR.

Our avocados were good but a recent heat wave has really hurt the latest fruit set.

Orange crop looks great. Still a few oranges from the last crop hanging on and a good set coming! Our lime seems to have a good number of small limes set and I gave it a feeding today.

We are ready for a bumper crop of apples come Oct.!

Our blueberries were good but we had to battle birds and perhaps some other animals for them. We will again propogate the bushes to produce larger crops in the future

[helomech]

My poor peach tree was overloaded, and broke a couple branches. Also the fruit seemed to go bad on the tree before they where ripe. Everything else did pretty good, still getting apples, just not many.

[Domeguy]

My poor peach tree was overloaded, and broke a couple branches. Also the fruit seemed to go bad on the tree before they where ripe. Everything else did pretty good, still getting apples, just not many.

Sure would have made some good peach brandy...for medical purposes of course.

[bacpacker]

Blueberries were fantastic this year. Grapes are doing well to. Pears, nectarines, and apples had some on, but poor quality and small game got it before we could. Mulburry and Pawpaws had nothing on them this year. Walnuts look to be doing pretty well.

[Katrina]

Waiting on the apples, looks like we're going to get a good crop this year. I did get 3 tomatoes off the plants, no blossom rot, don't know if we should use them though,they look like cherry tomatoes. Has anyone grown/used Santorini tomatoes? They are supposed to be drought resistant and more acidic than regular tomatoes. They come from the Greek Island of Santorini, they have two types, a cherry tomato and a slightly bigger one, supposed to be really good for canning.

[Katrina]

Well , it's almost apple time. DH says the ones he checked Thursday are about ready, so we'll be "harvesting" our apples next week and getting them canned and dehydrated. We're going to get the pressure canner out and do some that way so we can learn to pressure can. The fruit sale at the university is coming up so he wants to buy other fruits to can so we'll be busy. This will be interesting as I am still a bit leery about pressure canning but I WILL LEARN!!!. We water bath can so I'm more confident about doing that. Wish us luck all and pray I don't start growing botulism instead of having edible fruits and veggies, LOL

[helomech]

How old are your apple trees? Mine are only 2 years old, but only got a few apples this year.

[Katrina]

They are about 5-6 years old. DH won them from the home show that goes on every March at the university. We started getting decent apples about 3 years in so be patient. You should be seeing more apples every year. One thing we should have done when the apples first started to appear is spray them. They get rust like spots on the skin, doesn't affect the apples according to the gentleman that sprays them.They just look funky It should clear up next year. It's just a matter of maintenance. When we got them we did our best from what DH found out on line.

[helomech]

Spray them with what. Most of mine had brown spots on them

[Katrina]

helo, Not sure, will have to ask DH if knows what they sprayed and get back to you.