Kitchen Garden Harvests. 8.30.15

Asian Pears.  8.30.15

Tomotoes and Peppers.  8.30.15

 Today I picked the first of the Asian pears.  The European pears were all bad, complete bust.  I can never figure out when to harvest them.  Asian pears are much easier.  These are Hosui, Shinseiki, and an unknown.

More veggies from the garden.

Some Daylilies.  These must be the last.  Stella de Oro is a champion bloomer.

Daylilies.  8.30.15

Puttering. 3.28.15

Main orchard.  3.28.15

Jonagold with multigrafts from Fedco.  3.28.15

 Most plants are out of dormancy or nearly so.

Plums are basically finished blooming.  Unable to see if and how much fruit set has happened.  All Asian plums are done.  Toka finished just after Asian plums.  Euro plums, Green gage is almost done, and Stanley is still blooming.  Stanley is the last to bloom.

Sweet cherries are in about full bloom.

Tart cherries barely beginning to bloom.  They really are later than sweet cherries, which is good for late frost avoidance.

Too early to say anything about the apple and plum grafts.  I look at them every day.

Pawpaw flower buds are swelling, Sunflower and NC-1.  I check those every day too.

Persimmons are growing, even Yates that I planted this January.  I often read that they may take until mid or late summer to grow, their first year.  Mine are budding out at the same time as mulberries.  Nikita's Gift and Saijo both have swelling buds, almost open.

The Mishirasu Asian pear graft, that I grafted last year and was eaten off twice by deer, is growing nicely.  The tree is fenced with a deer cage now.  Other grafts on that tree - 3 are have their first flower clusters.  It's been raining during bloom.  Too early to know if there is fruit set.  I should get the first Shinseiki on the Battleground tree this year - 2 year old cleft graft - and the first Hosui, the tree that I planted in 2012 and grafted others onto it since then.

Plum whip and tongue graft.  Ember.  3.28.15

NC-1 Pawpaw flower buds, swelling.  3.28.15

 Grapes are budding out and starting to grow.

Apples nearly blooming.

Prairie fire crab apple, almost blooming.  There are a couple of flowers, so this is among the first of apples to bloom.

Mishirasu growing despite deer browsing.  3.28.15

Yates Persimmon buds swelling.  3.28.15

Asian Pear Grafts and Pollination Effect. 4.20.14

Pollinated Asian Pears.  4.20.14

~6wk Mishirasu Graft.  4.20.14

 I am hopeful this will be the year of a bumper crop of Asian pears on the tree I pollinated by hand.  The petals have fallen.  So far the embryonic pears look viable.  If they continue to swell, in a few weeks they may need thinning.   Excellent.

The 6 week Asian pear grafts are flourishing.  I think I'll choose May 1 as the date to remove grafting tape.  Maybe.  Mishirasu and Shinseiki look as good as the stock's own growth.

The stock, Hosui, was planted in summer 2012.   It was on sale at

2013 Graft on Hosui, one year later.

Home Depot.   I noticed last year it was susceptible to fire blight.  The varieties that I grafted onto Hosui appear resistant.  Now that I know how to graft, I can continue to rework the Hosui into a tree with disease resistant varieties.  And leave a couple of Hosui branches so I can sample that variety, as long as it makes a comeback from fireblight.

This is great.  The tree is nearly established.  By reworking it, I can have a self pollinating, multivariety, disease resistant tree that I otherwise would have had to wait 2 or 3 or 4 years to bear.

~6wk Shinseiki Graft.  4.20.14