I keep going out to look at the fruit and I"m using an old harvest date. No, those Calville Blanc D'hiver and Wickson crabs can't be ripe! It's only mid-September. Wait-they are ripe and they're all over the ground. Get going quickly to pick them up!
I think I'm going to need to make a new chart of when they are ripening. It's also confusing because some fruits in my orchard, like apples, didn't set much fruit this year.
Are you all seeing this effect?
John S
PDX OR
My Frost peach was later ripening than usual this year, I was able to enter some in the Washington State Fair. Usually the tree is done by middle August. My hardy hibiscus hasn't bloomed yet, I don't think it's going to make it, usually blooming about now. I'm not convinced that climate change is a real thing.
sweepbjames said
I had a couple of flukey early pawpaws fall that were edible, aromatic, ok towards good. I was surprised those were so far along, usually my earliest are about 1/2 a month out yet. Watching what comes next.
Do pawpaws keep growing between now and ripe? I've got my first handful, I think Sunflower, and they are still like a good plum size.
Dubyadee said
My Frost peach was later ripening than usual this year, I was able to enter some in the Washington State Fair. Usually the tree is done by middle August. My hardy hibiscus hasn't bloomed yet, I don't think it's going to make it, usually blooming about now. I'm not convinced that climate change is a real thing.
Earlier this year I managed to get a nice miniature peach that I noted usually avoids curl. It was already potted in at least 3 gallons and also was very dormant when I picked it up around March. This is the first time after having miniature 'honey babe' peach for years that I finally got about 20 peaches on this newest first year tiny little tree in a pot which is 'flory' in the pot. I thinned so I got about a dozen but it was interesting when I dissected the ones I removed. A month ago they were all pit and now they are putting on much more flesh, but not nearly ripe yet.
I have had several miniature peach trees all of which needed too much protection in a greenhouse to prevent them from dying. Frost peach was my only regular peach I could count on being outside but it overgrew the dwarf rootstock after 10 years. It was always done by mid August closer into town than you. But the Flory peach might be delayed due to oversetting, possibly?
Anyways, the flowers of Frost peach are very large and pink for a peach, but Flory is closer to red and is double flowering. Each Flory kernel has a double.
The descriptions put out for regular double flowering peaches as ornamental only trees are reported by Sunset books to be more reliable in longevity, which is what I am seeing too after talking to a previous owner of what was a large Flory miniature.
We have always had short periods where harvest times are running late or early for a few years in a row, but this is something different. Bird migration patterns are hundreds of miles different than they were. 40 years ago, they would tell us not to grow Concord grapes because they wouldn't ripen. Now they ripen easily every year, and are done before the end of the growing season by a lot. Several of my varieties always were published as ripening in October and that's when I would harvest them. Now they are half gone by mid-September, and we're not even in an early harvest pattern. We keep finding tropical fish species show up on our shores that have never been here before. The Inuit people and Pacific Island nation people whose land is under water, polar bears, pikas, and penguins sure wish climate change wasn't real. We keep setting heat records every year, and the 8 hottest years ever are always in the last 10. The measurable CO2 in the atmosphere keeps rising dangerously. It's an easy call from my point of view.
John S
PDX OR
jafar said
sweepbjames said
I had a couple of flukey early pawpaws fall that were edible, aromatic, ok towards good. I was surprised those were so far along, usually my earliest are about 1/2 a month out yet. Watching what comes next.
Do pawpaws keep growing between now and ripe? I've got my first handful, I think Sunflower, and they are still like a good plum size.
I hadn't paid that much attention really until you considered the question. I was going to try to make up an answer having to do with maybe a bunch(s) of them look smaller this year, ... but I'd a view point while taking down some 30' laurels, from a stationary scaffold platform at 10', I was able to take multiple looks at the same pawpaw fruiting areas... pretty sure during this 4hour session that I perceived them sizing up a little
. Seriously I do think they get a little more size as they tend toward ripeness,, quickly like Bartletts... and all the afore mentioned.
Even some of the oversized thumb knuckle size berries have been delightful in years past.
Would this be one of the first fruiting years in a juvenile tree? or have you been having fruit on for a while?
I have one pawpaw on one tree and it's quite small. I wonder if the dry heat of summer has affected them this way. Back east, where they're native, it rains a lot all summer, so that would be really different. I have seen dry heat damage on pawpaws when they received insufficient water in the summer.
John S
PDX OR
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