Saw the first white budding, noteable enough to take a photo for documentation on the phone, January 5. Like partially exploded popping corn. Today they look like this.
Now it looks like the local weather is forecast to be drying, cloudy and sunny for the next about a week. This will be an interesting year. For the sake of the plum fruit crop I’m kind of hoping for not a returning freezing episode.
Jafar, I suppose to have better timing and process this year, given fruit.. sadly I wasted nearly 8kg of fruit waiting on starting the process until nearly all fruit was off the trees over a couple or 3weeks.. they wouldn’t wait for me. Next try I will start incrementally and add as more fruit seems ready. I did manage to salvage a little to try my hand for the first time at making some umeshu, aka plum ‘wine’, although my plums by the time were a little more ripe than is common, usually more green. I think it will be ok, maybe not great but good.. will find out sometime June or July.
sorry, I don’t yet know how to delete the disoriented photo files. Or shrink them from this tablet. If interested the one that starts with A has the upright orientation I was going for.
Rooney, they had a really nice cropping last year. I like to think I’m getting better at my pruning processes. I have been thinking that leaving too much vegetative and crowding interior new fruit potential growth (greedy) for good light distribution and air circulation, and a wet spring during flowering and early leaf set, that I would experience something akin to a peach leaf curl. Most flowers would drop out and early juvenile leaves would shrivel and look really bad. Later leaves seemed to recover somewhat. Maybe 4-5 years ago, I got a ride home from a grafting class we participated in at Sandy HS, Tonya took a closer look and put name to my malady as shot hole. Still thinking key is not leaving too much; though Springs have been somewhat forgiving recently and I’ve seen an uptick of fruit production. I won’t claim complete responsibility for successes, but will definitely look to my process if plant response is poor or less satisfactory.
Except for possibly my original tree, (which I had cut down to ground level and maintain what grew back (from roots?), may or may not have been grafted, (Junsei, had a knife and some grafting materials in his tool closet and I know he had worked his persimmons) but I never had the opportunity to ask if he grafted his Ume as a matter of course) my other stems are on their own roots.
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