Ontario Fruit Explorers

["Thomas Olenio" <tolenio@sentex.net>]

Hi biz,

How are those Richelieu apple grafts doing?

Later,
Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Biz Storms [mailto:bizstorms@bell.blackberry.net] 
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 10:42 AM
To: Labruscagrape@Lists. Ibiblio. Org
Subject: Re: [OFEX] Crème de Cassis

Hi Tom

This sounds like it has potential. I will give it a try - next year. We hard
pruned our mature black currants since they had missed two years of pruning,
and the others  are younger and not as productive. What little fruit they
had was picked clean by birds or our resident voles or chipmunks. The ten or
so that Bert gave me ( thanks again Bert ) are sizing up nicely and donated
about two cups of fruit it total. Nice taste as well. We also splurged and
bought two new "Ben" varieties from DNA gardens, and also bought 10 pink
currants to go along a fence. Can't wait to see how they look and taste. I
had visions of pink cassis when I asked for 10 instead of juist going for
one or two.  

The weather here is dry, dry and more dry. Those blasts of rain helped hold
off the watering for many days so we have scorched earth with weird patches
of green grass and weeds. Now that the apples that are going to hang in
there are clearly visible, we're going to do a head count on the number of
different varieties fruiting this year. Hopefully double that of 2006. We
have experienced lots of cracking on the Cox's Orange, Hudson's Gold Gem and
Kerry Irish Pippin. I was expecting the Cox's but not the other two. I read
somewhere that you can spray them earlier to help prevent the cracking - or
you wait a year or two for the tree to get past the tendency. Since it
wasn't the entire crop on any of the trees, we are going to wait and see
before adding yet another spray. 

The insect activity has been a bit lower this year, but August is still up
for grabs. We are also experiencing fireblight in the area - which I
understand from the Onatario rep is showing up in many places. We have one
Pink Princess at the corner of the orchard that has been slowly losing
branches all summer. We did one major "ugly prune" about two weeks ago and
except for two "maybe" branches this week +t seems to be finally clear. King
City and Collingwood / Thornbury have also had flareups. 

So far the coolest / most attractive apples - Kandil Sinap, St Edmunds,
Murray - bright red apples, Grimes Golden, Lady, Niedswetskyana Crab - big
honking apples that are almost black, same with the Glowing Heart but a
little smaller, Alexander - enormous with scads of light freckles, Hudson's
Gold Gem with their characteristic "snowflake" russeting and the Pristine
for the sheer volume and the glowing yellow. We easily removed 150 or more
apples from the Pristine as the branches were touching the ground. The
apples on the Liberty are also gorgeous and very sun sensitive. The ping
pong size apples on the Rescue and Trail crabs are days away from being
fully ripe. The 8 to 10 apples on the Princess Louise are gigantic - think
Wolf or Alexander size. You would think she was also an offspring of
Alexander as the Wolf is reported to be - not descended from Snow. 

And for a complete topic change - regarding the use of garburators for
grinding apples. Has anyone in the group used this method? Bert - I remember
that you have a grinder - but my other half wants to try the garburator
route. Does the ground apple fall vertically - or do most of the models have
that 90 degree exit via the plastic pipe - which is flushed with the
incoming water. We keep encountering models with the exit from the side and
a plastic pipe that has the 90 degree angle to connect with the drain. If
anyone has this model - does it work effectively without the water to flush
it through? Did I ask that right?  Ripe apples are looming quickly and we
want to get this organized so we can freeze the juice as the autumn
progresses so we have lots to blend for our homemade hard cider. 

Cheers. Bizmark. 

Ps to the two Joe's - I hope your Ashmead's wood produced successful grafts.

Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network