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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] climate, weather and fruit

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  • From: "Erdman, James" <ErdmanJ@uwstout.edu>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>, "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] climate, weather and fruit
  • Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:20:13 -0500


We are having a very dry summer, again, but did get almost an inch of rain in
the last 5 days, after less than a tenth for the earlier part of the month.
I think we are around 5 inches behind normal for the year so far. My
rainwater tank, which is normally full by the end of April from rainfall
collected from a shed roof, hasn't had enough rain to fill it up yet this
year.

We are getting a bumper crop of excellent red and purple raspberries, after
almost no crop last year due to the rabbits and dear eating them down to the
ground the previous winter.

Our Manchurian apricots (2 seedlings purchased 16 years ago or so from Bear
Creek) are having a bumper crop, larger fruit than ever before, and little
insect damage. We are drying what we can, eating them until we are tired of
them, and juicing some too.

It looks like our only bearing pear tree, a Nova from St Lawrence, is
succombing to fire blight. In just 2 or 3 days it went from looking
perfectly healthy to having black foiliage, shriveling fruit, and looking
really unhealthy. If I cut the infected shoots 12" back into clean wood, I
will be cutting out most of the tree. Any suggestions of what to do
immediately, and in the longer run?

Since we started mulching our tomatoes, and the rest of the garden, before
the tomatoes get rained on, we have had much less problem with blight. We
try to get them planted and then mulched right away so that we don't have any
soil splashed on the plants by rain, and this seems to help. And of course
it is nice not to have to do much weeding the rest of the summer. Our
earliest tomatoes, Imur Prior Beta, have been producing for over 2 weeks, and
others are starting to redden, but peppers are slow in ripening.

Jim Erdman, in Menomonie, WI, cold edge of zone 4




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