North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Erdman, James" <ErdmanJ@uwstout.edu>]

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