North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Doreen Howard" <gardendiva@charter.net>]

2010 has been a health disaster for me.  A knee replacement in March that 
infected.  More surgery in April to clean up the wound, and then I slipped 
and fell and broke my left shoulder a week later.  Of course, I'm left 
handed.

Needless-to-say, I didn't do anything in my yard.  I had to hire a lawn 
service to mow my acre.  No pruning, no spraying, no fertilizer, no bagging, 
nothing.  Not being able to even walk at times, I mentally wrote off 2010 
for fruit.

I now have the largest crop and biggest fruit ever on the Seedless Concord 
and Swenson's Red grapes, and Chippewa, Maine Wild and Patriot blueberries. 
The berries are ripening and delicious.  Grapes are starting to color, and 
they are huge and disease-free!  Asian pears, Honeycrisp, Ashmead's Kernel, 
Pixie Crunch, Golden Delicious, Sops of Wine and Wealthy apple trees are 
loaded with fruit, have self-pruned by dropping and have no visable disease! 
I'm astonished!!

Maybe, I've been working too hard.  I think it has more to do with that my 
soil is finally totally engulfed with mycorrhizal fungi and other beneficial 
microbes.  I inoculated everything I planted five years ago, but I planted 
with plenty of space in between. It may be that soil food web has finally 
matured and is doing its job.  Next year, I'll go back to my usual routine 
and see what happens.

Meanwhile, I'm very grateful for all the wonderful fruit and that I finally 
can work a bit in the garden.
Doreen Howard
Roscoe, IL
Zone 4b (WI-IL border)