North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

Amy,  Comments below.  Donna

>Different stuff thrives here. The fig trees get HUGE, whereas we were in a frost pocket, and mine froze back to the ground every year.  Instead of sitting on deep clay, with a thin covering of loam, we are now on what appears to be sandy-clay, with more loam, and it's less acid.

 

You can only talk like this a little bit, otherwise some of us start getting depressed.  I speak not only for the clay-bound and frost-pocketed, but also for members whose trees are still covered in snow.   

 

 

 >Now that my husband is "retired" -- his job at papermill folded up with the mill--- we want to grow stuff to eat, that's not extremely fussy and high maintenance.

You are probably fortunate to have it happen early rather than later. 

 

>Pears seem to do extremely well here.  However, mid-Aug. is prime time for the garden, I would rather be canning something else than pears, if possible

recommendations for late ripening pears? fire-blight resistant as well??

Definitely the old Pineapple pear, which is good canned, but even better dried.  They don't have to be peeled, so you can have them quietly drying while you slave over the hot stove canning something else.  I have been eating some this morning, and they are always amazingly good.  I suppose other oriental pears dry to the same gummi bear consistency, but most offer only sugar, no tartness.  Pineapple actually comes in before the Kieffer/Garber types, and are much better eating.  The season is pretty long here too, which is very helpful for using them up slowly. 

 

See if you can find someone with the old fashioned sour cherries, they got them from their grandma and you can dig some sprouts.  Then graft or bud them to Montmorency.  You can even buy a tree of the latter, but plant some seeds and graft it onto sour cherry stock, in case the shortlived Mahaleb rootstock dies on you.  Sour cherry stock lasts longer, though it does sucker.   

 >do sour cherries HAVE to be that sour???

Did it have red juice?  They are more sour.  Montmorency has clear juice, and is sort of edible raw.  Doesn't take as much sugar as a morello type. 

 

>oops, forgot about peaches.

Are the very early-bearing types from Univ of FL suited for this area??

Probably not, but check chill hours and compare to what you get where you are. 

 

 

>Raintree advertises a plum that gets ripe in oct. - is that true?? even in hot summer areas???

No, it's true for up where they are. 

 

>oh, also- many thanks to the man who came out to my farm, taught me how to graft, and we did a whole bunch of honey-locust whips that day.

most of them survived, and bore heavily, and the people that bought the farm WERE impressed with that little bit of perma-culture. The sheep ,cows, and donkeys BEGGED for the pods every year.

 

I am mortally terrified that the thornless locust seedling tree and suckers coming up here and there around our garden will drop a viable seed and there will be thorny ones come up.  There are no honey locust in our end of the county and I don't want to leave them as a legacy. 

 

>And I have taught as many people as I can get to stand still long enough, how to graft.

just like I promised you that I would.

I am sure there will be a place for you in Heaven. 

 

Amy

now in the "other" Milwaukee

 

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