North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Jim Freeman" <jf@gctruck.com>]

Funny you mentioned pears, as I was tying limbs on my home trees this
weekend. I noticed on the ones I tied down last year that 45 degrees
does not seem to be flat enough for the best bloom production. The limbs
that finished around 90 degrees seemed to have a lot more blooms than
the others. The crotch angle does not seem to matter as much as the main
body of the limb. Most of my pears are in their fifth leaf, so it seems
to me they should all be producing decent amounts of fruit. The only
ones to have produced more that 1-2 pears are the Orients. They have
produced reliable & large crops since they were in their 3rd leaf. Our
Maxine & Moonglow had a few blooms last year but only averaged 1 fruit
per tree while Orient averaged 3 bushels. Luckily, all three have lots
of blooms this year, so I am less worried about knocking the odd bloom
off.

My Warren pears finally have a few blossoms this year and I am looking
forward to getting a few pears from them. Funny, but the smaller one has
10x the blooms of my larger more beautiful specimen. Wonder why this
happened? They are side by side in the same orchard with identical
conditions. The smaller one nearly died the year it was planted
(2006)due to some problem at the graft that caused 80% of the tree to
die. I cut away all the dead wood and it has slowly grown into a decent
looking tree that is half the size of my other Warren. It would be
really funny if my smallest runt produces the most fruit.

After two very wet weeks in March, we finally had good weather this week
to finish preparing a couple acres of new ground at our Murray County
orchard. It looks like we will have room for a large block of Pink Lady
and fill the rest with 32 other cultivars that are new to us. We will
also have enough replants to completely fill our old orchard. Hopefully
the weather will hold this week and allow us to get all these trees in
the ground. Once we finish our 2011 planting, we will have 97 varieties
of apples. Checkout our website and let me know what varieties (that
grow well in the South) you think we need to add on our way to 100 apple
cultivars.

Thanks!
Jim Freeman
Freedom Farms LLC
In Beautiful North Georgia
www.freedomfruit.net

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 14:51:47 -0600
From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>

I have pulled down the uprights and tied them to things, it does seem to
get fruit spurs on them a year sooner.  Right now though they are a
forest of uprights and I keep meaning to pull them down..... I'm afraid
that in windy weather they will whip back and forth and knock the blooms
or small fruit off each other.  Donna