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Karen and all,
We had a freeze at 30 one night
and maybe 28 the other, and during the 36 hours I feared all my fruit
(and my rosebuds, but everything seems ok) were wiped out I really
thought long and hard about this. Last years surviving crops after the
record late freeze were all natives, persimmons, blackberries, plums, hazelnuts,
and Thomas Myer walnut (a late bloomer). Maybe the key to fruit farming in
the east is not to concentrate on the hard to grow high dollar stuff, but rather
to increase demand for those fruits we CAN produce. 100 year freezes
aside, there is a wide range of pretty easy to grow stuff. Blueberries,
Hector Black has no trouble selling off his huge annual crop through the
farmer's mkt and U-pick. And pears, though more susc to late freezes,
really just need some better varieties selected for local commercial
marketing.
Perhaps the real question is,
can we grow organic apples and peaches in the east? And that may lead to
the question of whether we should really even try. I have certainly seen,
and eaten, the unsprayed apples in some backyards. As I was
picking the fruit off the ground, I never thought of storing it. We dried
as much as possible, cooking with the smaller bits, making wine with
the cores and brown bits, feeding the complete rejects to the
chickens. I HAVE picked unsprayed Mammoth Blacktwig and Ben Davis directly
from the trees and had them keep, though they needed the ones with codling moth
sorted out. Peaches and plums are harder, partly because they freeze out
so many years, and the curculio account for the other 98% of the trouble.
Is Neem much use for curculio on
it's own? If the freezes hold off for just a little longer, I feel be
obligated to protect some peaches and plums. I do have Surround, and know
people are talking about using it with Neem.
Donna
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