To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] climate, weather and fruit
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:08:09 -0500
In the last month we had one day of record cold (58 for high) & 3
weeks previous to that a record high (105). We've been known to have
cold summers or hot summers but drastic quick swings like this are
very new to me. Despite that I've been having a great year, ripened
enough red currants, strawberries & nanking cherries to put up a
carboy of Summerberry wine & enough Crandalls to make a big batch of
Black Currant Melomel. Black rot seems to be in check so far this
year on all the various grapes (except for Valiant) & I might even
start dreaming of buckets of grapes for this year. Had prolific
production from 5 Bali & a couple Montmorency & Evans but the robins
gracious picked 95% of the crop for me. First year of apricots & had
good set on some very old seedling Manchurian (12-14 years old) for
the first time ever, but every last fruit shriveled about the pit, I'm
wondering it that the result of plum curculio?
& big apologies for getting the global warming monster started again,
I was more posting the article to see if folks in that area had
anecdotal evidence that verified the report. I work in the organic
industry where global warming is not a theory but a call to action
that affects farm plans & daily practices on the land. Which is to
say, it's easy for me to forget how controversial it is to some
outside that world.