busy fortnight: fruit tree assessment

All the harvest processing, all the canning, all the mess and exhaustion and time taken...

And there's still some yet to go - although the main processing is the early nectarine and early peaches.

Overall in the fruit harvest:

1. Dual Stone (white peach and white nectarine): very heavy crop, lost about a third of it to mould and possums. That's usual. The nectarines are sweet as ever. The peaches are *meh*. Nectarines harvested in the first couple of weeks of Nov. Peaches harvested in last couple of weeks of Nov.

Such a delicious nectarine!

2. Two Stone (golden peach and white nectarine): lost most of the nectarine to mould. Still harvesting the golden peaches. Nectarines harvested in second week of Nov. Golden peaches harvested last week in November through to early Dec.

3. Quad stone in backyard: nectarines were ready in 2nd week Nov, but mostly lost to possums and mould. Apricots in 3rd week Nov - only two harvested. Plums ripening early December and a solid crop, no fruit fly. Donut peaches won't be for a number of months yet.
4. Cherry: 4 cherries, ripened in last weeks of Nov. *sigh*

5. Apricot: 2 apricots, still ripening in late Nov.

6. Dual Plum: about 5-6 plums, mostly on the mariposa side (probably), no sign of fruit fly.

7. Donut peach: not expected to ripen until later in the season.

8. Back avo: a couple of avos, lots of leaves. Trimming it down now.

9. Four apple: a few apples on the left branch, ripening. One or two apples on the right branch, ripening. Tried a few that fell down early - floury. They'll go into an apple-rhubarb crumble.

10. Hedge apples: harvested a couple from the early graft, but rather floury right now. Might not be ready yet? Or fell off because not ready? Otherwise, they're all small and growing.

11. Gala-Braeburn: Braeburn graft still growing pretty well, no sign of fruit fly or codling moth (would have to cut open an apple to find out)

12. Blueberries: doing okay by the fence, but haven't harvested any yet (must go look at them)

13. Mango: has a few fruit, not sure if they'll survive any longer than this

And yesterday I harvested a bunch of carrots - thinned out one of the beds to make space for others. It's a pretty good rainbow from this mix.

Regarding the fruit trees, I'm going to massively trim them down this year. Front and back, both. They're just getting out of hand so far as overproducing fruit is going. Also, I really rather wish that they were spread out across the summer better. My bad for not getting early and late varieties, accidental or no.

a big black horse and a cherry tree

After watching Gardening Australia's segment on cherries - a few lessons!

Cherry trees: stress them a little.
- too healthy, into leaves and shoots.

If there's too many branches, then they'll put all their energy into leaves and shoots

- soil type doesn't matter
spring: pelletised chicken manure
winter: again
mulch it through winter

But they need to be mulched through the winter, and fed early spring (probably July for us) and winter (I'd guess April, just before mulching.)

- chill factor - 700hours 8C or lower

That's about 1 month below 8C. It can definitely work in the colder parts of Sydney - southern plains, western Sydney, and up in the northern hills districts where we spend most of June and July between 5-10C at nights. I've had a pretty good cherry crop in Sydney, but I'm attributing the fact that it wasn't 'really good' to my ignorance on how to manage a crop.

Pruning: I think this is probably where the rubber hits the road for me.

For seedlings
December: cut back to 50mm
- take the vigorous ones out
- too vigorous too healthy

The trees on the program each had long skinny branches that had multiple fruits on them. I've been trimming my long branches back to shorter stubs because that's how to do it with larger stone fruit and with apples. Looks like it was a mistake - too many opportunities for the energy to go into leaves, not enough energy to go into fruit. So later this summer, I'll be chopping back the tree - take out the really big branches quite heavily, maybe stump one or two of the medium branches and see if we get the long, thin growths around it. Can't hurt, right?