Just a few weeks ago there were nectarines a' plenty on the trees. This was the first year they fruited and I was anxious to taste them. And then while yanking random weeds in the yard, I passed my full-o-fruit nectarine tree and saw something that made me do a double-take.
Every. Single. Nectarine was covered in some icky fungus stuff and some of the branches look as if they are blighted. I didn't even know that nectarines got blight.
The pears suffered from blight this Spring, the apples trees only had a few fruitlets on them (even though there were plenty of flowers) and now the nectarine trees have suffered this new ailment. It seems that the peach trees are our last hope for any fruit this year. We have four pathetic blueberry bushes which yielded zip blueberries and I never made it out to the Pick-your-own so we'll be blueberry-less as well.
The strawberry beds did well this spring, but those are long gone and I didn't even freeze or jam any of them. Which is actually ok since I vowed it would be a Jam-Free 2014 in order to use some of the jam already in the pantry.
Last year I was able to can some pears and apples, but we're down to one quart of apples and six quarts of pears. So unless I find someone with a bumper crop of pears and apples, there will be no glistening jars of home-canned fruits this year. Just another reason to stock up for more than one year.
It's been a pretty terrible year for fruit up here as well. We got some Apples coming on but only on our last remaining ancient tree all the new trees either failed to synch their blooms or the fruit was blown off in the high winds. The Peach Blooms got frozen, the Apricot as well I believe and the Fire Blight pretty much killed one of the Pear and set another one back a ways. Truthfully I haven't had a good fruit crop since 2011.
ReplyDeleteNo apples or peaches for us either. Strawberries were just Meh and blueberries are too few to mention.
ReplyDeleteSeems like we always buy our fruit so I can put some up. Right now it's cherries @1.99lb. One gallon in the freezer and I'm hoping to do another.
We too are down on apples and cursing myself for wasting apples from last year (well we fed to pigs so not actually wasted but still....) But we have beans so many green beans. Do you suppose if I add a couple cups of honey to them I can still make jam?
ReplyDeleteI don't have pears here this year. Our other fruit trees are still too young, but I did see them covered in Japanese beetles this year. My chickens are slacking.....
ReplyDeleteWe had about a total of 20 blossoms on our seven apple trees (all different varieties) so we know we won't have an apple harvest this year. Strawberries are in the midst of bearing right now and so far the crop has been great. Seems our raspberries never fail us and the blueberry bushes look to have a record crop. So with the three berries, we're counting ourselves lucky. I, too, have way too much jam in backlog so I won't make any this year either. But I sure would have liked to make a couple years supply of applesauce. We didn't have a good crop of apples (they never ripened fully) last year either so this will be our second year without applesauce. :o( (Hey, could be a lot worse!)
ReplyDeleteWe only have a few apples due to a major )needed) pruning, but have lots of nectarines. 6 pears on our new little pear tree :)
ReplyDeleteGood gawd! That is just heart-breaking! I hope that is the last of the set-backs - fruit or otherwise - that you get this year.
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