Bumper Fruit and Nut crop again this year,

[oldfella]

Just got in from the garden and I have never seen so much fruit and nuts on our trees as there is this year, it is a shame as we are still using the conserves from the past 2 years so it seems that we will composting a lot of fruit, and our neighbours will be doing the same. How is it in your neck of the woods?

[Millymollymandy]

Walnuts very few, apples not bad, pears so so and plums very good. Peaches are always loaded - BUT - we don't know what diseases will come our way this summer so no point getting excited yet, also there is always the problem with drought (which we currently have) and having to irrigate the trees in order to get any fruit. However if it rains we'll probably get brown rot!

So I just wait and see what happens, and if it comes good then that's If not, c'est la vie.

There's always tons of strawberries anyway and other soft fruit which don't seem to suffer any of the problems that tree fruit do.

[grahamhobbs]

Yes don't count your..... before...... etc, etc. and in our case before the squirrel eats the lot! The only fruit we can count on are the cooking apples.
Interesting though, we have 2 peaches outside, one was completely riddled with peach leaf curl but is absolutely covered in fruit and the other with hardly a scratch on it, is virtually bare - explain that.

[Millymollymandy]

Graham - all mine are riddled with leaf curl despite spraying with Bordeaux Mix - it makes not a jot of difference and neither does it make a jot of difference to the amount of fruit you get, despite the stuff you read in books which says you lose most of your crop to peach leaf curl. That's rubbish! The curly leaves drop off and new ones grow and the fruit stays in place.

It's nothing compared to all the other peach diseases we usually get!

[frozenthunderbolt]

brown rot is our seasonal favourite disease, though it only seems to REALY nuke the peaches. On the other hand, this year we have gods-be-damned Kaka's (protected rare native parrots) that have destroyed our entire pecan nut crop GRRRR

[Millymollymandy]

That's tough about the pecans. My plums got brown rot one year and apples get it too, but it is always much worse on the peaches. Most of mine are always small with black freckles on them - it's rare to get a crop that is unblemished. but just as well as I have an orchard full of not very good trees that really only sit there to be pretty in spring with the blossom, and various other trees dotted around the garden. The one in my veg patch is the one I really look after but even that had the black spots on it last year, though the fruit itself was OK.

One of my walnut trees is diseased for the 2nd year in a row and I can see it now with leaves all shot with black on them , we have insect probs which I just ignore otherwise I'd go crazy and then all the bacterial or fungal diseases which are the real killers of fruit. Then there's the oddities like my greengage which was loaded with fruit last year, but wasn't sweet, so no good for anything other than jam.

So I don't count me chooks! But each year there is a crop of something, so that is all that matters really. Just need to eke out my 2008 apple chutney until this autumn.....