Fruit? Yes, please!

Despite all the crazy weather, 80 degrees one day and freezing temps the next, it appears we may actually get some fruit this year on the homestead.

Our neighbor has two apricot trees and one pear along our shared fence line. He has repeatedly told us to take all the fruit we want. These are mature, dare I say, 'old' trees - but they still produce like crazy, and we're happy to have the bounty.

A Ladybeetle visits one of the apricot trees.

Cherries are a personal favorite of mine. We purchased two fairly large cherry trees (probably at least 2 years old) from Marcums Nursery in Goldsby. These are growing up against the house. The idea is to espalier them to the brick, but we have yet to actually affix them somehow. They seem happy anyway. We planted two different varieties of cherries, and I don't remember what either of them were - bad homesteader!

Cherries!

Buffalo currant, clove currant...whatever you want to call them we're delighted to see tiny fruits on these plants. They have beautiful yellow flowers in very early spring that some say smell like cloves. I think they smell like spring, almost like hyacinth flowers.

Buffalo currants (Ribes odoratum)

Baby nectarines! Nectarines are another personal favorite of mine. This tree actually produced some very small fruits last year, but, unfortunately, a case of brown rot took root and they all started falling off before maturing. Luckily Gabe was diligent about picking up all the leaf litter in the fall and has been preemptively spraying the tree with Serenade this spring to try to stave off the brown rot. Our fingers are crossed we get to taste some homegrown nectarines this year.

 

Nectarine

Not pictured we also have four varieties of apple trees (loaded with flowers - hoping for some fruit this year), blackberries, strawberries, sand plums, paw paws (Asimina triloba), grapes, all-in-one almond and Chickasaw plum. The paw paws are relatively young and we won't see fruit from them this year. The sand plums were transplanted late last year and we're hoping they catch up. They have yet to leaf out, but the wood is still green so there is hope for them yet. The all-in-one almond is also a new addition and has just started to bud out.