sad little plums

Well yall know I was very excited about my fruit trees, they were loaded up this year for the first time since we planted the orchard. Well Kev,,, you were right don't count your fruit before you get it off the tree ROFL ROFL... With the daily non stop rain we had for weeks on end I didn't get to spray my trees with tobacco  tea spray as I had planned. Its suppose to be very effective to keep the bugs off your fruit. Needless to say the bugs have had a field day with my fruit. My nectarines are a total loss. I got these plums and I am watching a few green ones left on tree and soon as they get any color on them at all I will pick and let finish ripen in the window. I didn't know if picking them green if they would ripen so I didn't pick them today. Some of these as you can see need to ripen. But none are totally green. Jury is still out on what is going to happen with the peaches. My pears look good.

 They are small and they are not perfect, far from it. But I can cut out the bad spots on these. The others were so bad there was no way to salvage any meat off them. 

I make vegetarian eggrolls quite often, we love them. I was so hoping to can some plum dipping sauce for them. I think I can one batch of plum sauce.  I am going to be tickled if I can manage that.  I will feel like all was not lost on the plums :O)

I can tell you picking fruit off a 8 foot ladder was a bit tricky.I climbed up into the tree at one point. I am not very big so the limbs could handle me standing on them and using them for support. But not really a ideal way to pick lol.  I think I am going to start working on topping the trees out. Except for my pear trees. I don't think I will do them that way.  Any of you guys do that? Keep the trees limbs cut flat on top for picking ease? I see it done at all the peach orchards around us. For ease of picking and bug control.


When my best bud came up recently to go on our girl trip, she brought from her garden some tomatoes, cucumbers, squash. Her garden is a few weeks ahead of ours,  amazing what 3.5 hours time can do in Texas to your climate.  I saved seeds off some of the tomatoes as I didn't have those varieties. We are constantly plant sharing and seed sharing etc. If I have an over abundance of something that didn't make for her she knows she is welcome to it and she is the same by me if she has more of something than she can use she will offer it to me. Being only 3.5 hours apart we can make a canning trip to each others houses and we have. We show up with boxes of jars, supplies for what ever we are going to can and then we can up for that person what ever it is :O). These are all cherry type tomatoes in size... Minnie Orange, indigo kumquat, mexican midget, snow white ( wasnt sure I had that one so I saved the seeds) and Yellow Pear.  To bad all seeds are not as easy to save as tomatoes! :O) These have been soaked in water till moldy to remove the gel sacks off them, then rinsed, drained and dumped to dry.