Apple tasting with Redwood Empire CRFG chapter and tour of Main Street Trees in Napa, CA

We had over 60 apple varieties to try

We also tasted a number of pears. Warren, #17 was my favorite 

American persimmons, D. virginiana. We had two cultivars to try

Pears are getting cut

Various other fruits and black walnuts were offered for tasting too

Cut apples

We had at least 4 varieties of quince, Aromatnaya and Kaunching are upfront

Feijoa fruits

Cut pears

Tallying the taste scores for apples and pears

Apple display 

Touring the orchard at Main Street Trees nursery

The nursery grows and sells very large native oak and fruit trees.  They are grown in fabric containers, and they move them to larger containers every year.

 http://mainstreettrees.com/ 

Tasting pomegranates: Eversweet, Myatadzhy, Medovyi Vasha, Vkusnyi, Cranberry

These all are Early and Mid-season varieties. Eversweet and Cranberry originated in the USA. Myatadzhy, Medovyi Vasha, and Vkusnyi were developed in the USSR/Turkmenistan. I grow all of these with the exception of Medovyi Vasha. Medovyi Vasha fruits came from Harvey Correia.

Eversweet is usually my earliest pomegranate and we used to pick it early October in previous years. This year (2016) I collected the first fruits on September 9, and they were ready.  This pom is very sweet with very soft seeds. light pink juice.  Definitely going to continue growing it.

Myatadzhy is more complex in flavor, and ripens few weeks after Eversweet. Dark red arils, very soft seeds, more acid than Eversweet.  Definitely a keeper in my yard. Overlaps for few weeks with Eversweet.

Medovyi Vasha

Very sweet, soft-seeded, large dark arils.  Not much complexity in flavor, and some people detect the straw flavor in it.  It seems to be better flavored when picked earlier in the season.  The fruits picked mid-October 2016 were good.  My husband actually likes this variety, and I can live without it.

Cranberry

Large fruits with large red arils, hard seeds.  The flavor is rich, complex, and compensates for the hard seeds. The plant is vigorous grower, fruited in the second year in my yard.  Definitely a keeper.

Vkusnyi

Mid-season variety, one of the best.  Dark red arils, soft seeds, complex flavor with lots of sugar and acid. This variety is a must-have for the mid-season harvest.

The dormant cuttings of these and other pomegranates are usually available during our winter sales at reallygoodplants.com

Tasting pomegranates: Dewey, Garnet Sash (Elf), and Mae

I picked fruits of these three cultivars on October 9, 2016. They all are sweet, and all have large hard seeds.

Mae has the most acid, and a little of bitterness, but still pretty sweet. Probably the least desirable fruit from this set.

Garnet Sash has the the largest and hardest seeds.  The arils are sweet with a bit of vanilla flavor.

Dewey is sweet with slight acidic tone. Probably the most juicy one out of these three cultivars. If I had to select the best out of these three cultivars, Dewey would be the one for me.

All these are less desirable when compared to a fruit of Vkusnyi pomegranate, that is ready now too.
However, they are certainly add to the tasting experience of pom flavors and may have other important traits outside of flavor and seed size.

Mae fruit

Garnet Sash (Elf) fruit

Dewey fruit

Grafting cherry onto plum

Here are the results of my attempts to graft various cherry varieties onto the Shiro branches of my combination plum.

Grafting directly onto plum 

In February of 2015 I made 2 grafts of Bing and 2 grafts of Rainier onto Shiro plum.  They both took initially, but one graft of each  variety dried up by the end of the summer.  Two other grafts survived through the winter and even bloomed in spring of 2016.  None made fruits, and they both dried up by July 2016.  These grafts had only developed leaves and flowers from their buds. No new shoots have ever emerged from them.

Grafting onto plum using Adara interstem

In January 2016 Andy Mariani recommended to use Adara as interstem for grafting cherry scions onto plum trees.  He also suggested to get both grafts going in the same year. The cherry chip-buds can be grafted onto Adara scions before attaching them onto plum.  This was exactly what I did in January 2016.  Two chip buds each of the following cherry varieties were attached onto Adara scions:

1. Duke

2. Noir de Chavanne

3. Coral Champagne

4. Sour Cherry Bell Magnifique

5. Early Purple Guigne

Then Adara scions were bark grafted onto Shiro. I used nail gun to attach the scions initially, and then also fixed them onto the branches with grafting tape.

And finally I covered the cuts and the exposed areas of scions with the grafting compound.

All of the above pictures were taken on January 24, 2016.

Four out of five grafts took (the failed one was Early Purple Guigne), and they all grew up significantly. The developed shoots were between 2 and 4-foot long in July, and some of them needed pruning.

Bellow are the pictures of four successful grafts, taken on July 7, 2016.

Duke and sour cherry Bell Magnifique

Coral Champagne

Noir de Chavanne

I was surprised that the sour cherry graft took, but more time is needed to tell how successful sour cherry will be on this plum.  I could not find any info on Adara used as rootstock for sour cherries. Just one doc on-line states its broad compatibility with cherries.

Check our sales site if we have the scions available reallygoodplants.com