The tree will seal off the damage and though it will probably always a visible place in the trunk it should not become a source for disease entry. Al

Jessaka, More people "love their fruit trees to death" by overwatering and overfeeding them than kill them by neglecting them. I hardly ever water my yard or trees, and I never fertilize them, because all that does is push them into unnaturally fast growth. I want them to grow at the natural rate that corresponds to the actual rain that falls (or doesn't fall) from the sky. I know that, if all our native trees can survive, grow and produce fruit based on nothing but rainfall (we have lots of native fruit trees in our acres of woodland and semi-woodland), then so can the fruit trees I've planted near the house. That's just my own personal philosophy, though, but it is based on a lifetime of growing fruit trees and observing two things: (1) in rainier years, fruit trees have more insect problems and more disease issues, and (2) in rainier years, the fruit are larger but the flavor is watered down. Also, trees that get more moisture (whether rainfall or irrigation) carry heavier loads of fruit AND foliage, and limb breakage is more common. In a rainier year, it seems like limb breakage (even on properly pruned trees) is much worse than it is in drier years. So, my trees get only rainfall or perhaps an inch or two of rain per month in drought periods when there is no rain at all and they never give me trouble. I read somewhere once that peach and apricot trees grow best in a couple of feet of sandy soil on top of clay. In that type of soil conditions, they have the good drainage provided by the sandy soil and they have good deep soil moisture in the clay beneath the sand. I choose the planting location for our trees based on that....they are in the sandiest soil I have and that band of sandy soil lies on top of thick, red Oklahoma clay, and so far it has worked out really well. It has worked out so well, in fact, that I wish our band of sandier soil were wider so I could plant more fruit trees there. We have some neighbors a couple of miles up the road who have about 6 or 8 fruit trees (judging from their size, they are semi-dwarfs) planted by the previous homeowners. These trees are so far from the house and water faucet, that I don't think you COULD water them, unless you have a couple of hundred feet of water hose, or carry water to them in buckets. They only get natural rainfall, therefore, and have been covered in fruit this year, having somehow survived the late freezes and heavy winds. (They are in a pretty sheltered low-lying area with lots of trees and buildings around.) These are trees that get no special attention and still produce a crop that surprised even me, because the trees weren't looking good at all when I saw them in mid-July, but they had plenty of peaches, including some very yummy white-fleshed ones. So, sometimes I think that the less we interfere with Mother Nature, the better. The first year or two that we lived here, there was a drought and I watered WAY too much, trying to make up for the drought and for the fact that I hadn't improved the soil "enough" yet. (And I KNEW I was watering too much, but was afraid everything would die if I stopped.) I did have greener, lusher foliage but also had every disease and pest issue in the book, so I completely stopped fertilizing and cut the watering back to no more than 1" of water per week, and all the disease and pest issues vanished. So, less water and only natural compost/mulch as fertilizer gives me a less perfect-looking landscape but also less diseases and few pests. I don't know if watering less would solve all the problems you've had with your fruit trees or not, but it did for me. And, of course, you cannot control the amount of rainfall your plants receive. When I lived in Fort Worth, I probably overfertilized and overwatered our landscape too much, but I had lovely, lush St. Augustine grass and I liked keeping it thick and gorgeous. Here, though, I've learned that less is more, and in the times we live in with lots of water rationing, it is probably better to underwater than to overwater. That's just me and my experiences, though, and no one else has to become a "minimalist" at watering just because I prefer it, but it works here for me in our soil and our climate. Dawn

monibucky I don't know if they make a fruit picking pole, but what I use is a swimming pool telescoping skimmer pole. I tape a milk jug to the end of it. I cut the top of the jug and make a vie cut to catch the stem. Then when the fruit is in the jug with the stem in the vie you can use the pole to pick it and the fruit falls into the jug. You can just keep on going till the jug is full or your arm gets tired. If the plastic isn't strong enough you can use a vegetable can and do the same thing. I pick all my best apples this way at the top of the tree. I hope this helps some of you out.

I still think it was you but don't remember that much if kids were there. Wife black straight hair? Last Saturday at the Devonian gardens we talked about prunus Siberica and thought it to be a rather minor deviation of prunus Manchirica. Even though Siberica is likely to carry over the pink I still have one reserved thought that Robert Purvis knows of about Siberica. That it is an incredibly slow grower and is dwarf. Robert used to live in Alaska and in Idaho still does nothing but apricot in one of his collections in Washington. Gabe Botar was at the gardens who is another person knowing a great deal about apricot. He had scions of a prolific dwarf apricot with small good tasting fruits that he produced from crossed parents. Good stuff because slow growing and dwarf is always great for extreme cold or unprotected sites. For example flowering under the snow would delay bloom and escape the damaging spring frosts. If Clair Lammers (formerly from Edmonton) from Alaska ever grew Gabes apricot he would at least had fruits from this where all other his Manchurica experiments failed. My grandfather may have been around as a retired forester at the time those were planted and lived very close by. Only a remote possibility exists. I came across the trees a few years ago because I wanted to visit my childhood memories of the wading pool that still there in that place and not that anybody told me. Who ever planted them it seems very possible it was done from self pollinated Goldcot seeds similar the way you collected from the pink tree the seeds for another generation.