The modern take on bottom soil as far as I can tell is that it often leads to excessive vigor. Comes down to the old balancing act of fruit production- too much vigor, and you get poorly colored and flavored fruit- too little and the trees are short-lived and production poor with small fruit. Guess you could call it the Goldylocks syndrome. In the west, you can get a handle on it just by controlling water, but after 20 years of growing fruit in the east I am still struggeling to come up with the right balance. I came to fruit trees through vegetables, so I went for too much vigor for the first 10 years. First, too much compost than too much mulch! Dwarfing rootstock certainly seems to simplify this dance with apples. M 26 is harder to excessively juice in my experience than more vigorous ones. Soil texture is as important as soil depth, of course. As I've said before on this forum, I actually prefer a sandy soil- you can usually add water in a home orchard if it's needed, but you can't easily reduce it.

Was the fruit you refer to very sweet, smaller than normal, and highly flavored? I've been told that the best fruit in CA is grown dryland in areas with winter rainfall, deep soil, and old drought tolerant trees. That says the exact same thing to me that you stated above. @Fruitnut, Yup, exactly, especially with the sultana style grapes. Although with some fruit it's more to it than just small and sweet like with the grapes, for example pomegranates can get pretty complex flavors on the spectrum of sweet to tart when they're in the middle there of both and when the pits in the seeds become negligible instead of hard as wood chips- or when a nigra mulberry is just huge and so juicy but still extremely flavorful or maybe you've seen here but I haven't when a fig is so ripe the red pink nectar is oozing out from the bottom hole or when a pomegranate bursts open on the tree from the sun fully ripening it not bursting open from a disease or because of excess rainfall. But yeah, definitely a trend of smaller and sweeter exists I'd say- another common example of that would be the strawberries- they're tiny/mushy not aesthetically pleasing at all compared to grocery store strawberries here looking epic and beautiful... but the taste is something else with the small ones. This phenomenon of not watering the wild fruit (which are usually in not so easy places to go pick the fruit) has a name for it in Iran- "bash" lots of different fruit can be "bash" meaning grown wild in drought like conditions. I suspect the trees are pretty old too. I think pomegranate exists like this too- I've had fig and grapes bash before. All that being said, I've had some of my best fruit experiences here too. I was actually born in Virginia am pretty proud of our watermelon and peaches here :). The mid-Atlantic and South can grow very delicious fruit- I've always been impressed with how good fruit can taste in the U.S. once it's actually grown right instead of bought from a typical grocery store. BTW lots of fruit is now being imported to Iran along the same lines of typical grocery store fruit here and it's messing up the market for good tasting local fruit. I'm afraid in very short time if not already typical Iranian fruit markets will be worse than grocery store fruit here... before they all see the light again and start going old school/eco-friendly/green/homegrown/local/organic what have you like what's happening here.

This time I'm not posting about Gold Coat Peach's scent (which is awesome). Nope. This time I'm posting about how impressed I am with the first inflo I've gotten from this plant. Most of my first inflos have been lackluster and don't produce many blooms or they fall off quickly or even worse I lose the whole inflo. Not so with Gold Coast Peach. This baby is pumping out mega blooms! Love it...hope I didn't just jinx it by posting this. ;) -Robert

Cote d'Or on Labor day! Hi Mike, Thank you! I think we both have late inflos and these should last us through fall. Many more pictures to share until the winter blues kick in haha. Laura, Thank you!! You have lots of beautiful blooms as well! The weather has been unseasonably warm and humid this summer. I think we're very lucky to have so many blooms to share! Fantasia is great! I love the fragrance as well. Also, Robert gave me the gardenia you sent. A big THANK YOU!!! to you! One of the few "gifts" from GW that I will cherish! Hope to see this plant take off! Lynn, Thanks! I will definitely post pictures when my inflos bloom! Hope you have a great growing season! I know you have lots of flowers at your gorgeous new home! Allan, I have a gardenia from Laura for you! Taj Mahal is a great bloomer, it has been blooming for over 2 months! Kenny