"I just didn't know who to ask for realistic information and not just rumor." Rachel, This is an understandable dilemma. There are lots of people out there that will give you all kinds of wacky advice. It can be difficult for someone new to fruit growing to sift through it all. This forum can be an excellent resource for you. You still have to sift through advice, but with a little effort you can do it successfully. Pay particular attention to some of the seasoned fruit growers like Scott Smith, Harvestman, Fruitnut and others. People like that may not be from your area, but because of experience and reading, have a good intuitive sense of growing fruit. You won't hear nonsense from them. Advice from Extension personnel and Master Gardeners can be very dicey. Patty has had good experiences with both, but many Extension and MG personell don't know what their talking about when it comes to serious home fruit plantings. They are simply giving you secondhand information they read from a book and have no idea what are the real challenges for home fruit growers. Regarding your question about the Bonide Citrus and Nut fruit spray. A quick search reveals that it's nothing special. The active ingredients are sulfur and pyrethrin. Sulfur is an organically listed fungicide that has been used for centuries. It has some insecticidal properties for minor insects like mites. It is less effective than synthetic fungicides, so must be applied more often. Pyrethrin is a naturally occurring insecticide derived and concentrated from chrysanthemums. It has also been around for years and is also less effective than synthetic counterparts and therefore must be applied more often for control. It should be noted that because these substances are natural, doesn't necessarily mean they are safer for applicators. There are synthetic fungicides and insecticides that are safer than both sulfur and pyrethrin. Because your Citrus and Nut spray has an insecticide, you would never want to spray this product at bloom because it would kill pollinating bees. You don't say whether you have sweet cherries or tart cherries. Tart cherries will generally bloom and fruit just fine without worries to blossoms. Sweet cherries are more susceptible to what's called blossom blast. Blossom blast is caused by bacteria working in conjunction with frost. Basically certain bacteria make blossoms more susceptible to frost damage. There are some products available to reduce this damage with variable results, but Citrus and Nut spray will do nothing to prevent blossom blast. Generally speaking, it doesn't make sense for home growers to spray anything at bloom. I would ignore advice to spray your cherry blooms.

Well, look it here! Patty: You almost snuck this one right past me. I was just about to sign off for breakfast when I saw this thread. Wowowowo! I am totally amazed at all the work you have put into that slope. Those trees all look so happy, except the 'Oro' which I think you will figure out of course, and the coloring on them is just delightful! You even have tags and labels in front of them. You could use your Orchard for a learning experience for visitors and kids alike! I would. That yard is just too beautiful to keep to yourself. If anyone needs advice on planting trees in their yards, I know whom I can refer them to if you don't mind. I love that tree that has got white flowers on it. What is that called? Oh teh scene is just inviting! I had to post this one here. I also love the shape of this one! I hope you don't mind me posting it here since if anyone doesn't have the time too look, they won't miss this one:-) Gold Nugget Manderine This tree has such a perfect compact look to it, and so green. Does it smell good? Do you have any trees that give off a delightful fragrance without being in flower? Thank you so much for taking the time to share your babies with us. I hope continue to bring much pleasure to you and the surrounding community. I hope the darn BUGS and fires leave them alone! By the way, that is one fine looking, good sized grapefruit tree you got there for only 5 bucks. Amazing and just a tad jealous here. Bravo Patty!!!! Mike

Just figured I would give an update for everyone. I guess I'll start with the bad news. So far things have been pretty crazy. We got lots of flooding and a good part of the orchard floor has had standing or slightly flowing water for basically all of May. I've had this property for about 8 years and I've only ever seen water flow across it like that once previously. This year it's been several times that we've had quickly flowing 1+ foot deep water in the native grove and part of the improved section. But other than worrying about waterlogged roots, things have seemed fine. But last weekend, we had a frightening amount of water with 3-4 foot deep water with the creek swelled out several hundred feet wide. I looked on the FEMA flood map and we basically had a 100 year flood back their this weekend. Had some of the new Pawnees disappear so I thought the worst when I walked out there the next day. I was sure I was going to find stumps with the grafts ripped off the root stock after basically being submerged under fast flowing water with debris enough to make a cedar tree look like it went through a tornado. I was happy to find that all were still there and even with broken bamboo stakes, all the grafts held. Even a couple of the holes had been scoured out but the tree was still there. I restaked and cleaned them all up and all appear no worse for the wear. So other than alot of clean up that will need to be done, we are good! So far the only casualty has been a wind broken Kanza but I cut off the broken part and made scions out of it. Thankfully the there were a few buds left on the bottom of that which are sending up fresh growth so the tree should recover. Now the good news. I got 10 Lakota scions I've been tinkering with. We grafted 3 of them onto small 1.5in or so natives just to experiment. The scions never really took off but they did slowly start to swell so I hoped the scion was alive. Well three weeks in, two are sending green leaves out and the third looks like it's about to. So I trimmed back the couple native branches I left to throttle things up a bit. I also grafted another larger 3in tree a week or so ago and man you can really see the energy difference. A week later, its buds are starting to break. So Sunday I put on the rubber boots and splashed back out into the native grove and grafted the remaining 6 Lakota scions. Must be the right time of the season for it because both the bark grafts and the couple banana grafts are just starting to show some life so that offers hope that they will bond well. I also grafted a 6in (chest height) tree that was about 18-20' tall I was going to cut out of a group just to see what would happen. There are no native branches left so I don't know if it will kill it or send the scion up like a rocket but it was a curiosity anyway. So at this point, despite some extra work and some worry about the water standing in the orchard from nearly daily rains, things are going well.

Hi Cori, Thanks for the tip on the pollinator. I usually get somewhere between 500-600 chill hours in S. San Jose, sometimes more depending on the year. I've never had any troubles getting my Baby Crawford peach trees to produce fruit in my backyard, even though the stated chill hour requirement is 800 hrs. I'm sure having the other peach varieties helps with pollination quite a bit. With respect to chill hours, the only fruit variety which I think really DOES need the rated chill hours (or more) are cherries. Most of the other stone fruits, like peaches, apricots, plums, etc, if you're in the ballpark of the necessary chill hours, they'll produce fruit. My experience is the chill hour requirement is a rough gauge, not a hard and fast rule, but others may have experienced something different. The BC blossoms are pinkish-white, definitely not the deep red of Red Baron. You can get easily get BC from a lot of places - Peaceful Valley Farm, Bay Laurel, etc. I have loamy clay soil in my backyard and Citation tends to do well for me with this soil, which is the predominant peach rootstock I have (some are on Nemaguard). Baby Crawford does naturally tend to produce a somewhat smaller tree, so if I had to do it over again, I would have gotten the BC peach trees on Nemaguard, but I'm happy with what I have. Getting the Cal Red peach tree is another matter all together. I've been trying to get a Cal Red peach tree for at least the last 5-6 years. To my knowledge, it's only grown by Burchell Nursery and has historically only been available to commercial orchards. The Cal Red is listed on Tomorrow's Harvest website, which I believe is the retail arm of Burchell, but the tree is not in stock - they did not produce any trees last year, and may not produce any for the foreseeable future (I've inquired and I keep checking every year - lol). https://www.tomorrowsharvest.com/store/fruit-trees/peach-freestone.html