Shame about your apple tree! Mine are LOADED this season and that’s why I’ve been diligent on the watering in this drought season. Honey Crisp, Liberty, Bonnie Best and Haralson. All good for eating fresh, pies and applesauce.
Dear Old Mom has decided she’s buying me an apple peeler/corer for my birthday so I am on the hunt for the best one out there.
While I planted a variety of grapes, they’ve all converted back to the everyday purple grapes. I think rabbits did some ‘pruning’ for me a few years back and they’re all just coming up from the root stock (most likely ‘King of the North’) that the other varieties were grafted to. It’s always something! But those grapes are just fine for juice, jelly and fresh eating. Good seed-spitting practice, LOL!
One year my BIL found a stash of wild grapes near where he worked. He was a car salesman and he worked near our ‘Beltline’ which is the major 4-lane highway that goes around the city.
He made jelly from it and called it ‘Traffic Jam.’ ;)
The tree that broke came from Stark Bros. They still have it listed in their catalog. If none of the cuttings take root I’ll buy another one.
I’ve got two gala, one fuji, and one braeburn. They are all loaded. It was such a dry spring here that I started watering them the first week of May. That turned out to be a good move. The jet stream is back where it belongs now and we’ve gotten some rain - another storm rolling through this morning. With any luck I’ll have a bumper crop come fall.
SIL lost a chicken last night. The hens roost high in the rafters so whatever it was had a climb to get to them. It was eaten on the coop floor - critter could not get it out of the coop.
The coop is very secure - wire buried all around, 2x4 inch wire covering ‘windows’. We went around the entire coop looking for any place a raccoon or possum could have gotten in - nothing. The coop has an automatic door & it worked properly last night- closes at dusk when the hens roost & opens after sunrise.
My fear is we have something like a weasel that can squeeze through the wire. Never had one before, but there’s always a first time.
My new ‘easy set’ live trap is now set outside the chicken pen, baited with sardines. The sardines are in an open can, under the trap floor, behind the trip plate. The wire on that end of the trap has smaller openings to prevent ‘reaching in’. We also put in plastic tent stakes around the trap to keep ‘whatever’ from moving the trap off the bait. Fingers crossed we get the chicken killer.