What a beauty.
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I think it’s Fred’s Tie Dye.
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A mix of Lapins and Rainier sweet cherries. Made a cherry cake yesterday, and will look into jam and pie this week. Froze some (pitted), and eating as many as possible out of hand while they are available.
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adorbs!
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I’m having a great season with most things here in Northern California not far from Sacramento , but I’m concerned about what’s going on with these Flavor Grenade pluots.
My three stonefruit (Blenheim apricots, Flavor Grenade and Dapple Dandy pluots) are all in containers on a sport court, on twice daily drip irrigation, got sprayed twice with oil in the dormant season, fed with a granular fertilizer once or twice, had a longer blossoming season, more vigorous growth, and more fruit set than usual. They are about 5 years old, and are both winter and summer pruned; the summer pruning to keep them smaller. I have not done any root pruning.
I have seen a few stink bugs on the Dapple Dandy, and on a tomato plant grown nearby.
The tomatoes have had some aphids whitefly.
So far I have limited my pest management to weekly sprays of water, which in our usually hot, dry climate, is recommended for integrated pest management.
My biggest problems are usually drought, intense dry heat and sun, aphids, thrips, spider mites, and stink bugs.
The Dapple Dandies are few, but fairly pristine. (I don’t usually get any)
These Flavor Grenade pluots seem larger than usual, but have one or two kinds of scars. One I’m fairly certain is from thrips.
But what could this be?
I’m thinking an insect with sucking or rasping mouth parts, maybe injecting something in the process. I am hoping it’s not bacterial.
P.S. I know they would be better off in the ground, and the fruit density is too high on the branches, but maybe not the tree.
@bogman ; I don’t want to abuse the privilege, but if you are o<t there somewhere, any thoughts?
P.S. If this is not my usual “voice”, it’s because I copied and pasted some of it from “Growing Fruit”, another forum.
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Happy to help when possible!
The damage looks a lot like early stages of brown rot, Monilinia species. If the fruits later develop a brown, powdery spore mass, that’s the culprit. Monilinia typically favors humid, wet conditions. It can attack fruit tree flowers, too. It’s primarily a pest of stone fruits. You can’t grow peaches here, in VA without fungicides to control it.
There are powdered sulfur fungicides, which avoid the use of more toxic fungicides. However, sulfur can burn, damage plants if applied when it’s very hot. It’s stinky stuff, but washes off fruits easily with a little dish soap added to the wash water.
What’s very important is to remove any fruit that’s infected before tons of spores are generated.
If the fruit develops grey, clustered spore bodies, the culprit is likely Botrytis. Rhizopus can also infect fruit, but Monilinia is by far the most common. The only thing which is different in your case is that Monilinia typically covers more of the fruits, larger patches. The pictures show smaller lesions than is typical for Monilinia. The lesions resemble bacterial infection.
In any case, spraying water on the trees will make the infections worse. If you want to get more information, you could put one fruit, with symptoms, in a very tightly-sealed plastic bag and look for spores to develop. If spores develop, don’t open the bag, just note the color.
Taking some samples to the local agricultural extension service is the best bet. There are a LOT of potential troublemakers which attack stone fruits.
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Where I live, the Asian beetles do some similar damage. Very protective of my apples.
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Thank you both! @bogman I will try the bag test. Nothing yet that looks like spores. As you know, it is anything but humid here! I have had what might have been a fungus once. That was on a tomato plant, and so many things went wrong that year, including a wild fire in my backyard!
Taking it to an extension office is also a good idea. I have a feeling that’s the master gardener office! I scoured all of the UC Davis information, but don’t remember reading fungal stuff. I’m going to look today.
FWIW, I have not sprayed the trees, just the bottom of my tomato plants, and it seems to have done a good job reducing spider mites. I wrote about that in my last MG article!
It did rain once; I think around June 12th, the first time since around mid-April, and we did have a lot of rain when they were flowering. I didn’t think they would get pollinated because it was raining so much, but I didn’t see any signs of disease. We have also had a relatively cool spring; only about 5 days over 95, and not above 100 until July.
Those are some wild looking insects! Oh wait; those look like lady bugs. I have seen a yellow one that might have been an Asian beetle. I was thinking of these large, iridescent beetles that I see when I’m in the south in the summer.
ETA This one; A “Japanese Beetle”, (Popillia japonica)
We grow five varieties of high-bush blueberries: Superior, Patriot, Toro, Duke and Bluecrop. They’ve just started to come in. My mother would keep each variety seperate on her counter, every dish labeled with a small note as to which variety it was. I mix them all up.
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haha.
Looks like a fig beetle, which gloms onto any nearly ripe fruit. They’re awful, but fun to smack with a tennis or racquetball racquet. If you end up having grubs in your potting soil, it may well be them.
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Thanks! I’ve never seen those iridescent beetles here; I’ve seen them when visiting family in Georgia and North Carolina.
Japanese Beetles are terrible here. They’ve been bad on the east coast since I was a little kid. We have to have a special permit to ship plants to CA and other “category one” states. First the permit was for the beetles; then for Gypsy Moth (now “Spongy Moth”). Now it also includes Spotted Lanternfly, the latest Chinese pest introduction. We’re suffering massive forest damage thanks to terrible enforcement of quarantine laws and Chinese shippers sending us pests, which escape from containers or are hiding in the wood of pallets and boxes. All the Ash Trees (Fraxinus sp.) here recently died from infestations of the Emerald Ash Borer. Whole forests wiped out from a pest that came in inside of untreated wooden pallets, which were supposed to be heat-treated. So far, the US has been sent:
•Asian Marmorated Stink Bug-thousands will infest our house if I don’t coat the outside with insecticide. A serious pest of agriculture.
•Asian Longhorned beetle-destroys numerous forest tress. Also arrived in pallets.
•Emerald Ash borer-mentioned above
•Asian Ladybug, Lady beetle-infests houses as cold weather arrives. bites people. It has wiped out native Lady Beetles in our area, causing aphid and pest explosions early in the spring. Before the stink bug arrived, I was spraying the house to control these. After bombing the house with pyrethrin gas, I vacuumed up 4 gallons (3.8 L) of the dead insects inside the house.
•Spotted Lanternfly- has ruined vineyards farther north of here and is now all around us, in surrounding counties. I’ve seen pictures where you can’t see a tree trunk because it’s shingled with these pests, a solid layer.
Unfortunately, proper inspection and enforcement isn’t practical, given the volume of imports from China. The problem needs to be addressed at the export side. Some plagues arrive from people smuggling plants or animals. The boxwood blight came into the US via an illegal transport from Europe. Who knows where the Asian Longhorned tick came from; but, it was likely on an animal. Asian Tiger mosquitoes arrived in water, trapped in old tires headed to a re-treading company. In most cases, the origins of a new pest can be determined by genetic testing or point-of-origin mapping. In other cases, origins remain a mystery. We’re battling an insane number of invasive pests here, and they’re spreading like fire.
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Terrifying. So sad that people don’t understand why the rules apply to them, although individuals may not be the biggest threat. I hate to hurt feelings when family gives me things to bring “home” to California, but I try to be careful.
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