Spartan this is all fantastic! I am so happy for you as we all know that some years (like mine this year) can be quite thin. I didn't know you could freeze sour cherries? It all sounds great! Mrs. G

spartan-apple,

This is great to hear, especially after last year.
I hope you thinned your fruits appropriately so you wont get sucked into biennial bearing next year.

-Eric

I hear you man! I've got a tree full of Seckel and I think i'll use my converted chest freezer that i can set at 34F to store them once they are ready.

I'll be honest...i'm getting sick of stonefruit. I just sent probably 30 pounds of plums to my wife's work.

Yes, it's been an abundant year. Started getting a small crop of apricots and now I'm actually getting a crop of Hollywood plums and discovering that I like them quite well.

Thinking of getting yet another refrigerator.

MrsG=

I prefer frozen cherries to fresh. They are awesome. I can tell that a lot of people like them because the grocery store i buy them at always seems to run out of the frozen sweet cherries and nothing else.

This also is a great year for me as well. All trees loaded but I didnt thin enough!!! small fruit but plenty. Peaches were tasty but all small. I picked bartlett early due to schedule issues and they are about as close to normal as I get. Just a touch smaller than they should be.

Glad others are having a good year.

Megamev:

Your point on thinning is good advise. I always thin my peaches at least once in mid-june and often do a second thinning a week later to correct leaving too many on.

This year was crazy as the apples and pears had 2-3 fruits set per cluster so they needed thinning too. My daughter and I spend about 1.5 hours per tree hand thinning each tree. We quit after thinning only once. No time to go back a second round.

My peaches could have been thinned better for bigger fruit size but the flavor is good.

My biggest issue is not having refrigeration for all the fruit. We got a new refrigerator two years ago. The old one was fine but my wife decided it was no good since I owned it before we were married. All married men know that anything you had before marriage will disappear soon afterwards as the ladies like to shop.

Anyway I wanted to keep the "old refrigerator " just for fruit but my wife forgot and had the delivery people take it away.

Time to can, freeze or share the crop with those we can.

June drop didn't materialize here on my apples. Trees are way loaded.

It's actually getting me worried. Next week supposed to be in the 90s. That will bring the Stanley plums ripe, and the Galas are a week away from picking. I'm eating them off the tree already.

Harvest refrigerator is full of vegetables!

[do they rent refrigerators?]

Yup, awesome year, nice recovery after the barren year 2012. Trees are groaning, weather perfect. Apples are small, "lunch box" size, which is perfect for me.

Even though we had frost on May 13, there are still lots of fruit on some trees. Had abundant crop of Balaton cherries, have harvested Kuban Delight plum for the first time; only 10 plums on Starking Delicious, and superfluity right now on Superior plum. Barlett pear is loaded as is the graft on same tree, Harrow Delight. Of note: there are frost rings on Bartlett but not on Harrow Delight. Apples with a few tip bearing fruit: Golden Delicious and Mutsu. Florina, a graft on Hawkeye , is loaded, Pixie Crunch is loaded and Keepsake is loaded. Hawkeye has a Honeycrisp graft with 10 apples (Hooray!) and Grimes Golden graft with a dozen apples. Lodi is harvested and 11 quarts of applesauce made; graft on Lodi, Arlet is holding about 6 apples. Also Jonathan is loaded and I'm so glad. After 2012, I'm feeling greedy.

My Stanley plums are waiting for some warm temps that they'll get this week with the 90's predicted. Peaches galore on my Belle of Georgia, many waiting to fully ripen in boxes...had to pick due to birds pecking away at them. Domestic raspberries were totally awesome as were the wild black raspberries. Apples a bit sparse on our young apple trees but hope for better harvest as they mature in years to come.

Now our bartlett pear is a whole different story. Fire blight set in early in the season and is that stuff ever mean. No pears to harvest this year from that young tree..just hoping it survives.

Only a few cherries on our Meteor and none on the bing cherry tree. In fact, have never seen a berry on the bing. Are they male and female, or do I just have to wait a few years for it to mature and bear fruit? Beautiful, tall, willowy tree but no fruit since planting it.