In the six years we’ve been at StarField, we’ve harvested a scant handful of plums. The trees set flowers, get visited by a ton of pollinators, make fruitlets, and then sometime in June – just when we’re thinking of all the plums we’re going to get to eat, the tree decides life as a fruit produces is just too stressful and drops nearly all of its plums.
So I moved on. Focused all my love and care on the peach trees. *They* gave me bountiful harvests each August and the plums? Well, I labeled them prima donnas.
And then earlier this year, we had a brutal February deep freeze. Peaches set their flower buds early and without a coating of snow to insulate them, they all died.
There will be no peaches in New England this year.
:sob:
So, I turned my attention back to the plums. While there was some fear that *all* stone fruit would be affected by the February freeze, our plum trees actually set a ton of flower buds. Which meant I had to figure out how to shepherd a crop to ripening.
And no, my plum trees are not prima donnas, they have the dreaded plum curculio. My first salvo in the battle against the destructive beetles is a coating spray of surround – a finely milled kaolin (clay) that acts as an irritant to the beetles and discourages them from laying their eggs.
It’s a bit fiddly to use – it can clog up sprayers, gets all over – and it needs to be sprayed frequently through the season, especially if rain washes off the protection. But it’s not an insecticide and isn’t harmful to pollinators.
So we’ll see.