Re: Washington update It's Summertime!
- Subject: Re: Washington update It's Summertime!
- From: K* &* C* M*
- Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 12:27:19 -0700
Chris
I also have the 916. Looks to be very compact plant started the 1st
polliating and have 15 or so set. Round fruit 19 1/2 and 20 inches at
ten days on the oldest. Very prolific plant. Let me know how it goes.
Ken
Turkeyman
2turkey@juno.com
On Tue, 13 Jul 1999 14:21:04 -0700 "Michalec, Chris" <cmicha@chmc.org>
writes:
> Summer has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwet. The plants are
>responding to the warm weather as expected and getting crisped.
>Someone
>pass the sunscreen. We had a couple days in the 90's this past
>weekend
>just in time for the first females to be pollinated. We'll see how
>that
>went. I'm now pollinating every day. The first plant that had a
>female
>ready was the smallest, that is the 916 LaRue 97 and it was with a
>nice 5
>lobe female pollinated at 10 feet out
>on the main vine on July 7. The plants are almost 2 weeks behind
>where they
>were last year. It may all even out though as
>I lost all the fruit I set early last year. Many females daily now on
>all
>three plants. Pollinated three on the 769 Mettler this am, a couple
>more on
>the LaRue and 5 on the Mombert. There are so many females ready I
>only am
>using two to three males for each one. As for the leaf burn there
>isn't
>much I could do about it. When you go from constant daytime highs in
>the
>60's with a lot of cloud cover to bright sunshine and 90's with no
>transition the plants don't handle it well. The one that suffered the
>most
>was the 759 Mombert 97. This plant is so large though I don't think
>it will
>matter much in the long run.
>
>One question I have for other list members regards vine pruning. The
>Mombert plant is a very aggressive grower with large leaves on the
>main
>every foot or less. With secondaries coming off at these junctions
>and
>leaves getting close to two feet across it is very crowded the
>secondaries
>are crowding each other quite a bit and I'm pinching all tertiaries
>when
>they are quite small. Would I be losing much by pruning off some of
>these
>secondaries? There is no way I will be able to set fruit on all of
>them as
>they would be growing on top of each other in no time. What is the
>best
>approach to this? Should I cut every other one? Wait until fruit are
>set
>and determine which ones I'll keep and remove the secondaries on
>either
>side? Or perhaps just terminate some of them at the point where the
>begin
>to get in the way or too crowded and bury the ends? I have
>secondaries
>already at 15' and they are reaching the boundaries of my plot.
>Letting
>them grow into my neighbors plot
>or out onto the lawn is not an option. I grow my plants in a county
>pea-patch garden. I thought driving 9 miles each way to my garden was
>a
>nuisance until I hear some of the other stories lately.
>
>With the arrival of the warmer weather the patch has kept me very
>busy
>lately. It's been a real challenge keeping up with vine burying,
>pruning,
>pollinating and watering. But the more time I spend working in the
>patch
>the more optimistic I become about the prospects this year. Even
>though we
>went through a prolonged cool spring we haven't had to deal with
>extreme
>heat, thunderstorms with hail and damaging winds, vine borers, or
>cucumber
>beetles (yet). I just hope that I'll be able to make some selections
>as to
>which fruit I will keep on the plants prior to my vacation that starts
>the
>22nd. I was disappointed to here that Nic will be away as my
>destination is
>just a few miles from him in Ohio. I'll be unsubscribing for the
>period I
>am away and will check the archives when I return. Keep them growing
>everyone.
>
>Chris Michalec
>Covington, WA
>
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