What fruits did you eat today?

I know what you mean on KD. The word I thought of was effervescent. I had a couple damaged ones that had good sugar. The unblemished ones were very tart. Maybe I needed to let the hang a lot longer. Are you getting a few mealy ones suggesting that it would be bad to let them hang?

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I had a couple that were mushy and a couple that were damaged and they were pretty sweet. These are my first KD so more hang time might improve the taste.

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I have been enjoying some Paradise white peaches, it’s the first harvest on my second-leaf tree. It’s kind of a local Northern California variety, did not see any mention of it anywhere else. They ripen in mid-August here, large size, very juicy, excellent classic white-peach flavor. Very little color on the skin so birds seem to ignore them. Also, they don’t hang on the tree, drop the moment they’re ripe. Flesh still firm when fully ripe.

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Nice looking fruit. The only pawpaw I have tasted was as a young boy. Yours looks much better than the the one I remember and does look like a mango. I’m guessing that the taste is different than a mango.

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It doesn’t taste like a mango, it is a fruit that I have a hard time describing. It is a very polarizing fruit, you either like it or you don’t and in my experience most people don’t. If you are like me and do like them you can’t eat much, one per day is my max. They have an aftertaste that can stay with you for some time. I was recommended Wabash because it doesn’t have much of that aftertaste and after trying them these last two years I would agree.
The down side of the fruit is not being able to eat much at one time combined with large quantities of fruit with a very short shelf life.
The up side is you can freeze the pulp and make great ice cream and pawpaw nut bread. People that don’t like the fresh fruit will usually really like these.

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My dad was kind enough to give me a couple of the ~1 dozen Williams Pride apples off of his tree.

I’ve been eating my way through 5 lbs of Pristine apples I bought, but these Williams Pride beat the socks off of their cousin (by breeder) Pristine. This one had a little core damage possibly from an attempted attack by codling moth, but otherwise was good. Nice sweet, aromatic flavor. No red tinge to the flesh on these, but some sweetness-enhancing water core in this specimen.

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According to the label this should be an elephant heart plum. The visual description matches, but I am confused because I didn’t expect it to ripen for several weeks. However, the plums have been falling to the ground so I have no choice. Can anyone confirm this variety? The taste is a little off, although when very soft the flavor improves and I am wondering if there is an issue with the tree. The tree will get the axe if this is what it is going to be.

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That could be Elephant Heart Plum.When was the tree planted?
The taste is a little off in what way?That could improve after a few seasons. Brady

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When I was in PA, Gettysburg area (zone 6?) the first week of August, I bought some Elephant heart plums. The skin was brighter red than yours but the flesh looked similar. It was meaty. Not very sweet but those were store bought so they probably were not fully ripe when picked.

Since you are a zone warmer, I think your ripening time was right.

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It tasted fairly bitter. I am wondering if the fruit does poorly in the heat. We have had a number of days above 100 and too many to count in the 90s. Any recommendations on a pluot when I chop it down? I have flavor king and flavor supreme. Oh, and the tree was planted 3 years ago.

Had a Toka plum that hit 21 brix yesterday, delicious. I also got to try my first Prunus Americana wild plum. Based on descriptions, I expected sour skin and generic sweetness inside, but the inside was actually very good. 17 brix with a nice, bright fruity flavor. The skin, however, was thick and too astringent for me to eat. I’ve been using organza bags to catch the plums when they drop. This has allowed me to let most of my plums get as ripe as they can get this year.

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Had several different varieties of muscadines, Asian pears, and apples. The one surprise was the Korean Giant. In our area a few start ripening this early and continue for several weeks. When it is ripe you have a massive size fruit that is juicy and sweet. Great walking tour at Petals.

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I tried my first Zestar! apple today. Notes below:

From Holmberg’s retail store 8/19/18. Exceptionally sweet, mildly subacid. Crisp. Some bites more acidic than others. Mild aroma. [1 year old] was very excited when she tasted it and wanted more, [3 year old] didn’t want a second bite. Seeds were partially white. Under-ripe? If so, VERY impressive sweetness. Wife disagrees with me, says it tastes sour.

Of course, I do not have the palate and experience most of you all have but all in all, I think it’s a contender to be grafted to a mother tree (once established) so that we can have a continuous apple harvest.

I also bought some Ginger Gold apples and Coralstar peaches, but have not tried them yet.

Edit: Coralstar’s a winner. More on the acidic side, which is fine by me. It’s the best peach I’ve had (the only good peach I’ve had) since we moved back north from South Carolina. Every supermarket peach I’ve tried has been absolutely terrible. I might just put Coralstar it in the ground next year, but I’ll have to learn more about it.

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Zestar has a long picking window, I had one two weeks ago that was good and I had one today also good. But I don’t think they will be at their best for a few more weeks. They get super fruity and aromatic when they are fully ripe.

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That’s good to know. Sounds like it’d be worth buying more Zestars in a couple of weeks to see how they’re coming along up here.

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Heres a few good things I am harvesting now:

The biggest surprise is the pear, Urbaniste. This guy was taking a long time to fruit and I had topworked a bunch of things on to it while waiting but it finally rewarded me. Its similar to Magness, rich and juicy, but a touch more rich than Magness. So far its smaller by a good amount.

The peaches left to right are Athena, Sanguine Tardeva, and Early Crawford. The Sanguine Tardeva is my favorite of these three, its like Indian Free but earlier (and bigger and less prone to rots etc). Early Crawford often rot from the inside and are small and often mealy, but the flavor is good. The Athena is an excellent honey peach, they are more mild like a melon.

My “Pixie Crunch” ended up being some really big sour apple, my wife cut one up for dinner. I noticed it tasted like Canada Reinette which I used to have … then I looked it up and sure enough the “Pixie Crunch” was grafted to my old Canada Reinette tree – oops! I’m glad in a way its back, that variety is one of the very best cooking apples. It was getting bad blight back when that was a problem; the new tree is doing fine blight-wise.

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Baby Crawford Peach!!! 17 brix and amazing! Best peach I grow and probably the best flavor I have ever tasted in a peach. It’s between this and my flavor king for my current favorite peice of fruit. It’s like eating essence of peach

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Sounds amazing!

Zestar are some of the varieties being picked now at an orchard we visit (central KY), along with Sansa, Honeycrisp, Macs and Ginger Gold, among others. Seems a bit early, they prob will be best in a couple weeks.

We really like Zestar from the orchard, so much so that we planted one (G30) last year, but don’t think we’ll get any fruit off it next year, still not quite big enough.

We also have a Coralstar that’s been in the ground since '16, and still is only 4ft tall (bad soil). Our Contender peach was planted last year, and is about 5ft tall, doing very well. They and our other two peaches bloomed this year, but got zapped by freezes. Maybe next year we’ll get lucky. Or not.

I’m eating and canning my Contender peaches. They were very small about a month ago with very little rain. Since then we have had several really good days of rain between last month and now. There were 3 1/2-4 bushels of peaches off of two semi dwarf trees this year. They were so dark this year they looked black in the trees. Almost looked like black plums from a distance. VERY juicy too.

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