For years now I have complained about chokecherry as not being suitable
for canning and not suitable for harvesting since the fruit is so small
and pits so large and in fact poisonous if enough swallowed. So
chokecherry was on the borderline of practicallity.

So what changed my mind so abruptly? Well it is because I can utilize
the juice of chokecherry for other canned fruits and then save the
mashed up chokecherry, put in refrigerator and use my mouth and tongue
to separate out the pits. Carry around a small spittoon and so fully
utilize the cherry in the chokecherry.

If you ever seen the juice of chokecherry it is very pretty purple-red.

And the flavor of chokecherry is a good cherry flavor. So when sour
cherries are not available, chokecherry is a good substitute. And they
are easy to pick and easy to prep.

However I have a question about picking chokecherry. Maybe someone knows
what this is. The chokecherry come in what I call "drupes of fruit". And
I noticed on some drupes as if a whitish appearance, sort of like a
spider type webbing. Maybe it is some worm type webbing. It seems to
cover an entire drupe of chokecherries.

So what is this whitish film on chokecherries? Anyone know?

Well apples and pears usually are the bulk of my canning, especially
with cinnamon applesauce. But this year the pears are few, for them
seem to be biennal in production capacity. One year huge, next year
sparse.

The apples are large production this year however, due to hores, llama
and alpaca, I am having to compete for apples. I normally just pick up
fallen apples on the ground, but these animals are cleaning me out
before I get there. And the horse especially. The horse seems to know
what trees are apple trees and makes them the priority rounds of the day.

But there is good news about apple canning. I will have more than enough
apples to can. The bad news is that 75 percent is going to have to be
crabapples. Not much fun in prepping crab apples. But one thing good
about crabapples is that the color of their skin can tell you if ripe
enough.

As for the regular apples, I pick the fallen to the ground ones and
depending on their color I either wait till ripened or cann immediately.
I am adding currants and chokecherry juice to the apples so it is quite
a delicious mix.

All organic.

Hello,

anybody out there knows about using the fertigation way direct to the
soil (not in poly-bags). Size of land 2 acres using to be a rice
field. Any example with pictures of successfull farmers using this
method. How did he do it? I want to grow vegetables.

Advice are wellcome.

Thank you.

My biggest two problems are asparagus and watermelon for next year for
this year was failures in both.

Asparagus-- harvesting is fine and great. Trouble is when mid summer
rolls around and the asparagus
stalks are falling over to the ground and a hassle in trying to mow
around. So what have to do next year
to solve this problem is once the harvesting is ended, I place a big
enough tomato cage over the spears
so that they grow into the wire cage and the cage keeps them upright
throughout the summer.