June 05, 2006
Summer!
It's summer. Not officially yet - I think Yerevanians declare summer when the temps hit 40 degrees. But the sun is shining all the time, and over the weekend, our cherries just sucked up all the heat and turned into this:
Yummy!
The mulberries are just as I remembered them from my childhood in Istanbul: mainly sweet.
We are looking forward to masses of walnuts in the fall:
Since our landlord doesn't approve of pesticides (and we don't either), this year the apricots yielded to some sort of horrible disease:
(Mama? Wonach sieht das denn aus?)
I'm sure there are gentle alternatives that can be applied but those will have to wait until next year (until my mom has educated me on the subject). However, at least the apricots are still there. Our figs have just disappeared and that one baffles me. There were quite a few of them and then, there weren't. Not a trace of them left. What the hey? Have they been abducted by aliens? Birds? Ants? It seems odd.
Posted by claudia at June 5, 2006 07:33 AMI've got peaches and nectarines. Any discoloration or spotting on the leaves?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at June 5, 2006 05:51 PMWell, they look gnawed. Can you see it in the picture? They have holes in them.
Btw, I saw the same brown spots on some cherries that we bought on the market. It doesn't seem to bother the cherries much, and maybe the apricots will be tasty if ugly. I been looking up different diseases but nothing seems to fit. Of course, it could be two things eating away at that tree - some kind of insect devours the leaves and a fungus of some sort attacks the fruit. The sap on one of the apricots is a bit mysterious.
I feel like the protagonist of a detective story. Who did it? And why? And how did the victim die? I bet, in the end, I'll find out it was the cook...
Posted by: claudia at June 5, 2006 06:12 PMLooks like bugs, at first guess, but I agree that more than one problem might be present. Are they full-size trees or dwarfs? The presence of sap would not be uncommon for young dwarf trees, but if you have full-size it could be bacterial canker.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at June 5, 2006 08:03 PM