It has rained for the past few days, which is why we are not in Mississippi. These are the readings on the rain gauges in Baton Rouge for yesterday and this morning. As soon as we get back to the farm, we will check the rain gauges there.
We planted a Muscadine grape vine three times. The first two never grew a leaf. We switched suppliers and the third vine grew about 4 feet over the last year. It looks quite dead now, but when we broke a twig, we saw green. This muscadine is actually a seedless hybrid. It has been crossed with a Muscadine and thin skinned table grapes. It is self pollinating and disease resistant. This vine survived the freeze and should be blooming this spring. It takes four years to mature. There have been no flowers on this vine so far, so maybe this year is the year! The vine looks pretty pitiful to me, so we will read up on helping it thrive.
This is our second year with Cherry Trees and third year with apple trees and fig trees in the Mississippi Delta Area of Mississippi (just 5- 7 miles from the Louisiana – Mississippi state line.) Although the map shows that the growing zone is 8, the tree company said we should think we are in zone 9. Our area does get the recommended “cold days”, but the summers are brutal at the farm. We lost three of the bing cherry trees we planted. A fruit tree expert told us that the cherry trees should have been planted in the fall so they would have time to establish a root system before the summer. We were planting the bing cherries in the summer. Regardless of the reason, we will not try bing cherries again.
We have four Lapins Cherry trees, two pear trees (that are supposed to have five varieties of pears), and three apple trees. The Lapins Cherry are self pollinating. In addition, Preston has supplied us with four fig trees. We also purchased a Persimmon tree from Home Depot. The name of my home town, Plaquemine, is Indian for Persimmon. Plaquemine used to have many Persimmon trees, but you rarely see them now.
Below is a tour of the fruit trees. Although they all look pitiful right now, leaves should start appearing in the next six to eight weeks. Stay tuned for a much better tour in six weeks.