Mulberries, pastures and pears

 It is difficult to over-state how attractive Illinois Everbearing Mulberries are to wildlife.

I know what you are thinking: "I have mulberry trees and I don't see what the big deal is."

I also have other mulberry trees. They ripen a ton of berries in the space of a week or so. Then the bland, insipid berries fall on the ground.

Because so much fruit is ripening over such a short time, the tree lacks the ability (leaf area and time) to photosynthesize enough sugar to make them very sweet.

Illinois Everbearing, on the other hand, ripens fruit over six-to-eight weeks. There is no single, big fruit dump. There are always some ripe or almost-ripe berries in the IEM and they are sweet! Not "seem sweet because there is no tartness to balance it" but they truly are sweet.

That comes at a time when there is not a lot of competition. We have both red and black raspberries ripening but nothing like the sheer poundage carried by a single IEM tree.

And I have a bunch of them grafted around the homestead. One over the dog run, two in an opening in the White Pines, an even half-dozen on the west side of the pasture and several more scattered about the place where a mulberry seedling sprang up.

IEM calls in squirrels, raccoons, possum, orioles, starlings, robins...... and they will undoubtedly call in wild hogs when they show up here.

Speaking of pastures...

Did you hear about the dummy who left the back gate open when he let the calves into the fresh paddock.

It was raining the other day and rather than try to squeeze between the gate and the hot-wire, I cut the baling twine holding the gate shut. We are high-class around here. Nothing but top-end hardware.

I promptly forgot that I had left the gates open. Both the one to the back paddocks and the one that opens off-property.

The calves were in the shade in the back pasture. I closed the gate that led off-property and will collect the calves later on.

Thinning apples

I had a few apple trees that had too heavy of a fruit load for the leaf area. Mrs ERJ and I thinned them out by hand.

I figured the first tree could ripen 20 or 30 pounds of fruit so we thinned it to about 40 apples.

The second tree we pruned all of the thin, whippy branches that had been dragged into the shade by the weight of the apples they were carrying. That went much faster.

The third one Mrs ERJ wanted to do as an experiment. I always gripe about the Liberty trees dropping a quarter of their crop. The fruit has short stems and where there are doubles and triples, fruit is going to get pushed off before it ripens. We selected a Liberty tree and thinned all doubles and triples we could find.

The last tree we thinned was a Winecrisp that is runting-out. We took off at least 3/4 of the fruit.

Pears

I have a friend in southwestern Missouri and she loses her pear crop to frost on a frequent basis. 

With the magic of the internet, I found at least one high-quality, dessert pear that blooms a full week after Bartlett. Like many older varieties, it has several names.

Belle Lucrative a.k.a Fondante D'Automne

This good old pear has been a standard autumn sort for nearly a century. The internal characters of both flesh and flavor are nearly perfect, but externally much more might be desired as to shape and size. In flesh and flavor, the fruits are of the Bergamot type -- fine-grained, buttery, juicy, and sugary, with a musky taste and perfume. The fruits are not as large as is desirable, and are variable in shape and color, external defects which a rather handsome color offsets in part. The trees are more satisfactory than the fruits. They bear enormously and almost annually on either standard or dwarfing stocks; they are very vigorous, with a somewhat distinct upright-spreading habit of growth; are hardier than the average variety of this fruit and are rather more resistant to blight than the average variety. The fruits are too small for a good commercial product, but their delectable flavor and luscious flesh make them as desirable as any other pear for home use; besides which the trees grow so well, and are so easliy managed that the variety becomes one of the very best for the home planter.  -U.P. Hedrick Pears of New York, 1921

Underlining is mine. 

Now to find a source of scionwood. Trees of Antiquity sells this variety as a completed tree but scionwood is much cheaper.

She will also need a pollinator. Hoskins looks like a decent bet. It came from Tennessee so it should handle Missouri's climate well.

Introduced in 1954. Seckel x Late Faulkner; crossed in 1938; tested as Tennessee 38S10. Fruit: size medium; roundish obovate, pyriform, sides unequal; skin medium thick and medium tough, dull, light yellow blushed and mottled with russet; dots many, large, russetted and conspicuous; core size medium; flesh white often tinged with pink, fine-grained, melting, juicy; flavor subacid to sour, sprightly, good; ripens 25 September - 7 October in Clarksville, Tennessee. Tree: large; vigorous; spreading; fire blight resistant.

---Added later---

This gentleman, Anton Callaway, grew both of these pears in the Southeast and wasn't impressed with either one. His notes are HERE. Well worth the read if you want to grow pears where they have good college football teams.