Fruit crops are coming in. Some good and some not so good.

A fair grape crop if the raccoons had left them alone.

Swenson Red grapes

Grape jams and tomato sauce.

Apples aren't quite ready yet. One or two cold nights should sweeten them up. 

 We have dried (dehydrated) the dropped fruit and have several large jars of crispy apple treats.

The plums didn't fair well this year. The crop was small and some fruit was infected with "Brown Rot".

The apples are almost ready. One or two cold nights should do it.

This is what we have from the cherry crop. Cherry Cordial. Thanks to the expert advise, guidance and recipe from our friends Ed and Terry. A great sweet w..a..r..ming after dinner sipping treat.

This generally wasn't a great growing year this year. Everyone seems to have had smaller or no crops at all. Our vegetable garden was horrible. Tomatoes either didn't set fruit or the fruit that set didn't ripen. The squash performed as usual. One or two edible fruits. Most set then wither on the vine.   Green beans were slow but might be the highlight of the year. We are still getting small helpings every few days from the pole beans.

One very notable observation IMO.  I saw very few if any honeybees foraging. Even with sunflowers and other aromatic flowers the bees weren't here. Although neither were the yellowjackets. Their numbers were also small. Of course weather might explain both of these observations. 

We had an early warm start. We had early flowering but just at their peak we had a cold rainy (sleet) few days. The interrupted flowering cycle might explain the low crops on the fruit trees. 

The most discouraging event of the growing season was the infection of our Mount Royal plum tree. Although it did result in me making a new friend at the UW Madison Plant Pathology lab.  Thanks Brian H.

Brown Rot