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Bluegold's fall leafs are more maroon, my other blueberries are brighter red

I love the fall colors blueberry bushes bring to my yard, Darrow is especially vibrant this year.

Has a nice golden yellow fall color

This one is coming into producing a good number of figs, I feel like the LSU tiger is maybe at the borderline for seattle, it's about as late as I'd want to have a fig come ripe, any later and you're likely to get water logged, flavorless figs. LSU Tiger for me has often just gotten the figs in before weather turns bad, and that's been late September/Early October. I bet we'll lose half of the crop to bad weather this year. Where you look at something like Ronde de Bordeaux, we are harvesting almost the entire crop, we are still getting lots of figs right now but we'll end up harvesting most, if not all of the figs from that tree, certainly more ideal main crop timing on that tree, but you can't beat LSU tiger on its sweetness, it's so sweet.

We're starting to see some fall colors, one or the reasons people plant vine maple, besides that it's an easy to grow, compact, native tree, is they usually have good fall colors, but I've heard some strains aren't as good as others. This one so far hasn't been stellar, but it's young and has shown some signs of good color, I'll try to journal it's colors this fall.

More and more figs, it's been a big crop off RDB this fall

Starting to hit its stride, this fig has had a tough skin this year, which it didn't have last year, but flavor is great.

Figs are really coming in now, they taste better to me too

First ripe main crop, so good, VBD this year has just been my favorite fig variety in terms of flavor.

This is also the first fig I've ever gotten off these grafts so I'm not going rate its flavor yet, it was only ok.

It would have been a little earlier but the first ripe one got snagged by something

These are so good, I find these to be superior to the villarica variety so far in terms of flavor.

First main crop, taste pretty good, sweet and good flavor

Yesterday something took every ripe and even slightly ripe fig off this tree, maybe about 10 figs, didn't see the culprit because it happened mid day I'd guess birds or squirrels

Lots of rain last night and RDB figs cracked a swelled up a bit

Scale bugs with their ant friends

This one loses its leafs before the other varieties I have

With rain moving in we picked the last of the plums, they are very sweet in the late season

Next to the RDB you can see how thick the skin is on these, but the MBVS taste better to me. Still not as good as I remember them from our old potted MBVS that I got rid of, but this one was better than the first.

It seems ripe, no sap when picked, but I still haven't had a RDB I'm crazy about, maybe it needs to get more ripe

Nice, taste great, smaller than the breba but taste similar, I like this fig and it's main crop came in nice and early, our second earliest of our fig varieties this year

These taste pretty good, I'm calling them ready

First main crop fig and it's just ok, we had a lot of rain recently and that maybe why the flavor was not the best, it seems like rain and cold makes the skin mushy on figs and the flavor pretty watery. It was the first fig from this graft and I'm sure they'll get better.

Looking good, the Berry's on this one are bright red. I tried one, it wasn't bad but I think it will get better, not counting it as first fruit.

Starting to get a few

I started holding out hope for a main crop fig in August in Seattle, it got pretty close, with this one grown against a south facing fense, but not quite.

More berries

Last I checked this tree was full of nuts, maybe in the hundreds, now I don't see a single one, I wonder who the culprit is here? I'll need to put up a camera next year I think.

My first Italian harvest where couldn't eat them all fresh and we needed to dry them, still got a lot left on the tree

Not quite ripe enough for me, but the kids love em so we're breaking into them

Good flavor, we only got two plums from this graft this year.

Oblong shape, and larger than the Italian plums

Sometimes it's easy to miss the green gages on the tree, these ones were overly ripe

Last peach of the summer, it was very good.

Fall/Second harvest is kicking in.

It is somewhat absurd how productive the Italian Prune is in our region, it's amazing how one tree produces so much fruit. While some of my other plums may beat it in flavor it's hard to beat it in productivity.

This is the first time I've noticed an insect larvae in a plum, not sure what it is

These are closer to what I'd consider a classic mirabelle plum. Small yellow plum, first one I had was nothing to write home about, but this was the first from this graft and they might need to ripen more. But so far just a so so fresh eating plum

This makes a very big plum, not exactly what I imagine when I think of mirabelles

A few berries left, they are incredible, so sweet. We definitely need to wait longer to harvest these, we jump in when they turn blue but they are flavorless early on, come August these guys are amazing

The flavor of these has dramatically improved, just reminds me to wait until August to pick blueberries, they get so much sweeter.

Picked our first peach, it smelled good and looked good but I think I slightly jumped the gun in my excitement, not calling it ready, it wasn't bad but wasn't there yet.

First and only VBD breba, these were grafted the spring 2025. What a tasty fig!

Lots of nuts on the tree, also noticed the stellar's jay hanging about for the first time this morning. He's come to inspect the harvest.

These are huge and really tasty

Breba is complete

These seemed a little stalled. I added a sprinkle of fertilizer and cut the water as I think they were over watered.

Grafts were to young this year to produce fruit

We had some flowers but it didn't set fruit this year, it has grown a lot though

This is the first fruit we've ever gotten off the Lattarula. It didn't have a lot of flavor but it wasn't bad

Pretty big fig

More delectable desert kings

I don't know if it's dry season or heat stress, but some of my oregon grape leaves are a bright red, they are a nice splash of color

Taste really good, I like this one

While harvest has slowed some, we are still getting berries

I picked lot of what was left on the tree, at this point many of the plums are ripe or overly ripe

First DK!

Looks and tastes not unlike my Longue d'Août fig. Almost over ripe on the bottom and a little under ripe near the top, although I didn't get any sap when I picked it.

Typical size

You can't judge a plum without making the NYT Original Plum Torte. As always it was excellent, these multi color plums make a nice presentation, everyone ate it all before I could take a picture, I had to photograph what was left

Still producing a few

It might have been my favorite blueberry of the season. This variety has been consistently tasty, with large berries, although yet to be very productive for me

Pretty sure our local rabbits got this one, noticed one hanging around and the seedling is just gone. I'll need to remember to protect young trees from these guys

More golden and crimson orbs. A bowl left on the table in the morning is always empty by the evening

Finally truly ripe, these are really good. The smell alone is something special, my best description is like deep floral and almost cream like aroma. Like peaches, you'll know these are ripe when you pass by and the tree smells intoxicating. The taste rivals the smell, I really like this plum.

This might be our best harvest to date from the jersey.

An Oregon grape sparkling water. Interesting flavor, this berry seems to give me a slightly odd sensation, it's beyond the flavor, it's almost like a very light buzz, it's so light I almost think I'm imagining it but I don't think I am. Flavor is a kin to blending up grass and mixing it with sparkling water and drinking it

I missed documentation on Oregon grape flowering, they make a nice yellow flower in spring. I collected some seed today to see if I can't grow a few more out, they make a good evergreen border.

While all other varieties have most apples showing frass this time of year, I'm not seeing any on goldrush, they are once again way behind in their development, other apples are large and red by now, goldrush is still small and green, it's my theory that this is why the local boring insects pass over this one, but hard to think like an apple maggot.

Lots of frass on my apples. I don't bother with covering them, many people in our area will cover apples in early summer often using pantyhose or organza bags around individual fruit to keep the local apple boring insects out.

Still lots of berries coming from these guys

Not bad, it didn't have a lot of flavor but I enjoyed it, it was actually ripe and sweet and hadn't gone bad like the other breba from earlier in the summer

Maybe a touch tart, but good

Officially out of rain water from our barrels and no rain in sight.

This has grown a lot, maybe too much as it's taking over a lot of the tree, but has yet to set any fruit, we didn't get anything off it this year

Starting to show some color

Maybe this one is ripe or it's bad, guessing somewhere in-between. We had a weird breba crop, I think in part because the tree is young but also maybe because we had such a mild winter, the trees carried over a lot of larger fruit they normally drop

For the last couple years my imperial ep. Plum is the first plum to ripen and we are starting to see color in the plums now. The first to ripen always seem to get hit the worst. During the day squirrels and at night rats are getting at the fruit at the moment, notice the rat trap in the background. Last year I noticed with the camera just putting up the traps, not baiting or loading them, seemed to deter them from the tree, not this guy. They don't seem to go near the traps no matter what bait I put in them. It's something you'll need to deal with if you grow fruit in Seattle. Plums, figs and peaches are all favorites for squirrels and rats, although they'll eat almost anything you grow, maybe not garlic but besides that good luck. Rats get much easier to trap in the winter when they're hungry, trap hard all winter long and the problem will be reduced come summer, although never completely. That's been my strategy so far. Would love to find a way to trap them in the tree but nothing works so far, let me know if you have any ideas.

I was gone for a few days and had a watering issue with my water timer, all but one small plant died, I reseeded them, but at least we know that one is tough

Raspberries are still coming strong from the back patch

Getting a good number of berries, or at least the kids are

Getting lots of berries from Spartan lately

We had a few berries off the bush today, this one has never been super productive for me

Rust is covering the plant and it dropped all it's fruit

Rust is coming in strong and the tree dropped all it's fruit

I think this will be our last strawberry of the season

Lots of hazelnuts forming, maybe we'll get one this year before the birds and squirrels do

I planted seeds for fall/winter kale harvest and summer reseeding

These are coming ripe regularly, kids seem to prefer these and get to them first

First fruit of what looks to be a pretty small harvest

Super ripe, maybe too ripe, and quite a few berries, this one definitely seems to do better with rust than the other varieties around the area, a good tree.

Collected seed today. I found crushing up the dry seed pods into a jar and blowing the jar with my high volume inflator blew out at lot of the chaff and made for fairly clean seed.

Some of the checker-blooms are still flowering, but others in warmer sunnier spots are all done

We have too many, time to start freezing

Kids got to them before I could photograph it

I need a finer scale to measure blueberry weight

First and only

Strawberry harvests are starting to thin out

Raspberries are hitting their stride

I pick and roll the pods in my hand and the seeds fall out easily

Our local leaf cutter bees seem to prefer the vine maple. I like how they cut little circles off the leafs and fly around our garden with them, it always looks like they are riding little flying leaf motorcycles.

Last year we had such a great harvest, but this year most of the fruit dropped. Many of the flowers turned into small pinhead size fruit and then fell off.

This one also produces dark red berries

Ok, this one is winning this year

Sun touched upper leafs gain a purple/red hue in summer

Some of the plants in my patch have a cream color with a nice pink blush

LP seems to drop a lot of breba late in the game, it's almost like the figs are coming ripe, but they're just going bad and dropping off, it did this last year but it's much more pronounced this year

Our little harvest, salmonberry have a lot of color variations, this makes a nice reddish orange color fruit, really attractive. I also find these to be tasty, maybe better than some of the wild varieties around us.

Planting seeds in coconut core and old coffee grounds

Kids ate most but managed to weigh one

Not bad

Maybe the currant maggot? Somebody is poking holes in these guys. With this plus rust issues the saskatoon berry has a hard time in our area.

I don't know what this is? I noticed what looks like maybe a white fungus growing on the underside of leafs and along parts of the lower plant. The plant appears healthy, although it's always been a slow grower

Maybe our largest strawberry yet

Currant maggot

Cotton Scale insect, I brushed these off, my general scale management technique

Currant maggot was too much to handle, it's really good at ruining currants

Finished flowering for the most part

Seed pods forming on flowers

I have two VDB I grafted last year, of the figs I've grafted only VBD has produced fruit the next year after grafting. Two breba it seems to be holding on

Lots of ladybugs

First single flower

All curled up for the evening. California Poppy showing their nyctinasty side

All finished flowering and now forming seed pods

Rust developing on a few berries

Again this season LDA dropped all it's breba

First strawberry of the season

First spots of rust on the leafs

Some leaf curl

Working through breaking dormancy and fighting off leaf curl.

Currant maggots have proven too great of challenge. They have laid waste to every single gooseberry I've grown. Sad because I really love gooseberry

Working through the Spring leaf curl

First ripe blueberry from Spartan of the year