Season 2009 - Week 13 Notes from Montgomery Place Orchards

This week you are getting our seedless table grapes. These are very
different from than the California seedless grape you may be use to.
The flavor is intense. We love to freeze these – there is so much
natural sugar in them that they do not freeze solid and they are like
little sorbet balls. We hope you try some frozen. We have had to
spray the grapes with a fungicide. We have had to spray them a lot –
at first this sounds bad to you, but the reason we had to spray a lot
is that this is not a systemic fungicide and can easily be washed off
and so every time it rained, (it did that a lot this year), all the
protective spray gets washed off. This spray has 0 days to harvest.
Grapes do also have a natural bloom which looks like spray residue.
Just rinse off the grapes before you eat them.

We are really happy to be able to send you some nectarines this week
and the last of the white peaches. We had a lot of heat and humidity
last week and this means that you will have to work a little harder to
enjoy good fruit. Again, we ask that you spread your fruit out to
allow it to soften. Fruit should not touch each other because, if
there is brown rot, we do not want it to spread to the other fruit.
IF you get brown spots, you can just cut out the bad spot. This year
we have VERY few perfect nectarines or peaches, but the flavor is
worth the extra work you have to do.

For our final fruit, we kick into the wish for fall with apples. Each
share will receive 5 Whitney Crab apples. Now we know that when you
hear the words crab apple, you think YUCH!! This variety will make
you change your mind. They are great hand apples and really good to
eat. Enjoy.

Happy last days of August.


Doug and Talea Fincke and all of us at Montgomery Place Orchards