Thanks for sharing. I just moved to NC so these posts are very informative. I ordered some Pineapple Guava bushes. Have you had experience with those? Hurray for pawpaw!!

I have some. One I bought at a nursery and a few I grew from seeds collected from fruit growing in Raleigh. The bought bush is planted in the shelter of my south wall of the house and it does much better than the seed grown ones which are out in full exposure. Winter winds seem to do the most damage. It can take a few years before they start fruiting. The flowers are delicious - taste like cinnamon red hot candy. The fruit taste great but you better like regular guava. It makes good jam and awesome fruit leather.

Thanks for sharing your fruit tree updates and photos. Your post came along at the perfect time because I want to try my hand at a peach, and maybe a few plums. Nectarines, apricots and pineapple guava sound great too (for another year). Your successes are very encouraging. Interestingly, Carmine Jewel is a sour cherry that I did not purchase. I hope my Romeo, Juliet and Crimson Passion do something for me. I have some Rabbiteyes, but I will be on the lookout for a Woodward. I will definitely look for an earlier fruiting peach. I already asked for suggestions in another post about choosing a peach tree. Lowe's has a few I was looking at. Thanks again for sharing. Your post is really helpful

John: I think I may have asked before about your paw paw tree but I don't recall the answer. Do you do anything to help pollination. I have a couple trees and have had flowers for at least 5 years with no fruit. What do you do?

I know that you have various types of winter protection. What do you do for your apricot. I find it hard to imagine them growing under any condition; whaasup? I came from apricot country but they only grow silicon chips and mini mansions there now.

chas045 - my row are pawpaws are all seed grown from fruit of named varieties. Out of 8 trees, I've removed a few and lost a few over time. I have propagated the one that does the best and has the biggest fruit. I am assuming that the survivors are not related enough to cross pollinate (they must cross with a non-relative) because I get plenty of fruit. The only other thing I do is let the ground under them stay damp and weedy, I even dump compost-ey stuff there to keep it extra damp and weedy. I think that the small flies that live in the rotting stuff pollinate the pawpaw flowers - so don't clean up under the trees while there are flowers on them and try and find trees that aren't related. I've been to pawpaw tastings and my mouth cannot taste the difference between them, but others swear to it. Also, I can pick two fruits off of the same branch at the same time and they will both have a slightly different flavor soooo I think the flavor is influenced by subtle differences in ripeness that we humans can't detect. It's the luck of the draw.

I grew apricots back in central Oklahoma which has harsh-er weather (colder winters and hotter summers) and even there my tree would produce a bumper crop every 4th or 5th year and OK isn't known for apricot production. I got enough fruit to jam and dry that it would start to run out by the next big year of fruit production. Around here the problem seems to be that they bloom way too early and get bit by late frosts and then there are the bugs (all the plum, peach type of pests). They don't seem to suffer with brown rot. When the fruit actually ripens it is pretty early so that may help things. In my fantasy world - my trees will be fully mature when we go through a mild winter/dry summer spell and I will be sitting pretty with all the apricots I can eat. Right now I have a large Royal Blenheim, and Patterson and the a recently planted Manchurian (what I grew in OK) and a Manchurian hybrid called Andirondack Gold.

Liz - Sweet cherries are next to impossible here so I am opting on sour cherries (pie cherries) that have sweet fruit. Sweet cherries and sour cherries are two different species, one tolerates heat and humidity and one doesn't. There are sweet cherries that are sour and sour cherries that are sweet but not as sweet as say a Bing or Queen Anne. I have 'Danube' and 'Kristin' as older trees as well as a Mazzard which is a rootstock tree but has decent fruit. I don't remember which species name goes with which but one is sour and one is sweet and neither has ever successfully fruited for me (but they both look like they might this year). I also have a new 'Northstar' which I have grown before and does okay here. It's a sour cherry with somewhat sweet fruit. In the bush cherry row I have the old hybrids (P. japonica X P. jacquemontii) sold as 'Joy', 'Joel' and 'Jan' - they do fine, are super cute when in bloom but they get some sort of disease that scars the fruit. I still eat them and they make a decent cherry jam but the flavor is not completely like a real sweet cherry. I tried a collection of the new crosses and 'Carmine Jewel' was the only one of the mix to survive NC summers - the birds have bitten every fruit in year's past. This year I plan on netting them so I can at least see how they taste. I also have some Nanking Cherries which taste great but the fruit is teeny tiny and the bushes hate summer heat and humidity. And lastly I have a 'Hiawatha' cherry plum which grows and looks like a cherry but tastes like a plum (it's an ancient hybrid that is sometimes used as a rootstock for cherries).

I bought my Vaccinium ashei 'Woodard' from the NC State Hort Student plant sale (known as the PAX Sale) which they hold twice a year. They didn't have any Woodard this spring but I made sure they understood how important this plant is to me (maybe they'll find some in time for the fall sale).