Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
We bought a property that has some fruit trees. A couple of peaches, a
nectarine, an apple, a couple of apricots, and a couple of almonds.

The trees were neglected. One that was near a spigot that was slightly
leaking had gotten regular watering from the seepage, and we got five of
the
fruit boxes FULL of baseball sized peaches. The best I ever tasted. We
got
just a few nectarines. Lots of good apricots, and a quart or two of
almonds.

The apple tree was full of apples one week, hundreds. The next week, it
was
stripped except some at the top. No people tracks.

You got someone in there who picked them. There's sites like the following:

http://www.urbanedibles.org

where people track neglected fruit trees.

Fruit on the ground is not necessarily indicative of neglect of the trees. I
like to
keep my fruit on the trees as long as possible to maximize the sugar transfer
to
the fruit. I even put ziplock bags on my fruit, so that the critters will
have a hard
time munching on it whenever it falls.

The former property owners almost
certainly didn't pick the trees either, as a result some years back the
trees started
dropping fruit.

Fruit will drop for many reasons, including too many fruits on the tree. It
is
commonly known as June drop. Almost all fruit will eventually drop from the

trees, if left on.



I will tell you this - think what you will of me - but I am very much a
supporter
of people going out there and picking fruit off trees on private property if
there
is dropped fruit under the tree - with or without permission. Particularly
in
urban areas.

Stay away from my yard, or you may get an unpleasant surprise.



Dropped fruit on the ground is a magnet for rats, and will support quite a
lot of them. Until you have had to fight the beasts chewing holes in your
basement, foundations, and God knows where else, you will not appreciate
how incredibly irresponsible it is for people in an urban area to leave food
sources available of that magnitude. It is bad enough for people to use
crappy-designed bird feeders that allow birds to dump seed all over the
place, but at least, birdseed isn't going to support 10-20 rats. Dropped
fruit, by contrast, definitely will. And, when the fruit season is finally
over,
the rats will move into the homes of every house in the vicinity - yours and
your neighbors, and it can take up to a year to trap them out - and trapping
ultimately will hit the law of diminishing returns, and then you have to
resort to poison.

There's nothing like one of your neighbors having to fish a stinky dead rat
corpse out of their wall to get your neglected fruit trees girdled.

No animal tracks, and
no half eaten cores on the ground. It was as if aliens came down in a
space
ship and sucked them up. We were traveling at the time. At the time of
disappearance, they were hard and not ripe.


So you are justifying tresspassing on private property to invoke your brand
of justice. We don't need no stinkin vigilantees patrolling our orchards.



What tends to happen with these trees over the years is that the longer
they are neglected, as word
gets around, people show up earlier and earlier in the season to get
the jump on other pickers. Your not going to stop it unless you start
posting Do Not Pick signs, and keep a close eye on the trees. You
probably will have to confront a few people during the season as well.
And be prepared for them to complain that the former owners let them
pick the fruit - very likely, the former owners were well aware that
this was happening and were welcoming it - because they didn't then
have to go to the bother of picking the trees themselves.

I think a call to the police would be in order.



My questions a

Give me some pointers on watering, fertilizing, and care to get a good
crop
this year. I am good at pruning, and these need some pruning, but not a
lot.


Contact your local county extension office or state land grant university
extension office, they have people who are paid to answer these kinds
of question tailored for your trees and location.

Well, that's a big help. Why did he bother to post the question on a
gardening forum, just to get sluffed off.

Sherwin



Ted