Everything else

Written by

Well. Here we are. Because I don’t yet know what you Inta-webbers will want to comment on, this page is a temporary garbage dump for comments on topics that I haven’t yet made a blog post for. For instance, if I get a lot of comments on apricots, then I’ll make a special page for them. If I get a lot of comments on the Kardashians… well, I’m going to delete those. There’s too much space wasted on that shit already.

Comment box is below (scroll down) or you may have to click on the date link below to see the comments page. I didn’t do it intentionally, but maybe the “updated” theme changed it(???).

Comments

15 responses to “Everything else”

March 11, 2026

Blake Branch

Your blog/contact info is irritating to decipher. On the entry for Roucaneuf/SV 12-309, the breeders were actually Bertille Seyve and his father-in-law, Victor Villard (S for Seyve and V for Victor).

Reply
1. March 13, 2026
  
  Anton
  
  That makes sense. I got the incorrect information from one of the listed sources, but what you say makes perfect sense. I apologize for the irritating blog. It irritates me as well. As long as I use WordPress, and it’s kind of the default, this is out of my control. As this is a hobby, I don’t know when I will be able to wean my blog off of WordPress and onto something that is more stable.
  Anyway, thank you for the correction. I will make the website reflect your information shortly.
  
  Reply
May 22, 2025

Anton

A miserly 42 chill portions all last winter. Many varieties that leafed out every year are failing to leaf out this year. I suspect that I will lose a lot of trees this year. Time to re-think some things.
I will try to update the estimated chill requirements of the cultivars I have/had in the coming weeks.

Reply
May 21, 2025

Anton

This blog has been rendered just about useless by WordPress. I did eventually figure out how to login to my WordPress admin account, but I don’t like the new 2025 theme at all… Why insert a “SHOP” link on my site (I didn’t, it was a part of the WP theme that I was forced to “upgrade” to.) when I DON’T SELL ANYTHING?

Reply
June 1, 2024

Anton

Well, another “winter” has passed in the Southern California desert. We got about 62 chill portions this season, so I’ve made observations and updated or added chill requirement information on all my current apple cultivars. Don’t take these figures as written in stone. I will continue to update them almost every year. For instance, the 2022-2023 winter wasn’t very informative because we got quite a bit of chilling (89 chill portions: That’s a lot for here.) But most years we get less, sometimes a lot less and while those years aren’t good for the apples, they make good test years (lemons/lemonade kind of thing).

Reply
December 24, 2023

Anton

Merry Christmas everybody!
This holiday season, let’s be grateful for the good in the world (it still exists!) and do what we can to help those who are less fortunate and those who are just decent folks in our community.

Reply
August 12, 2023

Anton

A friend of mine who has little agriculture experience went pear picking with a charity in her area… which leads to today’s rant. The group’s purpose (so they say) is to harvest excess produce from local producers and give it to the poor. The harvest was scheduled for a certain date and was not delayed by the fact that the fruit was not ripe yet. The “leader” of the group told the volunteers that pears ripen off the tree, so no worries. She must have read that somewhere, because under certain circumstances, that would be correct. First of all, these were Asian pears, so the softening that is desirable for European pears is NOT desirable for Asian pears. More importantly, she seemed not to know that the pears must be PICKING RIPE before they will finish maturing to eating ripe (again a principle applicable to European pears, not the Asians they were picking that day). To make matters worse, she and most of the other crew picked by yanking the pears, pulling spurs, leaves and branches with them. My friend knew enough to lift and give a half twist…. but that didn’t even matter because they were instructed to STRIP THE TREES regardless of the fruit’s ripeness!
There are so many things wrong with this event, but I think that even worse than the tree damage is the educational damage done to the volunteer crew who look to the “leader” as a source of knowledge and the customers who will try to eat these green Asian pears and conclude that Asian pears aren’t edible. The trees will recover from the mishandling, but the ig-nant urbanites playing farmer for a day will carry this bad misinformation to others and the stupidity will spread.

Unfortunately, there are SO FEW people today who know anything about farming/ gardening that destructive myths abound… and those of us who do know something about it are too darn busy to participate in such events and would never be invited to instruct anyway… these self-appointed urban “leaders” like the adulation far too much to care about what’s real.

Reply
August 4, 2023

Anton

Well, we finally made it through the blistering heat wave- actually it’s been hotter here, but not for so long. It was over 100 degrees F (38 C) for practically the whole month of July. Now it’s merely in the 90’s (mid-30’s). It was a good test of the heat resistance of my collection of “Prairie Cherries” from the U. of Saskatchewan, though. I’d grown ‘Carmine Jewel’ in North Carolina for years and it did very well there. It hasn’t produced here yet, but it survived the heat with no obvious suffering, as did the ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet'(s). Two of the ‘Crimson Passion’ also look OK, but another had about half its leaves scorch and the smallest one just croaked in the heat. Looking forward to testing more, but like everything else here in the desert, if it doesn’t do well, it will be replaced with something that’s more adapted.

Reply
March 30, 2023

Vance Mullis

I love your webpage. As a southern fruit grower that likes trying weird things, it is a diamond in the rough. It is lovely to find information from a similar climate that I find to be reliable, or at least consistent with my experience. The number of hours I have spent pursuing your thoughts are many, and yet I keep coming back for more. Thank you for sharing.

Reply
1. April 7, 2023
  
  Anton
  
  I appreciate your comments, Vance. Yep, it’s definitely “in the rough”. It’s a hobby that sprung from my poor memory… I wanted a place to store information for myself that I could reach from anywhere and figured it might be of some interest or use to others, so this little website is the result.
  
  Reply
2. April 7, 2023
  
  Anton Callaway
  
  I’d love to hear more about what “weird” things you are trying in your orchard.
  Are you also in the Piedmont or more coastal or mountain-region?
  
  Reply
January 5, 2023

Anton

Well, we finally got significant rain… and it’s a LOT at once. Extreme drought followed by extreme rain… and terrible water infrastructure that ensures maximum damage from both. What I do on my few acres won’t fix what’s wrong on the larger scale. For one example of what COULD be done, check out the letter I sent to various government officials… and be aware that only ONE of the people I wrote responded at all.
https://chathamapples.com/CA/BeaverDams.html

Reply
October 27, 2022

Anton

Vote people.
I try to avoid things not directly related to agriculture on this site, but without democracy, America and the world will suffer, agriculture included.
So vote. Protect democracy. It matters.

Reply
June 27, 2022

Anton

Cinch gopher traps work well. In my case, it was important NOT to cover the hole with the trap in it. Some other traps apparently only work well if you DO cover the hole.

Reply
January 9, 2022

Anton

Has anyone done any breeding within P. ilicifolia?

Reply

Everything else

Comments

15 responses to “Everything else”