NOW IS THE TIME
By Eunice Messner

SEEDLING MANGOS
Only one of my new seedling mangos held its fruit. It had about 12 good tasting, Kent-like fruit, only a little smaller. It also had an undeveloped seed, so maybe next year it will grow larger. They were picked by mid August which was very early but I really doubt that will happen again. The Thomson that usually fruit in October are also starting to ripen. Next time I will only leave about 3 to a cluster to get a sizable fruit. My previous seedling mango, Carnival'
that was such a winner, disappointed me this year. It set about 100 fruit that only attained about 1/4 of their previous size and then ripened. We are eating them but they require a lot of peeling. Glad I don't have to depend on mangos for income. They are very unpredictable in California. I will prune all the mangos back to the last terminal of leaves in order to keep the trees from getting too big.

EXPERT ADVICE
Gary Matsuoka, of Laguna Hills Nursery, is offering a 100 minute free session on the fruits, nuts and berries that will grow in our area. The time is 6:45p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21 R.S.V.P at (949)830-5653. You may leave a message if the line is busy. Include your phone number and the number of attendees. To get there: Exit the 5 freeway at El Toro Rd., travel east about 1 3/4 miles, turn right at Jeronimo Rd. Turn right again one block from El Toro into the Nursery. If you haven't been to Gary's nursery, you are in for a real treat.

FERTILIZING TIME
Don't overlook the item in this newsletter that alerts you to your last chance to buy EZ Green in bags. I may have to look into in-line fertilizing through my drip system. In any event, now is the time to do your fall fertilizing. We will still have a lot of hot weather so be generous with your mulch.

CLEAN-UP
There's not much you can do about Codling Moth this time of the year except to pick up any fruit that falls to the ground with a worm hole in it. I put them into a bucket. When the bucket is full I fill it with water. Hopefully, this will drown any worms so I can use the fruit in my compost pile. If left on the ground, the worms will pupate there and come back again next year. It's also the time of the year to spray for any citrus problems you have had or want to avoid. If you have a severe scale infection, you may want to consider pruning out selected branches. Just heavily hosing down a tree helps to keep a tree healthy. For minor pests, Safers Soap cleans up most infestations.
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LOW CHILL STONE FRUIT SURVEY

At the last meeting Tom Del Hotal handed out a list of low chill peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots and how they performed in San Diego County. From my experiences, I noted that some fruits performed differently in
Orange County. We would like to revise this list to more accurately describe our experiences with these fruits in our area.

For instance: 'Bonita' peach didn't do well at all; 'Sprite', cherry/plum, only did well in very cold winters (400+ chill hours?); Early Golden apricot is not on the list and it does well every year for me; 'Goldmine' nectarine was very small--perhaps it likes coastal areas better.

Those were some examples of the kind of responses we'd like to have from you. The list from Tom is now on our web page <home.att.net/~oc_crfg> Send any corrections or additions you would like to make to me:

<eunicemessner@yahoo.com>

or, for those of you without e-mail, jot down your experiences and bring them to the next meeting. Or:mail them to me at

For those of you without a list, make your own list of experiences of fruit you grow or have tried to grow and how they performed.