Just a quick post to cover the last of our crop of Cara Cara navel oranges. That big one in the middle is my blue ribbon fruit, it's as big as a grapefruit.
Now that the tree is bare, I'll prune those branches back off of the sidewalk.
DarrylCopyright 2016 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
Late fall...winter starts next week...and in the middle of a big drought, not a lot to do in the garden but we can find something.
December in Southern California is citrus season and our three trees are producing!
The cara cara navel orange tree (at the top of this post) has put out the most fruit it's ever given us.
Our Meyer lemon is not far behind.
We harvest just enough to last us for a week or so and let the rest of the fruit stay on the tree til we're ready for more.
Along with the oranges and lemons, I also find a few rogue Anaheim chiles that will go into tomorrow's eggs.
These tart but sweet cara caras are just the ticket for a nice, healthy shot of vitamin C on the side of this sandwich.
DarrylCopyright 2015 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
Eh, well we still got a few fruit from this plant in the corner.
Now the question is, is this the last harvest of the summer or the first harvest of the winter?
Darryl
Great haul this week.
Heirloom tomato, guavas, hybrid tomato, Anaheim chile, hot chiles, and onion. Time to make salsa.
These cherry tomatoes will be used for a Caprese salad.
Darryl
Well, Labor Day 2015 has just passed, marking the unofficial end of summer. How did our garden do? This year was much better than last. We had a lot more good news than bad.
Let's start with the good stuff and save the bad for next time.
On the sweet side of things, the guavas are ready to start picking. Some are already dropping on the ground. Lots of fruit on this tree.
The dragon fruit aren't ripe yet but they're getting there.
The tomatoes have done great. Three plants have put out enough that we haven't had to buy tomatoes for two months now. Maybe not enough to share with all the neighbors but a banner year still, especially compared to the lousy year we had last year.
The hybrid has put out many in clusters like this.
The heirloom has been a bit stingier, only giving us about a half dozen but they were pretty big, tasty, and spectacular.
Although the leaves could look healthier, the hanging cherry tomato has been loaded down all summer with tiny, tasty fruit.
On the spicy side of things, the pasilla I planted last year that I gave up on because it was ravaged by squirrels has made a comeback and is providing a good, late harvest. When done, I will transplant it into a more suitable spot.
Another plant that was rodent plagued last year was our Anaheim chile plant. It has also produced handsomely this summer. Great with eggs or in salsa.
Need some more heat? I've got more than enough serrano and Thai chiles for the whole neighborhood. This shows just a tiny portion of those plants.
And coming soon, this Meyer lemon should be leading our late fall and winter citrus parade.
DarrylCopyright 2015 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved.
The biggest chore I had this week was deadheading the roses but the temp is 110 and climbing. I expect it'll hit 115 before the day is over.
Just too hot, so I'm just fertilizing and check the progress of the crops.
These tomatoes have weighed down their part of the vine so that they're resting on the soil. I don't want them there where the worms and other insects can get to them.
Gingerly, so I don't break their branch, I lift them up and rest them on the neighboring hot chile's cage. Now, they're about a foot off of the ground.
Something's already got this green heirloom, so I picked it off and threw away. Nothing else seems to be affected right now.
Except this little zucchini plant. It's hard to see in this picture but something has been digging at it's roots and the plant is a bit wilted from it.
Across the path, it's sibling is finally producing some fruit. Homegrown zucchini on the way.
This pasilla chile has three fruit that should be ready in about three weeks and will feed the three of us with the tastiest peppers in the garden. A lot of trios in that paragraph and there's also about 40 more chiles on the plant in the earliest stages of ripening. Can't wait.
Finally, although most of our crops are in between harvests right now, I got one good heirloom tomato, one hybrid tomato, and a nice little Anaheim chile to go with a good harvest we already got last week.
DarrylCopyright 2015 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
One plant I really love in our garden is the dragon fruit. This tropical cactus does very well in our climate and I'm hoping to get more production out of it.
We have two varieties, one with white flesh and the other a vibrant, hot-pink flesh like a watermelon on acid.
It's time to eat this one. Eaten straight, it's ok. Slightly sweet but a bit bland.
The best, we've found, is to cut it up in cubes and very lightly sprinkle a little powdered sugar on it.
This amps up the natural sweetness and the taste is as stunning as the looks of the fruit.
Best of all, I went out this morning and found more flower buds on the plant. More fruit to come...
DarrylCopyright 2014 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
This will probably be my biggest harvest this summer.
While the squirrels decimated my zucchini...I will not get so much as one squash this season...at least the tomatoes and grapes pulled through.
The grapes are usually end-of-summer but this hot, drought parched year made them come in early. Very early. But we did get a good crop. The bunches above represent the last of this year's.
The tomatoes are just starting to come into their own. The rodents attacked them early in the season, even uprooted the vines I have now, but I guess tomatoes aren't to their tastes after all because they've pretty much left them alone since then.
Now the plants are recovering and producing fruit.
Luckily, the dragon fruit grow on spiny cactus stocks, so we can count on a few fruit from time to time from that.
It won't be long til we're picking Meyer lemons too.
DarrylCopyright 2014 -Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
So far, my harvests this year have been pitiful. The drought's taking it's toll...not on the plants directly...but driving animals down from the dry, cooked mountains behind our house.Deer have been using my rose garden as a diner, picking up dinner whenever the flowers are in bloom. Squirrels have invaded, some even trying to burrow under our water heater, and have decimated my zucchini. Although they can't stand the hot chiles, the leaves are to their taste and our pepper harvest is very minimal.The pest control guy says to just block their access so we try to fill every rodent-sized hole with bricks. Just when I think I'm making progress, I look out and see another squash or pepper plant laid waste.We have had limited success with our tomatoes, especially the cherry tomatoes I grow in a hanging basket.The grapes have been my most successful battleground. Years ago, I put up a rodent-deterring cage around the bottom of the vine. That works for the mammals but the birds still have access to the top.I've tried netting and, while that worked, the fruit was tiny. My wife thinks it constricted the plant too much.This year I applied holographic tape to scare the birds away. My wife says she still see mockingbirds eating the fruit but even so, some clusters have made it through (I put fruit nets around some of the clusters but not most of them).The heat and drought have also had another effect. Our grapes usually ripen at the beginning of September. We're harvesting now...the first week of July...and expect to get around 10 pounds.At least I've had one success this year. Now, if I can just sneak some veggies past the squirrels, I'd be a happy gardener again.DarrylCopyright 2014 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
Just a quick hit to show you this week's harvest...
Still a lot left on the plants but this week we've got a couple of Cara Cara oranges that are just perfectly sweet and juicy, a couple of Meyer Lemons, tomatoes, guavas, and a bell pepper plus a pepperette.
The bell peppers are done with this week's picking but the hot chile peppers just keep going and going and going...
DarrylCopyright 2014 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
I love citrus, especially those of the orange variety. There's almost no dessert that can compare with a perfectly ripe orange, picked from the tree, and eaten on the spot. No soda can compare with the lemonade you make with the fruit you just harvested from the tree. A cocktail just isn't a cocktail to me without a squeeze of fresh lime in it.
Our house resides in a former lemon grove. All traces of that farm are long gone, although some of our neighbors still harvest and sell their oranges.
While I don't get the quantity of fruit I'd like, the quality is sure there.
We have three trees...a navel orange, a tangelo that I rescued from a trash pile, and a Meyer lemon. All three are dwarf trees.
I definitely have my idea of what a perfect fruit from each tree will be...
On the orange, it has to be round. Like a globe, not oblong like an egg. The navel has to be small...almost non-existent (this gives you a bonus of a large, interior navel made exclusively of tasty, juicy pulp). The skin should be rather thick to make peeling easy, I like to peel and eat the sections more than I like to cut it up into pieces with a knife. The color should be a dark orange, signifying that it has absorbed all the UV the sun could pour on in and converted that into life-giving ascorbic acid.
The orange at the top of this post looks like it meets most of these qualifications, I think I'll pick it today.
A tangelo should also be dark orange for the same reasons. They're easy to peel naturally, so the skin doesn't have to be as thick but it helps to have a large head of rind on the top. Now, you pop that off like the pin of a hand grenade and strip of from top to bottom.
This last fruit from this year's crop meets that criteria. It's coming off today too.
The Meyer lemon needs only to be a deep yellow. It's naturally sweeter than most lemons. I don't have a use for it this week, so I'll leave them on the tree a couple of more days before we take them off and make lemonade or maybe lemon cake.
Mmmm....cake...
DarrylCopyright 2014 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
It's Christmas time and that means another harvest should be ready. Let me check, yep, we've got produce.
The big stars of the wintertime here are citrus, like that tangelo at the top of the post. Juicy, sweet, yet tart, it provides a tasty dose of Vitamin C to help us with those wintertime bugs.
The Cara Cara navel orange is even tastier, not quite so tart.
While my summer harvest of tomatoes was a dud, winter is providing a nice batch. I made fried green tomato omelets with this one.
It looks like an apple but these are actually guavas. We've got hundreds of them.
And here's this weeks harvest...oranges, tangelos, Myer lemons, tomatoes, guavas, and a small bell pepper in with our hot chile plant.
Have a great Christmas and New Year!
DarrylCopyright 2013 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
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