Review of Tree Brainstorming

[hrj]

I got a lot of good suggestions for my tree brainstorming, so rather than reply to individual items, I thought I'd bring it together in a new entry. blaurentnv suggest an olive. Olives would definitely do well here (although not as fabulously as they did in Davis!), but they're very messy trees. If they olives themselves are squishing underfoot, then birds are eating them and shitting olive-colored stuff on available surfaces. And to be edible, I'd need to put in significant work. (I cured some olives once as an experiment -- I think they came out ok, although I wasn't as used to the flavor of Greek-style olives at that time and wasn't sure I'd done it right.) wulfsdottir suggests avocados (sorry, no -- there's an avocado next door and I already have enough leathery, non-decomposing avocado leaves to deal with) or walnuts (only if I want to plant yet another "squirrel feeder") or pears -- the last seconded by kaththeamac and by roswtr in the more specific form of wardens. Nice idea -- especially if I can find a multi-variety graft like I did for the cherry. (Helps with pollination plus deliverying more than one type of fruit.) While I enjoy pears, I find I don't normally end up buying many (partly because store pears are always under-ripe), so it's quite possible that a pear tree would satisfy my entire needs for the year, which is always nice. I'm a little less inclined to replace the tree with another apple (as helblonde suggests) simply because my experience is that store apples (around here) tend to be as good quality as homegrown, and I can get pretty much any apple variety you can think of at Berkeley Bowl. Mom suggests a macadamia nut tree, but again I worry that I'd just be growing squirrel food. (I currently have two hard-shell almond trees and the squirrels get about 80% of the crop, if only because they're willing to take them green.) To naadhira, you're right about there being nothing like an apricot ripe from the tree (although I've gotten some very ripes ones from the store regularly), and I'm pretty sure it's warm enough for apricots here -- I believe the neighbors had one a number of years ago. And I may be worrying too much about the potential for cross-infection by lingering peach curl. So maybe I should consider that more seriously as well. And I checked out One Green World which reminded me that medlars are another item to consider -- being in the category of "medieval European fruits that it's hard to find in the store". I might also consider a Seville orange (for cooking projects, not for juice or straight eating). If I can find a dwarf variety, it could go in the line-up of dwarf citrus that stand beside the deck posts. (Well, ok, the lemon seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to be a dwarf, but the lime does its duty nicely.)

So there you go: thinking about a pear (multi-graft if possible), medlar, or apricot. And keeping my eyes out for a dwarfed Seville orange for a different spot in the yard. Of course, this is all thinking ahead to bare-root planting time.

Today's goals: shop for curtain hardware and finally sew the curtains for the living room. (Including the thermal curtain to go across the doorway to the stairs, so that winter heat doesn't always end up upstairs.) Also start tackling the contents of the two bedroom closets. And sort out the assorted weathered-lumber-to-be-gotten-rid-of into painted and untreated and cut it down and bundle it for the Big Garbage Pickup. Box up the books-to-be-gotten-rid-of that are of heraldic interest to take to the next heralds' meeting. This should bring the books-to-be-gotten-rid-of down to a single book case. Of that, about a third are clearly trashcan-bound; a third might bring trade credit at Moe's Books; and a third are more in the realm of donation to a charity booksale. There are still a couple of items arcane enough to be saved for the right home: specifically, bound photocopies of a couple of Welsh texts (an edition of the ap Huw manuscript and a collection of medieval grammatical treatises).

Comments

[marymont.livejournal.com]

I'm slated to take over from Bruce Draconarius as Shire Herald down here in December (huge shoes to try to fill!), but my heraldic library is woefully poor. I'd be very interested in heraldry or heraldic-interest books. Can you let me know what you're purging? I'd pay for shipping above and beyond what you'd want from the people at your local heralds' meeting.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

The uber-Longs in Oakland used to carry dwarf Seville Orange trees. That was before Longs "simplified" their inventory, though.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I don't know that much of this would be of general enough usefulness to be worth the shipping costs. The heraldry books tend to be either relatively obscure special-topic items that i simply don't have much use for (and mostly photocopies rather than originals), or are modern-oriented items like "flags of the world". The onomastics books include a very few duplicates of useful stuff, some duplicate photocopies of "associated interest" books (like Yonge) that aren't of any practical SCA use, a number of modern surname/baby-name books, and some that I simply find unusable (e.g., the Bulgarian names book ... in Bulgarian which, to make life even more interesting, is written in Cyrilic). There isn't much for a "basic library" -- it's more a matter of curiosities for someone who already has a basic library put together.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll keep my eyes open. This isn't a rush job -- more a matter of long-term brainstorming.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I forget -- are you upslope or on the flats? Actually, the better question is: how much high fog do you get versus direct sun, and how much frost do you get?

(If you already dealt with this earlier, sorry, I missed the earlier post)

Apricots seem to do pretty well all around our region. Their heat and frost needs are not too heavy. Pears also seem to do alright, though if you're going for a multigraft make sure you like the varieties. There's an old variety I used to run into around SF Bay and Monterey Bay a lot, whose name I do not know, but the pears were meant to be cooked and were really unpleasant if you didn't.

Do you already know you like medlars?

Do you already have a plum tree? Because plums are troopers. Leaf curl is neither as serious nor as hard to fight as people say it is. It took a long time for me to get the leaf curl all gone, but I never had a low yield year until it hailed in blossom time. Also I think that eating/cooking plums seem to be cross-pollinated with flowering plums that people have on the street. I'm very fond of the tiny "wild" plums that almost nobody grows any more.

I'm unsure that you have enough heat for a Seville orange.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about missing the earlier post -- I'm glad to get your opinions. In no particular order:

I'm on the flatlands in spitting distance of the bay. Not quite in one of the heavy fog-rivers, but a fair amount of fog. The sun problem is more due to surroundings than weather -- I get less sun for the heat than I should. Heat is almost never above the 80s and there are rarely more than a dozen days of frost in winter.

I currently have a plum that has occasionally been extremely prolific. (I think it's been suffering from the over-shading by the neighbor's tree -- the one I'm going to hack off at the fenceline. It hasn't been very happy the last few years.) I don't know that I've ever tried a medlar, but honestly, I love most fruit, so I figure there isn't much risk.

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

Actually, almonds and peaches are more closely related that are peaches and apricots. Almonds and peaches are Amydalus subgenus of Prunus, while plums and apricots are Prunus subgenus.

You shouldn't have to worry about peach leaf curl on anything except peaches and nectarines. But even there you just smack it down with a good dose of fungicide either in the fall after almost all of the leaves have fallen, or in the spring before the buds set.

Most U.S. apricot cultivars I think are grafted onto plum or peach rootstocks. You can, in fact, graft almost any Prunus onto another. My father had two trees he called "fruit salad trees" because on one he had grafted plum, apricot and peach, on a plum tree stock. The other was a pear treestock, with apple and crabapple grafts. I'd bet medlars would be graftable onto pear or apple stock also, they're in the same family.

If your trees are healthy, you might experiment with a graft or two to expand your fruit potential on the same tree!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I can get pretty much any apple variety you can think of at Berkeley Bowl.

King David? Karmijn de Sonnaville? Golden Russet? Ashmead's Kernel? Those are my top four dessert apples. For cooking, nothing beats Rhode Island Greening, absolutely the best pie apple EVAH. Does BB have those?

Nevertheless, I recommend to you the Medlar. Consider it as an ornamental that also happens to produce an otherwise unavailable period fruit. (Yields from a single tree are pretty low, in my experience, barely enough to do anything with.) They are a pretty, unfussy little tree, requiring little pruning, and in the fall they make a gorgeous display of flame orange-red leaves. Just be sure to get a well-formed young tree and take the usual care in planting.

Have you also considered Quince? They are messier, with an untidy bushy growth habit, but can be quite striking after a few years - the Van Deman tree at Luther Burbank House in SR is spectacular. Blossoms are gorgeous. You already know about the fruit.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

If your trees are healthy, you might experiment with a graft or two to expand your fruit potential on the same tree!

Hah! Despite my preoccupation with the growing things in my yard, my level of green-thumbedness is on the level of "stick it in the dirt and see what doesn't die". Performing my own fruit tree grafts is about as likely as performing my own appendectomy.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ok, ok, point taken on the varieties. (But really, they do carry a lot of really obscure stuff.) I have a quince already -- it's theoretically an ornamental flowering quince (never gets taller than a couple feet), but nobody gave it the message about not bothering with fruit and I get about a peck of handball-sized quinces every year. Which is quite sufficient for my quince needs. A true fruiting quince would have more conveniently sized fruit, but on the other hand, it would take up more space. The quince bush was planted in the parking strip right next to the driveway to discourage short-cutters and dog-squatters ... at which it does an admirable job.

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

It's really not hard - the easiest way is to do bud grafting, and Googling for that will get you a number of diagrams. The one caveat is to treat it like any other surgery - I wipe down the tools and surroundings with a bleach solution first, let that dry, then do the graft.

If a bud graft fails, it usually won't harm the main tree you are grafting to.

And I called my local nurseryman, and they tell me that most U.S. pears are grafted onto quince rootstock to get smaller trees, since pears are BIG on their own. So quinces and pears can be crossgrafted!

Rehoming Books?

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in the Ap Huw photocopy if it isn't already spoken for :-)

Re: Rehoming Books?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ok -- send me a mailing address and it's yours. This is the Claire Polin edition, by the way.

[j-i-m-r.livejournal.com]

Mark von dem F over in Marin has successfully grafted on his fruit trees, so you might ask for his assistance.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

OK, I learned something today: Ornamental quinces (Chaenomeles sp.) and true quinces (Cydonia sp.) are both in the Rosaceae family, which explains why they can have similar fruits.

Are yours fragrant? A couple of Smyrna quinces can perfume our entire kitchen. Smyrnas are also a nice compact tree with a neater growth habit than most quinces. Tough choice between that and a Medlar.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Are yours fragrant?

Incredibly so! Even if I don't get around to processing them into something, it's a delight just to have a bowl of them sitting in the kitchen. (Or a small pile sitting on the front porch.)

Re: Rehoming Books?

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Oops! Already have that one :-/