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Produce of My Estate Calendar - the plan
Jan. 8th, 2023 12:39 pmA "memory" on facebook reminded me that I've been thinking of keeping a garden/orchard calendar, tracking when things are coming ripe, how much I harvest, etc. So since it's the beginning of the year, I'll start off with the 2023 POME records. I may fill in bits and pieces from my photo albums. (Too much work to try to sift through the facebook stuff.)
January 8
Tomatoes: Still a few green and half-ripe cherry tomatoes that made it through the frosts and storms. Collected enough for a stir-fry, but that's it for the year. Time to pull out the plants.
Medlars: I was experimenting with leaving the medlars on the tree to blet, rather than harvesting them hard and letting them blet in a paper bag or basket. But then I didn't check on them before the storms that came through last week and most were knocked off the tree. I gathered up all the ones that were both bletted and non-splatted. Processing them resulted in about 3c of medlar butter. (Squeeze out the pulp, then cook it with enough water to form a slurry. Process through a sieve to remove the seads and fibers. Cook down until it's the consistency of apple butter -- a thickish paste. No added sugar, so put in sterilized jars hot, but store in the refrigerator and use fairly promptly.)
Citrus
Lemons: Both the anonymous backyard lemon tree and the Meyer lemon in the citrus grove are producing continuously, as usual. The backyard tree is dropping fruit so I should gather and do some juicing.
Kumquats: The kumquats have been gradually ripening for about a month or so? So count them as starting to come ripe in December. (I think I have photos of when I picked the first of the season.) Plentiful crop -- if I picked them all at once, it would probably be 3-4 quarts. (But I won't because they aren't all ripe at once.) They stay on the tree well when ripe, so I've been picking a handful each time I'm out there and putting them in stir fry. They go well in salad when it's salad season, so I'm guessing they may stay ripe that long?
Bearss Lime: I've picked several, starting about a month ago. I learned last year that they tend to drop from the tree when past ripe, so I need to stay on top of them. I've never had so many that I needed to find specific recipes for them. Mostly I tend to use them in drinks, or as a lemon substitute. When I made this year's quince paste the recipe called for lemon juice as the cooking liquid and I used a combination of lemon, lime, and Seville orange juice. I think there are fewer than a dozen in this year's crop, which is about the same as last year.
Buddha's Hand Citron: Again, they started coming ripe about a month ago, but are ripening at various rates. I've only picked one so far and several are still quite green. Fewer than last year's bumper crop, but I haven't actually counted. I think I'm mostly going to candy them this year. The ones I candied last year didn't have enough moisture removed and came over with white mold so I threw them out.
Grapefruit: This is a retrospective. I had one fruit each on the Ruby and Oro Blanco trees, both ripening in December. I picked them right around the end of the year. Hope for more this year. The Ruby was a new tree last year and came with the fruit started (so I was lucky it survived the transplant shock). The Oro Blanco has been in place since 2016 and this is the first fruit. I suspect irrigation levels are the key, as 2022 was the first full year of the current irrigation system and I think all the citrus is happier for it.
Seville Orange: OMG. Once again I have a massive crop on both trees. (Why did I think I needed a second Seville orange tree?) Starting in December I've picked a few to test ripeness (since most still had a bit of green on the rind, but I wasn't sure if they might be re-greening). They look pretty much all ripe at this point, so they'll be the bit January project. I still have marmalade from several different years, but I'm running very low on candied peel, so I think I'll mostly focus on candying this year. But I also need to restock the zest-in-sugar which I use regularly in baking. I dried some zest last year, which is good in spiced tea, so maybe I should do something more systematic with that too. Candying peel means that I have juice too. Last year I made up some orange sauce (juice in reduced duck broth) but I haven't remembered to use it. I may do some of that again, or just freeze cubes of juice to use in cooking. One of the ideas of growing Sevilles was to have sour orange juice for medieval recipes that called for it, but my bumper crops started coming after I'd drifted out of the SCA. Ah, the life rhythms that don't quite synchronize!
Juice Oranges: The two juice oranges (Valencia and Trovita) didn't set fruit last year, but they were only planted in 2021 so I'm happy to give them time to settle in.
Thai Lime: I think I've figured out which tree this is by process of elimination. If so, it's the sad little thing that is now at one end of the grape arbor. For various reasons, it's always struggled. If I think it can spare a leaf, I may pick one and see if I'm right. Or I may continue to leave it alone and see what happens.
Everything else is dormant currently. Needed tasks are pruning the fruit trees (heck, Pruning All The Things!), transplanting more of the strawberries from the cane-berry beds into the dedicated strawberry beds. And weeding. Always weeding. If I want to try a winter vegetable crop, this is when I should be doing it. It's also when the light levels and weather mean I don't get much yardwork done beyond the essentials.
January 8
Tomatoes: Still a few green and half-ripe cherry tomatoes that made it through the frosts and storms. Collected enough for a stir-fry, but that's it for the year. Time to pull out the plants.
Medlars: I was experimenting with leaving the medlars on the tree to blet, rather than harvesting them hard and letting them blet in a paper bag or basket. But then I didn't check on them before the storms that came through last week and most were knocked off the tree. I gathered up all the ones that were both bletted and non-splatted. Processing them resulted in about 3c of medlar butter. (Squeeze out the pulp, then cook it with enough water to form a slurry. Process through a sieve to remove the seads and fibers. Cook down until it's the consistency of apple butter -- a thickish paste. No added sugar, so put in sterilized jars hot, but store in the refrigerator and use fairly promptly.)
Citrus
Lemons: Both the anonymous backyard lemon tree and the Meyer lemon in the citrus grove are producing continuously, as usual. The backyard tree is dropping fruit so I should gather and do some juicing.
Kumquats: The kumquats have been gradually ripening for about a month or so? So count them as starting to come ripe in December. (I think I have photos of when I picked the first of the season.) Plentiful crop -- if I picked them all at once, it would probably be 3-4 quarts. (But I won't because they aren't all ripe at once.) They stay on the tree well when ripe, so I've been picking a handful each time I'm out there and putting them in stir fry. They go well in salad when it's salad season, so I'm guessing they may stay ripe that long?
Bearss Lime: I've picked several, starting about a month ago. I learned last year that they tend to drop from the tree when past ripe, so I need to stay on top of them. I've never had so many that I needed to find specific recipes for them. Mostly I tend to use them in drinks, or as a lemon substitute. When I made this year's quince paste the recipe called for lemon juice as the cooking liquid and I used a combination of lemon, lime, and Seville orange juice. I think there are fewer than a dozen in this year's crop, which is about the same as last year.
Buddha's Hand Citron: Again, they started coming ripe about a month ago, but are ripening at various rates. I've only picked one so far and several are still quite green. Fewer than last year's bumper crop, but I haven't actually counted. I think I'm mostly going to candy them this year. The ones I candied last year didn't have enough moisture removed and came over with white mold so I threw them out.
Grapefruit: This is a retrospective. I had one fruit each on the Ruby and Oro Blanco trees, both ripening in December. I picked them right around the end of the year. Hope for more this year. The Ruby was a new tree last year and came with the fruit started (so I was lucky it survived the transplant shock). The Oro Blanco has been in place since 2016 and this is the first fruit. I suspect irrigation levels are the key, as 2022 was the first full year of the current irrigation system and I think all the citrus is happier for it.
Seville Orange: OMG. Once again I have a massive crop on both trees. (Why did I think I needed a second Seville orange tree?) Starting in December I've picked a few to test ripeness (since most still had a bit of green on the rind, but I wasn't sure if they might be re-greening). They look pretty much all ripe at this point, so they'll be the bit January project. I still have marmalade from several different years, but I'm running very low on candied peel, so I think I'll mostly focus on candying this year. But I also need to restock the zest-in-sugar which I use regularly in baking. I dried some zest last year, which is good in spiced tea, so maybe I should do something more systematic with that too. Candying peel means that I have juice too. Last year I made up some orange sauce (juice in reduced duck broth) but I haven't remembered to use it. I may do some of that again, or just freeze cubes of juice to use in cooking. One of the ideas of growing Sevilles was to have sour orange juice for medieval recipes that called for it, but my bumper crops started coming after I'd drifted out of the SCA. Ah, the life rhythms that don't quite synchronize!
Juice Oranges: The two juice oranges (Valencia and Trovita) didn't set fruit last year, but they were only planted in 2021 so I'm happy to give them time to settle in.
Thai Lime: I think I've figured out which tree this is by process of elimination. If so, it's the sad little thing that is now at one end of the grape arbor. For various reasons, it's always struggled. If I think it can spare a leaf, I may pick one and see if I'm right. Or I may continue to leave it alone and see what happens.
Everything else is dormant currently. Needed tasks are pruning the fruit trees (heck, Pruning All The Things!), transplanting more of the strawberries from the cane-berry beds into the dedicated strawberry beds. And weeding. Always weeding. If I want to try a winter vegetable crop, this is when I should be doing it. It's also when the light levels and weather mean I don't get much yardwork done beyond the essentials.
