hrj | Entries tagged with pomecalendar

Hey, maybe doing the "Produce of My Estates Calendar" entries will get me on a posting roll.

Did a walk-around this morning for my stretch break. Noticed blossoms on a couple more of the citrus trees. The Trovita orange is doing its thing (after giving me a single orange the first year). It's still relatively young--planted just 2 years ago--so that's impressive. And the "mystery citrus" has some blossoms, so maybe I can remove the mystery label in the spreadsheet. My current map lists it as "Eureka lemon, but the Eureka is clearly the next tree over, so IDK?" and the tree that's clearly the Eureka lemon is tagged in the map as "previous note said orange, but it's clearly a lemon." So just maybe this is another orange tree (not another Seville, thank goodness), but if so, it's one that I never jotted down the details for.

The theory is that every plant that goes into the ground also goes into the spreadsheet and, in most cases, gets a photo of the tag that comes with it. But life gets busy, and tags sit around waiting to be entered until I give up and throw them out. In theory, I use a location grid to ID specific plants in the spreadsheet. I put a lot of work into charting out the fixed structures and measuring key grid locations relative to them. But I slack off for a lot of things. (I long since gave up on documenting the annual vegetables.)

Hence, the "mystery citrus" whose identity just may be revealed this year.

ETA: Not worth a separate post, but wanted to get the observation recorded. Looked out the office window to see that the pomegranate is just starting to bloom. In the past, I've gotten 2-3 fruits per year, but when it gets more mature I hope for a more extensive crop.

I have two rituals that clearly mark the turning from winterish season to summerish season: setting the thermostat to "off" and doing the walkdown of the irrigation system. I did both of those today.

I have two (actually three) independent irrigation systems. The front yard (excepting the citrus grove) is on one system with 6 circuits. For that one, the walkdown is mostly a matter of making sure none of the risers have gotten broken (e.g., by tripping over them) or are trapped by vegetation, or for the <360 sprayers, have gotten twisted out of their coverage zones. The only fiddly bits are the lines coming off one of the risers that branch out to cover the two planter boxes and the gooseberry bushes. Those need to have the nozzles checked and maybe get re-staked into position.

The backyard hard-piped system has 3 circuits. One covers the formal herb garden and--in theory--the vegetable beds. But it doesn't really have enough pressure to do the veg beds, so I have a separate oscillating sprinkler on a hose with a battery-powered timer that covers the veg. One circuit covers the citrus grove and the strawberry beds, which I kept telling my contractor was a bad idea because the citrus grove wants periodic long soaking but the strawberries want daily watering. He wasn't always very good at listening, and that was one of the cases where I thought we'd talked it out and then at the end of the job I found out he'd done it his way after all. Sigh. The third circuit covers the fruit trees, which does allow for the periodic long soaking that works best.

Not much maintenance needed this year: a handful of micro-spray nozzles needed replacing, but no chewed up tubing this time.

Doing the walkdown also means checking out various plants that I don't always look at closely in off season. The Oro Blanco grapefruit--after presenting me with its first (and lonely) fruit last year, is blooming all over the place this year. Either it simply decided it was ready to fruit (as signalled by last year's crop) or it's really really happy about all the rain. Or both. All the apple trees are flowering madly. As usual, the multiple-graft pear shows no signs of flowering at all. You win some, you lose some. That tree grows ok, but hasn't ever produced anything. Some years I do get a few flowers, but it's gone beyond a question of "let it settle in."

I picked the first strawberries of the season--three tiny Alpines, which are always the earliest. My to-do list still includes transplanting strawberries out of the beds surrounding the herb garden and into the dedicated strawberry beds. This probably means I'll put the transplants off fruiting much this year, but all in all they'll be happier.

It looks like the artichokes will present me with one dinner's worth per week for the duration. I'm picking them at about tennis ball sized because they're a bit of an aphid magnet which gets nasty if I wait for the buds to open up much.

Harvested the first artichokes today. On the medium-small side, but I wanted to make space for the side buds to develop. OK, also I wanted to have them for dinner, and they were young enough that the "choke" didn't need removing. I have maybe...five? Six? Artichoke plants going now and they're all enormous, thanks to the winter rains.

The apple trees have started blooming and the back yard smells wonderful. The onion sets I planted are looking energetic. Last weekend I bought and planted tomatoes (12 varieties again this year, though I couldn't find any Sun Gold, alas). The strawberries are blooming but no fruit yet.

I decided to experiment with the citron and do a pickle recipe, which put up 11 8oz jars. After they cure for a couple more weeks I'll do a taste test. The one jar that didn't pop the seal will be my taster. The rest are waiting for me to figure out where to store them. The one kitchen cabinet that's dedicated to Produce Of My Estates is full up. Clearly I need to work harder at giving it away.

Having somewhat desultorily decided to try doing a garden diary to track when things come ripe (but having decided to do it during a year when the extended winter rains make it an unusual schedule) I took some notes for a "check-in" after mowing the lawn yesterday. So here is a snapshot of what my yard is doing at the moment, focusing primarily on food plants.

Crandall (red) currants all blooming.
Black currants leafed out but no blooms yet.
Blueberries mostly blooming but at different stages (as intended when I got lots of different varieties). The "Top Hat" (planted this year) as produced its second berry, securing its place as the early producer this year. (The description says it ripens "mid-season" which other descriptions seem to equate with "summer/fall" so who knows.)
Persimmon is finally leafing out, but it's only in its second year so I don’t expect fruit or even likely blooms.
Gooseberries are leafing but no blooms yet.
Artichokes are very energetic but no buds yet.
Kumquats are starting to fall from the tree, so I should pick them and preserve. (Got a suggested pickled kumquat recipe a few days ago that I may try, since I still have oodles of candied kumquats.)
Picked the Buddha's hand citron (half a dozen) as one had dropped. I think I'll try the pickle recipe out on this first.
Black Tartarian cherry is blooming a lot but it isn’t coordinated with its designated pollinator yet. The designated pollinator is a Bing, but it's only in its second year, so I'll give it some slack. Last year I did get a few Tartarian cherries, so there's something in the neighborhood that it's compatible with.
The Morello cherry is starting an abundant bloom. I hope all the rain will make this a good year. It's my best producer among the cherries so far. (The Montmorency hasn't started blooming yet. They're both self-fertile so the timing is less important. I got half a dozen Montmorencies last year.)
Quince blooms are very abundant and I need to remember to thin the fruit this year.
All the apples are just starting to leaf out and not blooming yet.
The apricot is starting to bloom but looks sparse. I don't know what's up with the apricot. At this point it's a large, vigorous tree. (My pruning goal is to keep the branches within easy reach.) But so far I haven't gotten more than half a dozen fruit in any year.
One medlar is finishing blooming and the other hasn’t started yet. Very strange.
The Pre-existing Plum (I just invented this nickname. I think it may be a damson type, but who knows?) has set fruit and it looks like it may be a great year.
The new Santa Rosa Plum is thinking about whether it wants to set fruit but it’s still a baby, so that's ok.
The strawberries are blooming but no fruit yet.
And, of course, both lemon trees are doing their continuous year-round thing.
The two newish juice oranges aren't showing any signs of flowering, but I'm getting used to the idea that citrus will take a few years to settle in and get happy.
The onion sets that I got in the ground a couple weeks ago are poking up green but I'll need to keep a close eye on moisture so I'll know when to start irrigation. And it's probably time to plant the tomatoes. Maybe I'll go off to my favorite nursery this afternoon and see what they have.

If this series of posts is going to do any good for mapping out the garden year, I need to post more often!

Let's see... As a snapshot of where we are right now:
* The first blueberry is almost ripe. I'd guess maybe another week? Most of the blueberries are blooming, but only one is close to giving me fruit. Once it does, I'll need to check the map to record which variety it is.
* The artichokes are putting out very lush foliage but I don't see buds yet.
* I just finished processing the last of the Seville orange crop. (Harvest and processing has been going on for most of February and March.)
* I've been picking the kumquats a few at a time and there are still plenty on the tree. I suspect they'll keep on the tree for quite some time, so I'll probably leave a few to see if there's a limit.
* Lots of lemons on the tree, both the Eureka in the citrus grove and the Anonymous in the backyard. Both varieties keep well on the tree, though they do fall eventually.
* The Buddha's Hand citron are all ripe but I haven't picked them yet as I haven't decided what I'm going to do with them yet. (Also: see "a month and a half of processing oranges".)
* The redleaf plum has been flowering up a storm...but it's also been flowering *through* the storms which may affect fruit setting. The anonymous plum in the back is also flowering up a storm.
* Apricot is beginning to flower but the rest of the fruit trees are just fattening their buds.
* If I have the energy tomorrow, I need to plant the onion sets I picked up, which means I need to decide what's going in which bed and do any amendments I want to do. I'm not a very systematic gardener in that regard. The raised beds need topping up every couple years, and I rotate which bed gets the compost output. If I've been digging holes and the dirt is reasonably free of rocks and grass roots, I'll put it in the bed with the lowest soil, but more often it goes around the roots of the mulberry where I'm trying to build the level up a bit.

I've completed all the tree pruning (except that I still need to get the pros in to pollard the mulberry and I've decided to get a quote for removing the palm trees out front, rather than continue to struggle to trim them every year). The next big task is going through the formal garden and cleaning things up, tying up the roses and the berry canes, and continuing to work on transplanting the strawberries into their new dedicated beds. Eventually I need to do the Spring walk-through of all the irrigation lines, but it doesn't look like that's at all urgent. (Glances at weather app.)

A "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.