EVERYBODY is Busy in the Garden

Spanish Lavender

Spring has arrived along with garden tasks to get ready for summer.  Winter crops like broccoli have been cleared to make way for summer favorites like tomatoes and peppers.  The last of the beets and carrots are hanging in there; but Hades heat will force them to fade to make way for more tomatoes.

Weeds have been cleaned away to at least start summer without weeds.  When July gets here, I really don't give a flying floo hoo if there are weeds.  It will be too danged hot.   For now digging, raking, hoeing, planting, pruning, composting, repairing, fertilizing, irrigating, and tidying are generally pretty enjoyable.

Calibrachoa

My current quest is to find some durable purple blooming plants to accent the garden.  Lavender is always a strong choice.  Purple Prince Zinnias have been proven winners.  Monrovia has a compact salvia called Marcus Meadow Sage that I'm thinking of ordering through a local nursery.  Calibrachoa has worked great in the past and is now hanging in several baskets in the garden to entice pollinators throughout the summer.

Hope you're enjoying all of your garden chores.

Grrrrrreat Grapefruit!

Rain! We received heavenly rain.  It even looks like we may receive more. Keep it coming. The weather is beautiful and cool. Most all of the spring blossoms have faded giving way to infant fruit that will surely drop as they develop. 

The Rio Red grapefruit tree is loaded with babies thanks to lots of busy bees.  In the photo above, the current crop being harvested can be seen below the new flush of growth.  I've had one grapefruit almost every morning since January. Wish I would have kept count.  Needless to say, there is no chance of a scurvy outbreak in this garden with grapefruit, orange, manderin, and lemon producing beautifully. The only imperfections would be the cosmetic damage from miners.  The next citrus tree I will bring to the garden is a Bearrs lime.  One of my favorite drinks is chunks of a variety of citrus all squished in a glass with ice and club soda.  So good.

Ajax doesn't care for citrus, but he's enjoying the cool beautiful weather.  High 5 paws for this great weather.  We need to duck inside.  It looks like the skies are threatening to open.

Thanks for the rain and snow!

Spring is Popping

A few edibles have bolted.  The mustard and broccoli are certainly attracting the bees in the neighborhood.  Those items will remain in place because all the bees in the San Joaquin Valley are welcome in this garden. They will get pulled as the weather warms and the beds are prepared to be solarized.

Mustard planted to repel Root Knot Nematodes.

After the sweet rain/snow earlier this week, the warm sun is encouraging most everything in the garden to pop.  The first to break bud was the Santa Rosa plum.  It's always first and this year it looks like there will be 5 million plums. The deciduous trees were selected for reliability to grow successfully in this area (Bakersfield, California - zone 8-9).  The next characteristic to help narrow the choices was taste.  Very important.  Then, the time of ripeness.  This timing helps to keep fresh fruit from June to October.

Blenheim Apricot

The second tree to welcome spring is the Blenheim apricot.  Even though a lateral limb of this espalier had to be shortened to remove a damaged portion, it looks like 2013 will be another banner year for this fruit.

Lilac (variety unknown) looks ready to explode very soon.

The edible garden does have a few non-edibles (as far as I know) that help to lure pollinators to come on in and enjoy themselves.  More blooms expected all the way through to fall.

Miss Congeniality–Granny Smith

Good Ol’ Granny Smith takes 4th place in the fruit blossom competition in the garden.  This year look pretty good for the apple tree.  There are dozens of blossoms on the young tree now.  Hopefully enough will develop into apples to enjoy later in the summer.Locally, the honey bee population is supposed to be on the rise.  I’m doing my part.  Hope they get busy in the garden.

Who Put the Ape in Apricot?

Blenheim Apricot is the 2nd fruit tree to blossom in the garden this spring.  It follows behind the Santa Rosa Plum.  All the trees are scheduled to be fertilized this week.  No rain or freezing temperatures predicted to get in the way of bees coming in to do their thing. The sap is flowing in all of the trees with some oozing out where it can.  Some is oozing where a certain dog applied his teeth leaving puncture wounds. I hope that the temporary blockades will keep the dog from pruning this tree any further allowing a bumper crop of apricots for 2012.

Another Winner!

The Santa Rosa Plum is once again the first fruit tree in the garden to break its bud.  Here’s the history:

• February 20, 2009
• February 14, 2010
• February 24, 2011
• February 11, 2012

2011 was the 1st year this tree could hold fruit.  Production was vigorous.  Temperatures have been very warm so early in the season and rain has been almost nonexistent.  The trees were fertilized on February 20, 2011 through to October 29, 2011.  Fertilizer was applied every 4 – 6 weeks between those dates. I plan to pick up some fertilizer next weekend and apply the 1st feeding of the year.Manual irrigation will most likely continue on through the growing season of 2012. 

This year, the tree was pruned to encourage healthy espalier growth.  Dormant spray was applied 3 times:

• January 1, 2012
• January 19, 2012
• February 5, 2012

Even though the dog is using his own pruning technique on the trees, I’m hopeful for a bounteous year of tree fruit.

Sunshine

The angle of the sun is moving from the south up to the north giving me more daylight in the garden.  Rather than hibernate after dinner, I can go out in the garden while dinner is cooking and get a bit more work done like a busy bee.

 

Raking the gravel out in the garden, pulling out the spent broccoli, or weeding the camellias are some exercises recently performed out in my garden gymnasium.  Farmer MacGregor joined in the calorie burning by mowing the lawn.  This weekend will be dedicated to more weeding and planting lettuce, carrots, and corn.  Heck, I might even consider a trip to the nursery to buy a flat or two of flowers for the front yard.

 

 

LILAC ALERT:

Love Is In The Air

Twitterpated.  The birds in the garden are completely twitterpated.  This afternoon at lunch, this fellow was letting the entire neighborhood hear his treetop opera.  He sat at the very top of the neighbor’s mulberry tree trying to impress all the ladies while I was out noting the progress of some buds.  These birds look like a sparrow dipped in that powder that my kindergarten teacher used to mix with water to make finger paints.  THAT came out of nowhere.  Back to the garden…

One of the lilacs has very plump buds ready to burst.  I suspect tomorrow at lunch I may be able to enjoy lilac perfume.  I have two different varieties of lilacs in containers.  Each one has a story to make them even more enjoyable.  This one was given to me as a gift.  It is from a cutting from a lilac that came to California from Mississippi.  Allen’s great-grandmother brought it with her.  Allen’s mother had a cutting in the yard of every place she lived.  This cutting was taken in the spring of 2004.  Looks like it’s going to do well.  If you have a lilac, make sure to prune it right after it blooms if you have to prune it at all.  The flowers form on the growth from the prior year.  If you prune too late or too much, it will take at least another season to enjoy the bouquets these shrubs provide.

This freesia reminds me of the crazy plant in the Little Shop of Horrors.  It should be blooming tomorrow.  I certainly hope it’s only a freesia.

Buttery yellow petals will most likely enjoy the spring sun by the end of the week.  I thought I had transplanted all of these bulbs last fall to a better location allowing me to transplant more strawberries.  Seems I missed a few and they seem to multiply fairly easily.  The freesia bulbs were a gift to me as well.  These gifts keep on giving.

Lilacs and freesia grow vigorously in zone 8-9 in Bakersfield, California

Santa Rosa Wins Again!

The Santa Rosa Plum is the 1st fruit tree to bloom for the 3rd year in a row.  So far, no fruit has lasted to maturity.  The tree was planted January 12, 2009 as bare root stock.  This tree has taken really well to espalier pruning.  Along with the apricot tree, the plum is suited to zone 8-9 in Bakersfield, California.  The long, hot summer days and the cool, moist winter season must work well for the Santa Rosa.

This has got to be the year I get to taste a plum from this tree.  There is an abundance of buds ready to follow the lead “breaking” bud.  There should be a load of white petals floating through the garden once the honey bees have done their thing.

These are the dates of the 1st bloom break of the Santa Rosa Plum:

• February 20, 2009
• February 14, 2010
• February 24, 2011

The Winner Is…

The Santa Rosa Plum is the 1st fruit tree in the garden to pop.  It popped today.  The tree was planted on January 12, 2009 from bare root stock.  It bloomed on February 20, 2009.  We’re ahead of schedule this year!   It has been warm and sunny lately.  This may explain being a week ahead of last year.  I suspect bees will follow tomorrow since these opened in the late afternoon.  The pollen is almost fluorescent.  There are about 24 buds on the baby tree. These buds have a couple of flies on them and the biggest bud has a spot that looks like a burn.  All the fruit trees were sprayed with dormant oil this winter to help prevent infestation and disease.  The oil is suppose to be perfectly safe and recommended to use on these trees to eliminate borers.  I don’t know what these flies are up to; but I don’t like it.  I’ll keep an eye on this. The apricot looks like it will be the runner up.  Here’s the bud at the bothersome cut shown previously.  The sap is still formed but the bud has gotten a bit plumper.  Here it is last week (02/06/10).