Summer finally arrived last week. A humid mass of high pressure from Mexico hopped the border fence and gave us some hot days and tropical-looking morning clouds that lit up brilliantly as the sun rose.
After almost four months with a total natural rainfall of .05 inches much of the garden has been heading into its defensive dormancy. But a few plants seem to be reveling in the arrival of some real summer heat. Top of the list is this California fuchsia, the ‘Route 66′ cultivar, which opened its flowers to coincide with the hot weather. Some Epilobium species and clones have fairly small, gray-colored leaves, but this is one of those where the leaves a smidge larger and greener, a bright contrast to the screaming orange flowers.
Desert marigold, Baileya multiradiata, has been blooming away with the help of a little additional water, but not much.
In the bed that gets some irrigation the gingers are the current stars of the show. Coinciding with the California fuchsia was this kahili ginger, Hedychium gardnerianum, a plant that I’ve been growing since my early teens, a hand-me-down plant from one of my mother’s gardening friends. Sitting in the back yard after sunset is a treat with this insanely fragrant ginger nearby.
Of course summer isn’t all about the flowers. The fig tree is hitting its peak fruit production this week. It’s the variety ‘Brown Turkey,’ which is supposed to do well with less heat than what most other varieties require. This has been one its best years ever for me. I’m trying to figure out what went right this year, and I’m thinking the success has something to do with water. This past winter and spring actually delivered a slightly-over normal rainfall that was spaced evenly throughout several months. Also, last year I applied some water-conserving woodchip mulch over the bed that contains the fig. And John’ has made a point of watering the zone around the fig every other week or so. I hope to be able to repeat the success next year, which according to the prognosticators could be a drier than average La Niña year.
The garden herbs are doing well. A sixpack of parsley several months back is turning out to be way more than two people who use parsley once or twice a week. At least it’s a pleasantly textured plant for the front of a border.
A sixpack of basil, however, hasn’t seemed to produce nearly enough. Maybe the basil will pick up with the warmer weather.
Surprisingly the tropical lemongrass plants (both the East– and West-Indian versions) haven’t been sulking and are overproducing just like the parsley.
Adding to the pile of edibles, our neighbor Olinda stopped by with her grandson. It was all she could do to carry this giant watermelon. John was impressed with its size and suggested I weigh it: 30.8 pounds.
It’s one of the with-seed varieties that stores these days don’t seem to stock much anymore. Stunning rind, don’t you think? One of the many things we’re losing in part because of big agra.
I was hoping to save the watermelon for a day or two, until we had room in the fridge, but I was a little clumsy photographing its cool rind in detail. Now I know what a melon dropped 3 feet off a table onto a brick patio does. It stays in one piece, but you have to deal with it right away.
High summer also means the best cantaloupes of the season. This is Scooter helping us out by finishing a couple of half-melons we had for breakfast. The melon came from the local hybrid grocery-farmer’s market.
And so our summer begins: a little too much melon and a garden peaking with fruit and herbs. Life is good.
August 23 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fruits • herbs • native plants • summer | 10 Comments »
While John and I were out looking for a small ornamental tree at our favorite local place to shop for plants, Walter Anderson Nursery, we passed by some bins of bare root fruit trees. We weren’t in the market for a fruit tree, and we really don’t have the perfect place to put one.
But John eyed the bins wistfully. “I’ve always wanted a plum tree.”
Our past experience with a stone fruit was a variety of apricot that was supposed to do okay without much chilling here in coastal San Diego. It’s been almost a dozen years, and that’s probably how many fruit we’ve harvested off the tree. Some of the fruits were eaten by critters before we got to them, but for the most part the issue is that there just haven’t been many fruit to begin with. It just doesn’t get cold enough here for success with apricots.
I had that discussion with Kurt at the nursery, and he assured us that all the plums they carried were selected to do well in this area. I wasn’t totally convinced, but with John and Kurt working their influence, I gave in. We now have a plum tree. Or is it five plum trees?
We walked away with one of those Frankenstein multi-grafted plants, with a branch of five different varieties. The theory is that they’re selected to provide a long season of fruits. But the reality of multi-grafts is that the vigor of the different varieties is never the same as that of the others, and one or two varieties often take over unless you continue to prune the plant carefully. In fact, one of the varieties is listed as being particularly vigorous. Uh oh.
John like the idea of the long season. I liked the idea that out of the five varieties we might actually find one that does well here–and actually taste good. If a variety doesn’t bear after its trial period, off the island it goes. Here’s what we ended up with:
- Santa Rosa: 300–400 hours chill requirement(below 45 degrees) . This variety is the one that ends up planted everywhere in Southern California, and it seems to set fruit pretty reliably. The flavor isn’t anything to get excited over, though. It’s in the “why bother” category for me, and I’ll be really disappointed if it’s the only one that does anything.
- Burgundy: 300–400 hours chill requirement
- Golden Nectar: 400–500 hours chill requirement
- Beauty: 250 hours
- Methley: 250 hours
Now, less than two weeks in the ground, some of the branches are blooming already. Encouraging. But I suspect the tree was at least somewhat pre-chilled at the originating nursery.
Interestingly, the branch with the most green foliage and no flowers at all is the supposedly low-chill Methley. And the other low chill variety, Beauty, has next to no flowers.
I’ll report back on how this all goes. How I love a good experiment!
February 07 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fruits • grafted trees • multi-grafted plants • plums | No Comments »
Brown Turkey Fig fruiting
Figs are among my favorite fruits, but they’re also among the fruits that are usually sad, unripe disappointments when you get them from a store. To help make up for that deficit we put in a ‘Brown Turkey’ fig tree over ten years ago.
Figs excel in the warm parts of the Mediterranean where they originate, but given cool summers they can sulk and not do particularly well. ‘Brown Turkey’ and ‘Osborn Prolific’ were a couple of the varieties listed as doing well with less heat. Here in coastal San Diego ‘Brown Turkey’ has turned out to be a great choice. The plant is bearing now, providing us–and some of the neighborhood birds–with tasty brown-purple-black fruit.
Last season’s crop ended being a puny one, so John chopped the tree back by a third. Figs produce two crops–an early one on last year’s wood and a larger, later one on this year’s. Pruning the tree sacrificed most of the first crop. But this summer has made up for what few figs we’ve had so far this year.
Another factor with its crop could be its watering schedule. Where the tree was placed–in the tough love bed behind the studio–it gets plenty of sun, but sometimes only gets summer water every three to four weeks. Figs are listed as being drought tolerant once established, but at the same time they’re listed as enjoying being watered. The plant definitely perks up after a good drenching so we know that could be part of the story. But it’s nice that there’s a plant that will provide at least something edible without too many gallons of the lower Colorado River poured on it!
August 18 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Brown Turkey fig • figs • fruits | 4 Comments »
I wanted to find the quince tree again.
It probably had been close to ten years since I last hiked my nearby Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. Still I clearly remembered coming upon an ancient but still fruiting quince in one of the tributary canyon bottoms. Unwatered for decades and tended only by the wildlife, it had seemed like a miracle of survival in San Diego’s desert climate.
Last Saturday I scootered up to the preserve and started a slow stroll through the native willows and sycamores and oaks that line the dry creek in López Canyon. I only vaguely remembered the location, but less than half a mile in, right by the side of the trail, there it was, still very much alive, green and loaded with fruit.
Nearby, in the shade of an old sycamore and crowded with some robust shrubs–including poison oak–I found a second tree with fruit on its branches.
And then I started looking around in earnest. Off to the left stood a different kind of tree, either a different quince or maybe even a pear. It had a thick, creased trunk and the plant was clearly old. But the tree still drooped a little from the weight of the fruit.
Not far ahead stood another specimen. Though without fruit it was clearly another fruiting tree, probably an apricot, judging by its leaves, a month after the last of its offerings would have been ripe.
So that made for four trees that I could find without crawling through more poison oak or further through the snakey grass. I’m certain all the trees were many decades old, but exactly how old I couldn’t say for sure.
Local history places an orchard operator in this canyon as late as 1921, so some of the trees may date to then, though this area has been ranched and cultivated at least as early as the early 1800s, when this area was contained in the first of the Mexican land grants in Alta California, to as recently as 1962, when the land was acquired by the County.
Nearby, under a protective shelter at the confluence of López Canyon and Los Peñasquitos Canyon, stand the remains of the Ruiz-Alvarado Adobe, one of the oldest structures in San Diego County.
Anything older than a hundred years around these parts is considered a relic. If you were to believe the most wishful of the sources the adobe would date all the way back to 1815, though more reliable sources place its construction at 1857. This small adobe, along with a later, grander one to the east, became part of a thriving concern dedicated to ranching.
Maybe it’s wishful and over-romanticizing on my own part–or maybe not–to imagine that the settlers who lived in this adobe planted the fruit trees in López Canyon. But the trees are as much of the human history of this area as are the few remaining adobe walls. Here we need all the history that we’ve got.
July 25 2008 | Categories: places | Tags: apricots • fruits • heirloom plants • history • Lopez Canyon • Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve • pears • quince • San Diego | 2 Comments »
