Meet Gloria, future Master Gardener and present helper extraordinaire! Gloria’s been helping me on Saturday mornings for the past month, and she’s amazing. She has the special “touch” the plants like, and everything she’s planted is growing well. My farmette wouldn’t be the same without her.
I’ve launched a full-scale war against snails and slugs, finally! I’m using beer traps and they actually WORK! I pour flat beer into shallow containers, the yeast attracts the snails and slug, they slide in for a drink and drown! Then more snails come to eat the dead ones and whoops, they’re drowning before they know what’s happened! Snails are notorious for being cannibalistic feeders: they love to eat each others’ dead.
I sprayed a mixture of fish emulsion and kelp this morning on the entire garden. It smells pretty foul, but it has everything the plants need. The nutrients get taken up by the leaves and the roots, and it’s got trace minerals and other goodies that other fertilizers don’t have.
This Saturday, October 24th at 11:00 am, Russ Parsons, the LA Times Food Editor will be on hand at the Peninsula Library at 701 Silver Spur to give a lively talk and sign his books called How to Pick a Peach and How to Read a French Fry. I plan to show up and hand out Bay Laurel Nursery catalogs, trying to drum up interest in planting more peach and nectarine trees on our lovely Peninsula.
Russ will be joined by Frieda Caplan, founder of Frieda’s Specialty Produce Company. She specializes in selling rare and unusual fruit, produce, etc. at farmer’s markets and through her website: http://www.friedas.com/
I don’t doubt that if I stand up and introduce myself as the founder of the RPV Fruit Exchange, that it will get a little “off topic” from trying to find peaches at the local farmer’s markets. But you have to admit, nothing could be more local than your own back yard, so I guess they can’t complain about me if they’re truly interested in local and fresh fruit.
So if you want to meet me, and get a fruit tree catalog, come to Russ and Frieda’s talk, buy Russ’ book, and then set up an appointment to have me come to your house and recommend trees (for free!!!)
There’s only two things I’m still harvesting in quantity at the “farm”: tomatoes and eggplant. I’d never made Eggplant Parm before, but you’d never know it: the recipe I found off the internet was excellent, and OMG, the results were fantastic!
I’ve been on a cooking kick lately. Here’s some of the recipes I’ve made over the past two months:
Banana Pancakes from scratch with blueberries
French Toast (Alton Brown’s recipe)
Lazy Man’s Beef Stew
Pork Medallions with a Plum ginger compote reduction
Spicy Mexican Tomato Soup with roasted homegrown Anaheim chilis
Linguine with Pecorino, homegrown tomatoes and homegrown arugula
Sauteed Tex-Mex homegrown Zucchini and Potatoes
Slow-roasted homegrown tomatoes with garlic and fresh thyme
Roasted homegrown Lemongrass Chicken
Curried homegrown Greenbeans (Indian)
Disappearing homegrown Zucchini Orzo
Orange-scented Chocolate homegrown Zucchini Cake
As you can see, I try to incorporate homegrown ingredients as much as possible, except for the French Toast. I used plantains instead of bananas for the pancakes, because Jill’s babysitter has a plantain tree. And I used curry leaves from my own curry tree for the Indian Green Beans.
If you want a recipe, let me know and I’ll make links.
Here in Southern California, we should plant fruit trees in January. That’s why I place my order in October: so that I don’t miss out on some of the best trees Bay Laurel Nursery has to offer. For example, last year I couldn’t purchase the Spice Zee Nectaplum because they had run out by the time I got around to ordering.
My neighbor was excited enough to buy two trees at my urging. Her son, Max likes Asian Pears, and there’s really only one variety sold by Bay Laurel that doesn’t need a pollinator: a Shinseiki Asian Pear. Then I suggested we try cherries together, because cherries usually need a pollinator. I like Royal Ranier, which is a large yellow cherry with a reddish blush. She ordered a Lapins Cherry, which pollinates the Ranier. Lapins is described as “large, firm, dark red sweet cherry with good flavor… ripens in early June” and it’s self-fruitful, but also pollinates other sweet cherries. We need to plant them within 100 to 150 feet from each other.
I bought the Spice Zee Nectaplum, described thusly: “It is slightly acidic and loaded with sugar, giving it a spicy sweet flavor. One can detect both plum and nectarine traits with ease. Spice Zee is a beautiful ornamental tree with a tremendous spring bloom followed by dark red leaf in the spring that matures to a rich green-red in late summer… very productive.”
I’m also trying my first true miniature tree, called Garden Delight. It’s a nectarine, with large fruits growing on a bush-shaped tree that reaches a maximum of 6 feet high. Sounds very interesting to me. Plus, it ripens just before the next tree I’m going to describe, offering a longer season for peaches and nectarines than I’m currently experiencing.
Liz’s Late is the last tree I’m trying. It’s also a freestone nectarine, described as: “Taste test flavor winner… Sprightly-sweet, intense, spicy flavored, yellow meated freestone with red over yellow skin. Ripens late August into early September.” I’m replacing my Snow Queen nectarine with this tree because Snow Queen nectarines crack too easily, in my experience. They are also a white fleshed nectarine, which is usually very sweet but not tart enough, in my opinion, to be interesting.
Lastly, I ordered another Southmoon Blueberry bush to replace a Sharps blueberry. The later had a lot of blueberries on the bush, but they were smaller and had more seeds and tasted tarter than the big, fat tasty Southmoon Blueberry.
I also ordered a Gala apple tree and a Double Delight nectarine for a friend of mine. I stick with dwarfing rootstocks so that they’ll have easy-to-pick trees, but I will have to prune and train their nectarine tree to give it a good start. I’m just learning how to prune apple trees.
Interesting side note: the miniature tree I’ve bought is grafted onto a regular rootstock, not a dwarfing rootstock because the tree itself is always bush-like. On the other trees, the rootstock helps to reduce the size of the trees, but you still have to prune them like crazy because peaches and nectarines grow very fast and can easily get tall.
The trees will ship in January, when it’s possible to plant the trees without worrying about the ground being frozen or worrying about hot, dry weather drying out the new tree.
I performed the summer pruning on my peach and nectarine trees. It took all of 45 minutes for 5 trees. Not bad. If anyone wants a quick primer, let me know and I’ll post it on this blog.
I planted three of the four trees today. I decided not to plant the Java Plum “Duhat” based on a review at http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/57324/ that said the tree is a big problem, and the fruit’s not that great. Decide for yourself, or email me to let me know your thoughts on this tree.
Here’s what I found about the other three trees and how to plant them:
Papaya: like a palm, just one main trunk. Plant in dry location (south-facing). No frost. Grows 10-12 feet high. Likes being planted near the house to receive reflected heat. Plant in a mound, to prevent water logging. It doesn’t like to sit in damp soil. FYI: http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/papaya.html
Cherimoya: Likes sun, south-facing. Grows leaves only in April. Evergreen, to 30 feet tall, but can easily be restrained. Stake the young tree. Do not plant near a radiant wall or on a hot hillside, next to the slope. Protect from Santa Ana winds. Only water in April, non-soggy soil the rest of the year. FYI: http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/cherimoya.html
Mango: Self-fruitful. Grows to 30 feet. Shade tree. Does best at the top of middle of a slope. Needs staking. Plant at the north side of a house in the desert; it likes shade. On the coast, plant against a south wall, near pavement to provide maximum heat. Avoid wet soils. FYI: http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/mango.html
San Pedro hosted a Philippine Festival today, and I found a vendor with rare fruit trees named Monalisa’s, which you can find by calling 626-367-3581. I bought four new trees (see pictures below), two heirloom tomatoes (“Rosso Bruno” and “Red and Green”) and some eggplant varieties I’ve never heard of before (see picture below)… I submit to you the following evidence:
Java Plum “Duhat” (left) and Mango tree on right.
Mexican Papaya on left and Cherimoya (right).
Rosa Blanca Eggplant, two Fairytale Eggplants (right) plus two of my stunning Persimmon tomatoes for decoration.
I’ve talked to quite a few people about tomatoes: how their plants are spent already, and what should be the height of the season hasn’t panned out. I’m certain that all the seasons have shifted later, so that summer didn’t really start until the end of August, so the tomatoes have just started feeling the right kind of weather to really produce.
That is why I’ve been doing successive plantings of all my summer vegetables and melons. Every month, I start more seeds, even though it’s really late in the year to be starting more tomatoes. I’ll bet that I can keep tomatoes coming in through January this way, so long as we have a week’s worth of hot weather in December or January that will get them to start ripening on the vine.
I’m still trying to get more production out of my garden, not only with successive planting, but also by fighting the snails! I’ve got a snail and slug problem that just won’t go away. I won’t give up and I won’t use chemicals, though.
I had to move the Falling in Love rosebush and Yves Piaget rosebush to new spots; they weren’t liking it under our biggest tree.
Since Jillian is in school and has regular taxi service, I’ve had more time to garden and it really shows! The garden is spiffy and clean now, cleaner than usual. The novel writing is coming along flowingly, if that’s a word. I get about 2 to 3 hours of writing in each weekday.
This is a dwarf banana tree that I finally planted outside after having it indoors for over a year. I can tell that it likes its new spot, because the leaf coming out of the center is growing fresh and green. Banana trees are rapid growers, but I don’t expect bananas for maybe another 2 years. And this type of tree never gets too big, and neither do the bananas. I planted it where it won’t feel a lot of wind, hopefully.
