Passages

I've been avoiding cutting back the cara cara orange tree while it was producing fruit but it's been blocking access to our back yard.

Now that we've harvested the fruit, it's no problem.  Just use the  walkway as a guide. 

Just in the nick of time as the next crop is starting...the flowers will soon be open and looking for bees.

All done and now the walkway is clear.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Cara Cara!

Just a quick post to cover the last of our crop of Cara Cara navel oranges. That big one in the middle is my blue ribbon fruit, it's as big as a grapefruit.

Now that the tree is bare, I'll prune those branches back off of the sidewalk.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Winter's Tangy Harvest

Late fall...winter starts next week...and in the middle of a big drought, not a lot to do in the garden but we can find something.

December in Southern California is citrus season and our three trees are producing! 

The cara cara navel orange tree (at the top of this post) has put out the most fruit it's ever given us.

Our Meyer lemon is not far behind.

We harvest just enough to last us for a week or so and let the rest of the fruit stay on the tree til we're ready for more.

Along with the oranges and lemons, I also find a few rogue Anaheim chiles that will go into tomorrow's eggs.

These tart but sweet cara caras are just the ticket for a nice, healthy shot of vitamin C on the side of this sandwich.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Caught in the Act!

Here are some of the deer that have been coming down from the nearby mountains to feed on my front yard rose garden. This one is helping itself to my nextdoor neighbor's holly topiary.

The drought is serious, folks.  These animals, and many more like them, are really feeling the brunt of it. They can have my roses until the rain returns.

Luckily, the bulk of my garden is behind a tall wall in the backyard, let's see how it's faring this week.

Tomatoes! I'm loving my tomato plants this year. Here, the hanging cherry tomatoes are reddening up. My son and I sampled but they're a bit tart at a redder color than this so we'll let them ripening for quite some time before harvesting. There are a ton of them on the basket.

That's in contrast to last year where I could count my entire tomato harvest on one hand. This hybrid is giving the cherry tomatoes a run in the numbers game and the big ones are the size of a baseball.

I was sweating a little over the heirloom plant but it's getting some nice fruit on it too, now.

In our citrus grove, we've got Myer lemons on the branches...

...more fruit on our Cara Cara orange...

...and a few late blooming Cara Cara flowers, too.

I had a micro-sprinkler clog and I think it affected our corn adversely. I replaced it but I don't know how this will do. In this drought-affected garden, however, it's sink or swim. We'll see if we can get anything edible out of it.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Blessed Are The Pollinators

Ah, the sweetest smell of spring. I'm talking about citrus flowers, or orange blossoms if you will. Nothing smells like it and it's heavenly.

Our little citrus grove is in full bloom. Well, the orange and lemon, anyway. The tangelo is still just in bud. 

The Cara Cara orange has these gorgeous white flowers.

While the Meyer lemon isn't to be outdone with its pink-tinged flowers.

Last week, I planted some lavender nearby to attract bees.

It may be working. Let's hope these busy pollinators give us a lot of fruit this year.

Darryl 
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Lavender: It's the Bees Knees!

Storm clouds are on the horizon for this Oscar's Sunday here in Southern California. While the rich and beautiful crowd undoubtedly have some poor production assistant to hold an umbrella over their freshly coiffed head, I have no such assistance so I'd better get what little gardening I have to do done.

I should also turn off the sprinkler timers until drier weather arrives to save on our precious water in this dry region.

I'm trying to fix my poor citrus production dilemma. My three-tree citrus grove just doesn't produce the way I want it to. I get hundreds, may thousands, of very fragrant blossoms each year but just a few fruit from each tree.

When I say few, I mean hardly any...two from the cara cara orange; three tangelos; and about ten Meyer lemons.

During the blooming period, I rarely see bees on the plants. You'd think such fragrant flowers would really attract the little honeymakers.

One place I do see them...tons of them, actually...is on the lavender plants.  Last summer, our backyard lavender  plant died so this year, I need to replace it.

I bought two small plants like this a Lowe's.

I dig an appropriately sized hole, knock the plastic pot off, and just stick it in the ground.  I planted a lavender between each citrus tree to attract the bees and, hopefully, they will notice the nice looking plants next door and go looking to do a little pollinating, if you know what I mean and I think you do. 

Dirt tamped down and plants watered in, we'll keep our fingers crossed for a better citrus crop this year.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Attack of the Killer Mockingbirds

Well, maybe not killer. I'm not even 100% sure it's mockingbirds but something's been eating my tomatoes and I've heard their calls mocking me in the morning (mockingbirds are an ongoing pestilence in our garden).

Before I get to that, however, we've got to take a look at the status of the backyard.

Our last in-ground tomato plant has just been played out.  I was going to harvest it this weekend before pulling it out but, as you can see from the top, something beat me to it.

No use delaying the inevitable, out it goes.

Now, it rests on the top of the weekend's clippings in our green waste barrel.

Next, I'll need to prepare the two blank spots in our side garden, above. Zucchini on the right; onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and something else to be determined on the left. I think I'll skip the corn this year, maybe some nice, big pasilla chiles instead. Those are delicious!

It's citrus bloom time again. Here's the Meyer lemon buds...

...and here's the Cara Cara orange blossoms.

Finally, I'm able to scrounge this little last harvest. The last Meyer lemon, some tomatoes from our Cherry Falls hanging basket that'll go on some burgers I'm grilling tomorrow, and a tiny little zucchini I'll chop up into tomorrow's eggs.

Darryl 
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

January's Jewels

Just a quick hit to show you this week's harvest...

Still a lot left on the plants but this week we've got a couple of Cara Cara oranges that are just perfectly sweet and juicy, a couple of Meyer Lemons, tomatoes, guavas, and a bell pepper plus a pepperette.

The bell peppers are done with this week's picking but the hot chile peppers just keep going and going and going...

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Musings on a Perfect Citrus

I love citrus, especially those of the orange variety. There's almost no dessert that can compare with a perfectly ripe orange, picked from the tree, and eaten on the spot. No soda can compare with the lemonade you make with the fruit you just harvested from the tree. A cocktail just isn't a cocktail to me without a squeeze of fresh lime in it.

Our house resides in a former lemon grove. All traces of that farm are long gone, although some of our neighbors still harvest and sell their oranges.

While I don't get the quantity of fruit I'd like, the quality is sure there. 

We have three trees...a navel orange, a tangelo that I rescued from a trash pile, and a Meyer lemon. All three are dwarf trees.  

I definitely have my idea of what a perfect fruit from each tree will be...

On the orange, it has to be round. Like a globe, not oblong like an egg. The navel has to be small...almost non-existent (this gives you a bonus of a large, interior navel made exclusively of tasty, juicy pulp). The skin should be rather thick to make peeling easy, I like to peel and eat the sections more than I like to cut it up into pieces with a knife. The color should be a dark orange, signifying that it has absorbed all the UV the sun could pour on in and converted that into life-giving ascorbic acid.

The orange at the top of this post looks like it meets most of these qualifications, I think I'll pick it today.

A tangelo should also be dark orange for the same reasons. They're easy to peel naturally, so the skin doesn't have to be as thick but it helps to have a large head of rind on the top. Now, you pop that off like the pin of a hand grenade and strip of from top to bottom. 

This last fruit from this year's crop meets that criteria. It's coming off today too.

The Meyer lemon needs only to be a deep yellow. It's naturally sweeter than most lemons. I don't have a use for it this week, so I'll leave them on the tree a couple of more days before we take them off and make lemonade or maybe lemon cake.

Mmmm....cake...

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Winter's Sweet Harvest

It's Christmas time and that means another harvest should be ready. Let me check, yep, we've got produce.

The big stars of the wintertime here are citrus, like that tangelo at the top of the post.  Juicy, sweet, yet tart, it provides a tasty dose of Vitamin C to help us with those wintertime bugs.

The Cara Cara navel orange is even tastier, not quite so tart.

While my summer harvest of tomatoes was a dud, winter is providing a nice batch. I made fried green tomato omelets with this one.

It looks like an apple but these are actually guavas. We've got hundreds of them.

And here's this weeks harvest...oranges, tangelos, Myer lemons, tomatoes, guavas, and a small bell pepper in with our hot chile plant.

Have a great Christmas and New Year!

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Fall's Fruits

Another day, another batch of guavas. I shouldn't sound so blase...we've waited three years for this bumper-crop harvest. 

My wife made some jam out of the weekend's harvest and we've been snacking on the ripe fruit too. If you've never had it, it's kind of like a real sweet apple, mixed with a real sweet pear, with a dash of ripe banana thrown in. You just bite in, like you would for an apple.

One thing I'd forgotten in the last three years...the very pungent aroma of ripening guavas. Not to be too blunt, but think of a sweet smelling version of cat pee.  It's close to overwhelming at times so we let them ripen in the garage.

Hope I don't have to fight off the tomcats to get in...

In other fall food news, our citrus is starting to show it's color. This is our Cara Cara navel orange.

The chiles are non-stop on the production this year. I've even used some as mulch on other plants because we just cannot eat or process enough to keep up.

What should be the last dragon fruit is on it's way to ripeness.

We've go a few tomatoes on the way...

...and lastly, it looks like we'll have a crop of Thanksgiving zucchini.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved