Every year I eagerly await the start of loquat season. Loquat is always the first fruit of Spring around here, even before raspberries and cherries. They ripen after the Owari Satsuma mandarins and Cara Cara Navels have finished for their season. And by this time of year we are usually pretty tired of apples out of cold storage sold at the grocery store. I like my loquats best when they still have a little bit of tanginess to them, but…
A trip to the nursery can get expensive pretty quickly, especially when first starting out. The initial investments in quality tools like a hand trowel, spading fork, shovel, gloves, and hard pruners are necessary, but spending hundreds of dollars on plants and supplies every year is not. I had a related post in 2012 about making do with less and recycling. The following list is some of the things have learned and practice in order to make gardening more affordable…
I am thankful the garden centers and nurseries are considered essential businesses in L.A. County and are staying open because gardening is essential to my mental health. Spending time working in the yard always makes me feel better, even when I end up with aches and pains at the end of the day. With all the light rain we were expecting to continue, I sowed some veggie seeds last weekend. I needed a project to be hopeful about and look…
One up side of being home bound for a while is there will be a little more time to spend in the garden. After a little thought, I realized a significant number of my plants have edible flowers, not just fruit, and the flowers can be added to soups and salads. There are many more edible flowers than just what I jotted down on my list below, but these are all the ones I personally grow. Acca sellowiana/ Feijoa /…
I really love apricots, and I have fond childhood memories of my grandmother’s apricots drying in her mid century stove. She lived in Southgate, only slightly further inland from where we are now. When we bought the house, I was told by an older neighbor, that before our housing tract was built, this area was an apricot orchard and many houses started out with an apricot tree on the lot. There is one house, two blocks away with a really…
Our beloved Golden Retriever passed away in 2018, and for a long time I was unable to move past the loss of my canine friend. I had not realized until he was gone what a big part of my life he was. For more than 12 years, he had been my constant shadow around the house and yard and on twice daily walks. He helped to keep me motivated to be active. He was wicked smart, loving, friendly with everyone…
12 years ago, my neighbor, K, volunteered her narrow front yard space for us to try two new low chill cherry trees, Minnie Royal and Royal Lee. She finds it funny that every January and February I start checking up on the trees, sometimes daily just to look for new blooms or to add more grafts of other cherries. One of her tree’s bloom time is always ahead of the other, and in warm years by as much as two weeks. It is frustrating they don’t always sync up their bloom in really low chill years.
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Collecting Scionwood I wasn’t really planning on acquiring another pomegranate tree when I spotted a pomegranate cultivar at the O.C. CRFG scion exchange simply labeled ‘Galusha Rosavaya’ pomegranate. It had no description of the variety nor from where in SoCal it was currently growing. Plus I did not remember reading anything about it in The Incredible Pomegranate. Yes, I AM that big of a plant nerd, that I enjoy reading all sorts of obscure publications about plants. Therefore, I picked up a couple…
I have to have a bit of a horticultural rant today, which has to do with plant labeling…or rather mislabeling. When planting fruit trees, it can take at least a few years for plants to establish and begin to bare quality fruit. So it’s pretty frustrating after all that time only to end up with the wrong cultivar. Sometimes it happens because plant tags get knocked off at big box store nursery’s and then reattached to the wrong tree. Worse…
Plant damage from last week’s heatwave showed up pretty quickly. Despite my best efforts to water well ahead of time, it still ended up being a real scorcher for some of my plants. My ‘Stargazer’ Oriental Lilies had just opened but they turned to toast the first afternoon. Tender growth on partial sun plants became burnt and crispy, especially on the West facing sides of the plants. With temperatures soaring above 110 degrees and practically no humidity, two of my…