Archive for the 'Fruit' Category
Our pole beans have now completely covered the 5-foot tall wire fence I erected for them last March. I love this fence structure, because it is strong enough to support the weight of the beans. I made the fence using two wooden posts and a steel wire frame that is used for supporting concrete in construction. But perhaps I should have made it taller. The vines are already 8-9 feet long.
This photograph is a pink climbing rose called America that I planted as a bare root a few years ago. I love this climbing rose. I have planted several climbing roses including Cecil Brunner and Blaze, but this one is my favorite. It has done really well in our yard. It produces lots of beautiful pink flowers, and it has not gotten any black spot or mildew diseases. It grows a moderate amount, but it’s not too vigorous like Cecil Brunner. I got so tried of pruning the numerous long thorny vines of Cecil Brunner, that today I pruned two of ours to the ground, and I plan on uprooting them next weekend.
May 31 2009 | Beans and Roses | Comments Off on Pole Beans and Pink Rose
I planted a new crop of green pole beans back in March around the first day of spring. I planted seeds that I harvested from dried bean pods on the Italian beans growing in our garden last year. I also planted some blue lake pole bean seeds that I bought from a local store.
The seeds sprouted in about 2 weeks and have grown incredibly fast since then, especially in the past few weeks. They have already grown several inches up the support from where they were just a few days ago!
In the past few years since I started growing beans again, I have been growing each group of beans up a single pole. The problem with this technique is that when the beans get large and heavy they tend to slide down the pole. For years, my mom used chicken wire held up by 2 poles on each side to support her annual crop of pole beans. But when the beans get large and heavy by late July, the chicken wire support begins to sag down in the middle.
This year, I decided to use a different technique. I nailed two 6′ tall wooden posts to the edge of one of our raised beds. Then, I screwed small hooks into the posts near the tops of the posts. I then hung a wire frame on the hooks. The wire frame is made up of rigid metal wire that is about 2 mm thick. I think it’s the type of wire frame that’s used in supporting concrete.
The wire is flexible enough to bend, but only with sufficient force. I can bend it with my hands, but it probably won’t bend under the weight of the beans. It’s not flimsy like chicken wire, but it has wider openings between the wires.
I bought a 4′ x 8′ piece of this wire frame from a local hardware store for about $8. I mounted the bottom of the wire frame about 12 inches off the ground. Beans don’t usually need support until they are about a foot tall. So far, our new bean support system seems to be working well.
May 09 2009 | Beans | Comments Off on Green Beans Growing Fast
The long days and warm weather have arrived, and our plants are loving it. Our long day Sequoia strawberries started ripening about two weeks ago. Today, I picked a whole bowl full of strawberries, which we enjoyed for lunch.
Strawberries are probably one of my favorite garden plants. Our Sequoia strawberries have grown really well in our garden and have produced many strawberries. Our home grown strawberries are so delicious. They are softer and sweeter than the strawberries I typically buy in grocery stores.
In order to get more plants, I let the runners from last year’s strawberries root in our raised beds, and then I transplanted them into pots back in December. The second photograph above shows the same strawberries pictured in my December 29th post. I now have about 15 strawberry pots, because I had so many runners last year. The newly planted strawberries from last year’s runners are growing very fast and are getting lots of berries. But even the strawberry plants that are 2-3 years old are growing and producing many high quality berries. The first photograph above shows strawberries that are about 2 years old.
Some of the newly planted strawberries from last year’s runners are already starting to generate runners of their own. This year, I plan to trim some of the runners so that I don’t get as many. I have read that cutting off the runners encourages the plants to produce more strawberries, although I haven’t tried this technique yet. I have noticed that the older strawberries do not seem to generate as many runners.
Recently, I decided to try experimenting with some new day neutral strawberries. I planted several Quinault strawberries about 3 years ago, and I was really unhappy with them. They produced very few strawberries. The strawberries they did produce were small and tough, even though they were growing under the same conditions as the Sequoias, which have always been wonderful. A few weeks ago, I planted Seascape and Aromas. Both are day neutral strawberries that are supposed to produce strawberries over a longer season. I admit I will be surprised if they taste as good as Sequoia.
I have read that strawberries will not produce berries when the daytime high temperatures exceed 85 degrees F on a regular basis. We are lucky here, because the summertime highs average around 77-80 degrees, and daytime highs above 85 degrees are rare except for the occasional heat wave. Last year, we harvested strawberries from May through August, except for about a month in June. I attribute that gap to not fertilizing them regularly. As soon as I started to fertilize them, they began to produce berries again.
May 09 2009 | Strawberries | Comments Off on Strawberry Season Is Here
We are lucky enough to live in a house that has an established navel orange bush (see picture). It was planted by one of the previous owners. This bush must be over 20 years old given the girth of its trunk.
Our navel orange bush produces the best tasting oranges I have ever eaten. The flesh of the oranges is soft and tender, unlike the tough fleshed oranges I typically buy in the supermarket. And the flavor is superb. They are juicy, with a nice sweet-tart orange flavor. Although I cannot be sure what type of navel it is, I believe it is a Washington navel given the high quality of the fruit. Washington (Bahia) navel is generally considered to be the best tasting orange.
Although navel oranges are known for ripening in the winter, our navel oranges are ripe now, in April and May. Our climate is probably too cool to stimulate winter ripening, but it appears to be warm enough to generate some very good fruit. Our summer highs average in the high 70s to low 80s, and our winter highs average in the 50s.
The first two years I lived in this house, the leaves of this bush would turn yellow each spring. Then, I learned that yellowing leaves is typically a sign of a lack of nitrogen. Oranges need lots of nitrogen, particularly in the spring when they are growing and blooming. For the past several years, I have been fertilizing our two oranges (navel and valencia) once a month from February through July with a general purpose fertilizer, 16-16-16. The first of these three numbers indicates the percentage of nitrogen in the fertilizer.
I give each bush 3-4 cups in each application, because both of them are quite mature at this point. The result has been more blooms, more oranges, and beautiful dark green leaves throughout the spring and summer months.
Some of our neighbors have large orange trees. They never seem to fertilize them and yet they always look beautiful! I am not sure how they get away with neglecting these trees. Although, our bushes often have more oranges even though they are smaller. 😉
May 03 2009 | Oranges | Comments Off on Navel Orange Bush
I am nuts about fruit trees! Last weekend, I spent time planting a few new fruit trees in our yard. I planted a Bing cherry, a Rainier cherry, and a Royal Rainier cherry. I also transplanted our small young apple trees and one small pear tree closer together to make room for the cherries. Yesterday, I planted an almond tree. We now have 3 apple trees, 4 cherry trees, 4 pear trees, one yellow peach tree, one white nectarine tree, 2 apricot trees, 1 fig tree, and 1 almond tree. We also have 3 orange bushes and a lemon bush.
Traditional orchards plant fruit trees 15-20 feet apart, because they grow so large when they are minimally pruned. Many publications also recommend that fruit trees in backyard orchards be spaced 15-20 feet apart. The problem is that our yard is only large enough to support about 4 or 5 trees at 20 feet apart and a large distance from the house and fence. Our lot is about 1/5 of an acre.
I have planted most of our fruit trees about nine feet apart. That’s much closer than most traditional orchardists would recommend. However, there has been a growing movement to plant fruit trees closer together in high density plantings. The idea is to plant many more different kinds of fruit trees close together in a smaller area to achieve a larger variety and a longer season of fresh backyard fruit. If the proper varieties are selected, a backyard fruit orchard can produce freshly ripened fruit from May through November. For example, one can plant early season ripening, mid-season ripening, and late season ripening peaches in one yard to get peach harvests from May through September.
In order make a high density fruit orchard manageable, the grower should be committed to size control. Some fruit trees are sold on dwarf rootstocks, but many varieties are not. Most of our fruit trees are grafted onto semi-dwarf rootstocks that will allow the trees to grow to 15-25 feet tall (or larger) and as wide. That’s far too large for a high density backyard planting. Fruit trees planted in high densities need to be keep small (e.g., 6-8 feet tall and wide) so that the branches do not grow together and shade each other.
I have recently read that the key to keeping fruit trees small is to prune them once in the spring (May) and again in the summer time (July-Sept.). Traditionally, fruit trees are pruned only during the dormant season in the winter time. However, if that technique is applied to a high density planting, the fruit trees will grow large root systems during each growing season. Then, if the trees are severely pruned during the winter months to control their size, they will grow back very vigorously during the next growing season, making it difficult to keep them small and manageable.
I have read that spring and summer pruning will keep the root system from storing too much food during the growing season, which will keep the tree from growing too vigorously during the next growing season. I have not tried the summer pruning technique yet, but I plan to start this year to maintain our trees at a height of no taller than about 7-8 feet. We have a few fruit trees that have already grown much larger than that, including a pear and a cherry. I may prune them gradually over a period of a few years to bring their size down.
I have found that large fruit trees (i.e., taller than about 8 feet) are difficult to manage. I have to put netting on many of our trees (even the apples) to keep squirrels from eating all of the fruit. It’s just not practical to net a large tree. Also, it’s difficult to harvest fruit from the top branches of a large tree. Cherries are especially difficult to harvest from tall branches, because the fruit is so small that it cannot be easily picked using a long pole with a wire basket at the end. And looking up for a long time while picking fruit can make one’s neck sore. At this point, I am convinced that growing fruit trees as large shrubs, rather than large trees, is the way to go.
Dave Wilson nursery is one of the suppliers of fruit trees that is promoting high density plantings. See e.g., http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/BOC_explained.html. They recommend planting 3 or 4 trees in one hole at 18-24 inches apart or planting a hedge row of fruit trees 3 feet apart in the row. That seems a bit too close for my tastes right now, because I want to have room to walk between the trees. So I settled on a nine foot spacing, because that left just enough room to allow my current trees to fit into the available space along the back fence, about 6-7 feet from the fence.
However, I am still contemplating the possibility of buying more types of trees, possibly an early or late ripening peach! If that happens, I may have to cram a few of them in a little tighter. 😉
February 15 2009 | Fruit | Comments Off on High Density Fruit Tree Plantings
« Prev - Next »