Garden

A view down the orchard row on an April Showers morning. The blackberry bushes along the fence are full of blooms.

The five-in-one peach tree has most of its varieties full of peaches. Some thinning has been done or it would be solid peaches.

Some plums that are about cherry size and had been growing in clusters looking much like cherries — except for being green.

Here is one of the real cherry trees. There were a lot more flowers than there are baby cherries, but probably not bad for a first time for this tree.

Two grafts that I did with scions from the local scion exchange event. The original bench graft apple did not take, but the rootstock sent out additional shoots to provide for a second and third try.

Half of the hill out front is purple. Mostly lavender which started with a few plants and has been seeding itself and spreading despite the drought of the past years.

Lavender flowers along with some other purples – vetch in this case. Clover and some other lupine(?) are also in the mix.

Valencia oranges along the driveway are getting ripe. That is supposed to be a good juice variety.

Nearby the Meyer lemons have been picked a couple times with plenty more left. They are wonderfully fragrant. They can be “peeled” and the zest dried for future cooking use. And lots of lemonade will be made as a result of this tree.

The nasturtiums have been self seeding and popping up like weeds for a couple years now. Much nicer than real weeds of course.

The five-in-one peach now has lots of leaves and the flowers are fading.

This started out as a four-in-one plum, but may be down to only two at this point.

This is a four-in-one pluot. At least a couple of the varieties are in bloom.

The other way to get four-in-one is planting four pluots closely together. No blooms on this group at all until now.

There were a few blossoms on a couple of the cherries last year. This year it is quite the opposite situation.

A group of four plums decided to start blooming this year as well. Like most of the others, there were only a few flowers on one of the trees last year.

Another of the peach/nectarine group picked as much for the spring show as for the fruit.

The weather for February turned warm and trees in the orchard started to break out in bloom.

A young apple tree blooming. Last year there were blooms appearing throughout the summer. Hopefully the colder winter this year will convince the trees to behave more typically.

The five-in-one peach seemed to have blooms on all five parts. They are supposed to ripen over several months.

A couple of the pear trees never really dropped all their leaves but they also started blooming.

Close up of a cluster of pear blossoms.

An early showy variety of nectarine is blooming as advertised.

Close up of the nectarine blossoms.

Last year there were almost no pluots that bloomed and only a tiny bit of sad looking fruit.

Actually, it has been a pretty long time since this site was last updated.  The garden and its visitors had been one of the major inspirations and 2015 was not a great year for the garden.  The weird weather and the drought impacted things.  I was stingy with the watering and did not get the fertilizer out soon enough.  A gopher found a way to get into a couple of the raised beds and wiped out a couple crops.  Only one tomato plant was reasonably productive.  On the other hand, we had plenty of corn, zucchini, green beans and blackberries.

So far 2016 is shaping up to be different.  There was some cold weather early in the winter to provide chill for the fruit trees.  And there has been rain.  More would be nice.