Garden

It has been a wet March, so not a lot of outside time.  Which is perfectly fine since we got no rain in February and the rainy season will be ending very soon. 

Last fall I decided it was past time to divide the patches of daffodils that I had planted between the trees in our orchard.  It turned out that there was a lot more baby bulbs that I expected.  In several places the bulbs were being pushed out of the ground because there were so many in the group. The new spot for them had to be a spot where they would not get in the way of mowing so I decided to plant them along the fence that is on one side of our property. 

When the task was done I wondered if I would have any blooms this year in the orchard as I had removed so many.  As we got below normal rain this winter, I was concerned that the transplanted daffodils would not survive.  So I was happy to see that there were still plenty left in the orchard.  And now that I finally made it over to the fence area, was very pleased to see how many flowers had bloomed.  Hopefully, they will be happy there and multiply over the coming years.  (Note: gophers don’t eat these bulbs and it looks like the deer are not interested in the rest.)

 

Meanwhile, along the driveway, the citrus is working overtime.  The Meyer lemon is covered in flowers.  And there is a large crop ready (or almost) for harvest from last years blooms.  The deer do seem to think citrus is delicious, so most of the fruit is in the back or well inside the branches where they were safe from the deer’s pruning. 

A small number appeared ready to pick.  This group provided a couple ice cube trays of juice for use when I need a little lemon juice for a recipe.  And there was enough left for at least one large pitcher of lemonade.  When the rest is ready I will have lemonade for several months. Before I juice them, I will take peel from the prettier ones to dehydrate to use when I need lemon peel.  

 And down the row a bit from the Meyer lemon tree is a Valencia orange.  Looks like I should have lots of fresh squeezed OJ soon.

When I left for ten wonderful days of gem related shows and events in Tucson, the garden was in its winter sleep except for weeds which were taking advantage of the situation to get a head start.  Yesterday afternoon when I returned, I was greeted by the beginnings of spring.

A couple of the early peaches had popped into bloom while I was away.

Daffodils of various kinds were beginning to bloom.

In the fall I had gone through the orchard and removed what I thought was most of the bulbs as they had multiplied to the point they were pushing new ones out of the ground.  As a result, I was not expecting much, if any to produce blooms this year.

But fortunately, they were not going to let me down.  Blooms are popping up everywhere.

And mixed in among the weeds are nasturtiums and calendulas which have self seeded from plantings that were done several years back.

 

Fall is definitely here.  The vegetable garden is pretty well done for the year and the stone fruit trees are losing their leaves.  However, the harvest continues.  Currently it is apples. The trees are still small and thanks to getting a better job done with respect to thinning the fruit, there have been a lot of very large apples this year.  A few days ago, after bringing in the latest batch from the garden, it was time to consolidate with what had accumulated in the fridge.  A couple dozen nice sized eating apples were picked out for snacking and went back to the fridge for the future.

Then there were the remainder.  I was planning on making an apple pie.  But this was a bit more than one pie. The three rows on the right in the photo are Granny Smith apples.  The huge ones in the middle are Mutsu.  The remainder are an assortment — mostly ones that were bruised, bird pecked or not very pretty for eating out of hand.

After a marathon session of peeling, coring and slicing, I had three large bowls overflowing with apple slices.  It was then I discovered that the shopping list my last Costco trip should have included all purpose flour.  I had only enough flour for at most three pies. Things went downhill from that point. The bowls with the apple slices and pie dough went into the fridge until I could get to the grocery store the next morning.

With the additional flour on hand, I lined up the six available pie plans, rolled out the crusts and filled them with the apples. For most, I used a streusel topping.  (It is easier and faster than making a top crust.)  When all the pie pans were full, there was still the better part of one of the bowls left with apple slices.   I found a couple of other pans and made more streusel for two apple crisps.

The largest pie pan went into the oven for desert later that day.  The rest received multiple layers of plastic wrap and went into the freezer.  It appears we will be having a lot of apple pies in the coming weeks.

Next up — what to do with all the pears.

Walking into the local Costco and seeing the artificial Christmas trees blinking in the seasonal area is a sure sign that summer has come to an end for the year. Much of the garden faded a month ago.  Of course, some of that was due to the critters which have breached the perimeter defenses. The cottontail bunnies started arriving at dawn and dusk to dine on greens.  It is absolutely true that they like carrots — or at least carrot tops.  Green beans and peas seem also to be favorites on their menu.  While the bunnies tend to avoid being out during the bright parts of the day, ground squirrels seem to favor that time.  Until a few years ago there were none in our neighborhood.  This year they came in invasion force.  Fencing barely slows them down.  They seem to have very short attention spans picking an almost ripe tomato and then dropping it half eaten in another part of the garden.

The early summer was cool, so the garden peas did well until too much cool fog encouraged mildew in the thick tangle of the plants.  Unlike the previous year there was a nice harvest of apricots as well as other stone fruit.

 

 

One evening I found a large gopher snake making its way through the garden.  It seemed like there were not as many snakes around the past couple years as there had been, so I welcomed this visitor and hoped that it would eat well reducing the gopher population that has been making swiss cheese like holes everywhere.

 

 

By late July the stone fruit was abundant.  Lots of canning and freezing and juicing resulted in a full freezer and pantry shelf.

 

 

 

As the stone fruit faded, the apples and pears made up for it.  The trees are still fairly small and I did manage to do a reasonable job of thinning the fruit clusters.  The result has been much larger apples seriously weighing down some of the still thin branches. To handle this bounty, we decided that turning it into a few gallons of cider (not the alcoholic kind) was a good solution.

At this point there are plenty of apples remaining on the trees which will ripen over the next couple months. And figs and a few pomegranates will be ready as the year ends.

 

We had weeks of “May Gray” and “June Gloom”. Some days the sun failed to show up at all. And on a couple it was so drippy from the fog that it registered as 0.01″ on our weather station. But just as I finished the task of getting the weed population down to a respectably low amount, summer came to our part of the central coast. And about that time some of the veggies in the garden and stone fruit trees started being ready to harvest.

Bush Beans, peas, blackberries and some early stone fruit were finally ready.

I realized that waiting for the fruit to be really ripe on the tree was a few days too long. It was ending up falling and getting bruised. So I came in with a basket of almost ready Peaches, nectarines and apricots.

Today’s harvest was more of the same. Only this time, a harvest of Flavorosa pluots

The early corn did not do so well. It was such a cool and rainy spring that even the corn that usually doesn’t mind the cool temperatures did not germinate well. So now we have tassels for the second attempt which was started indoors.

One of the apricot trees which has a nice amount of golden goodies ripening. In previous years we got only a handful or so of apricots. This year we have six or eight that are being generous.

One of the nectarine trees where I should have thinned fruit a lot more than I did.

One of the other apricot trees.

Apples here are always confused about when they should bloom and when the fruit will be ready. This tree is very productive and got an early start on the season.

The low chill pears are as usual full of fruit. I did not thin these, but I did prune back the tree so there is a lot less of it than there was last year.

The view down the orchard row

Marigolds are one of my favorites since childhood. This is a dwarf variety that I planted a number of years ago and has produced many volunteers each year since. This one is growing in a mix of mostly volunteer herbs – a couple of basil varieties, summer savory and parsley as well as some French tarragon.