These are last years crop, from top left: apricots, persimmons, Mayer lemons, greengages, damsons, tomatoes, a nice iris, HOT peppers, pluots.
Double click and they'll get bigger.
Since Gordon's cracked the barn door open with such an interesting 'herb' posting let's open it all the way and have a full-on gardening post, after all spring is here and all that! Here in California we had a worse than usual winter, it was cold from about late November 'til early March and then it rained, not monsoon but typical English style, steady for several days at a time. But then finally the sun broke through and it started getting warmer 'til now we've already had one 90 degree hot spell.
When we first bought this place I planted an orchard of about 20 odd apple trees, all heirlooms, mostly Europeans, every spring I've lost one or more and this spring there were 4 more dead apple trees. I don't know what's killing 'em, at one point I thought it was rodents stripping the bark at ground level so I wrapped 'em all in wire netting but they still died, it might be gopher tunnels exposing the roots to air pockets.
All my fruit trees have grafts on them, initially I did it with the idea of helping pollination but there's now other advantages, I've never seen Conference pears over here so I took a stem from my sisters tree and grafted it to my Comice and now it's bearing fruit; Conferences, right next to Comice, next to Bosc's also! I did similar with several UK apples, Grieves, Golden Cox and Egremont,
Regardless, I go through the same process every spring, I thoroughly dig and fertilise all the raised beds, ten in all. This year I tried something new, I rented a Mantis rotary tiller, it cost $35 for a day and I'd done everything in less than 3 hours! It would have taken me a week with a shovel. Marvellous tool, it really does a great job. I then fertilised every bed with a good dose of blood meal, bone meal and oyster shell, I do this every year and so far have been able to grow repeat crops in the same beds without any problems. This is only an issue because I like to grow a lot of varieties of tomatoes, this year I limited it to 22, last year it was 30 odd and they all grow on trellises fastened to the beds. In addition to those I've planted more hot peppers, a variety of oriental salad plants, lettuce, cucumbers, beets, leeks, potatoes, onions, squash, zuchini and several varieties of egg plants. There's still quite a bit of space so I'll be adding as we go. We also have several flower beds that take quite a bit of effort to keep weed free.
I have in addition to the apple trees quite a few other fruit trees and bushes, several pears, many plums; greengage, damson, Santa Rosa, elephant heart, French prunes, two cherries, two persimmons, apricots and a new species that's probably not available in UK yet, it's a pluot, plu-ot = a plum/apricot hybrid that's become very popular in California which is where it was developed about a dozen years ago. It's a fabulous tasting fruit, very sweet, spicy like an apricot and generally with very soft skins. I bought about six varieties and last year was a wonderful crop from all of them, I made lots of jams and preserves and gorged everyday. Beyond those we have grapes, red and black currents, gooseberries, raspberries and a small collection of citrus; lemons, limes and oranges. You might wonder how much fruit two people can eat, and you're probably right, I did over do it a bit, but Gina will retire and a few years and the plan then is that we'll get a stall at the farmers market and she'll sell fruit, jams and produce there a couple of days a week.
So that's my lot, I spend a fair bit of time out there every day, often with my iPod on, it's sometimes hard work but I enjoy it. What are all you other gardeners doing right now. What are you planting this year, any interesting new projects?
