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Kumquats - Genus Fortunella

9/29/2011

Changshou Kumquat Tree

My Changshou and Meiwa kumquats have been turning yellow and falling from the tree, months before they should be ripe. In some cases, the fruit is just drying up on the tree like raisins. At first I thought it was because they didn't get watered while I was in the hospital, but Dr. Wife assures me that they got plenty of water. The trees themselves didn't show any signs of wilting or curling leaves, so I don't think it is due to drought stress.

Houston area citrus expert Dr. Randall said he and others are seeing the same behavior in trees that are planted in the ground, and that he had never seen this problem before. He speculated that it may be because kumquats are not well adapted to 100+ degree temperatures like we have experienced this summer. The high for every single day of the month of August was over 100 degrees, with the highest temperatures reaching 108 degrees!

I couldn't find any literature on the high temperature tolerance of kumquats, but my observations seem to support Dr. Randall's theory. Even if the tree itself can handle extreme high temperatures, the fruit is getting cooked. This is really a shame, considering how much Boy #1 loves them. We've tried some of the fallen fruit, but they're dry and pithy inside, and don't taste good at all.

In addition to shedding its fruit, my kumquat trees have started blooming again. While I love the smell of the citrus blossoms, it is very strange to see them in September. Environmental stresses such as freezing temperatures or drought can trigger blooming, so I can only speculate that the flush of flowers I'm seeing now is due to the heat stress the tree experienced this summer. Even if they set fruit, they won't ripen before the first freezes of this coming winter, so I'll pick them off as they develop.

Meiwa Kumquat Tree

Kumquats drying on the tree and falling off.

Yellow Changshou kumquat.

Its dried out and pithy inside.

September blooms on Changshou.

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Homemade Drip Irrigation

9/25/2011

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Cheap Timer & Brass Splitter

This past August-September, Houston had one of the hottest weeks on record, with temperatures climbing up to 108 degrees. During this heat stroke, I was laid up in the hospital, unable to water any of my trees and dependent on Dr. Wife to keep things alive in my absence. She did a great job, but watering that many trees is a very labor intensive process, and she had enough to worry about taking care of the children and me.

Until now, I've just always watered my trees by laying a hose near the base of the trunk and setting a timer. Since it has hardly rained for the past nine months, I've had to water almost every week, a chore which can take as long as 3.5 hours. While I was incapacitated, I realized that I really needed to find a way to automate the watering of the fruit trees as much as possible. Not only to make things easier on Dr. Wife or others when I'm away, but also to free up more of my time to play with Boys #1 and #2 on the weekends.

I looked into purchasing a drip irrigation system, but you need pressure regulators, special drip hose, special tools, special emitters, etc, and it always added up to more money than I wanted to spend. Why couldn't I just run a garden hose to the trees, and drill little holes in the hose to put the water where I wanted it? I looked around on the internet to see if anyone else had done this, and found a publication by the Utah State University Cooperative Extension on how to make your own drip system from PVC, which was very similar to what I planned to do. Encouraged by what I saw, I decided to give it a shot.

The system is super simple. From the timer at the spigot, I ran a 100-ft garden hose along a line of seven fruit trees, and screwed a cap on the end. Once the hose was positioned, I drilled holes with a 1/16-inch drill bit into it next to each tree. A hole 1/16-inch in diameter is one 1/100th of the cross-sectional area of the 5/8-inch hose. As long as I didn't drill more than 100 holes, I would get back-pressure in the hose, and should get even water distribution along its length. I decided to drill 35 holes to start (5 at each tree).

Using my watch and a measuring cup, I measured the average output at each little hole, which turned out to be a little more than 3 gallons per hour. Five holes per tree means 15 gallons per hour per tree. Ideally I would like closer to 25. A garden hose on full blast can put out 300 gallons per hour at my house, so I think I can increase the output by drilling some more holes, as long as I don't drill too many. So far th seems to be working very well, and if it holds up, I'll rig up similar systems to irrigate all of my trees.

Hose run around Hirdao Buntan.

Hose run around young pear tree.

1/16-inch Drill Bit

Tiny tiny hole in the 5/8-inch hose.

Each little hole emits approximately 3 gallons per hour.

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Seedless Kishu Mandarins

9/22/2011

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Seedless Kishu Mandarins

We've been eating the first citrus of the year this week. I knew they were supposed to be an early cultivar, but I had no idea that Seedless Kishu mandarins could be ripe and ready to eat as early as September. The fruits have been turning yellow and dropping from the tree, some falling even before they have fully colored. This may be due to the intense heat we've been experiencing.

Even though the peels haven't been fully colored, the interior of the fruit has been orange and very juicy. They aren't the sweetest mandarins I've ever tasted, but they have a very nice sweet-tart flavor, and they're very easy to peel. The fruits are very small for citrus, only 2-inches or so in diameter, but as the name suggests they are completely seedless.

My two-year-old Kishu tree is very small, but this cultivar seems to be very precocious and productive. I keep it in a large pot near the back porch where it gets sun until early afternoon. It seems to be pretty slow growing, but it is very well behaved and attractive little tree. Boy #1 loves the fruit, and calls them 'baby oranges'. He's eaten just about every one we've had so far (around 15), and is always asking for more. Like other mandarins and satsumas, the flavor of the fruit should improve as the tree ages.

The terrible freezes this winter combined with the awful heat and the drought this summer have been pretty hard on all my other citrus trees, and we won't be getting very much citrus this year, so I'm very thankful for these early little fruits.

Only 2-inches in diameter.

Boy #1 gobbling them up.

Lots of fruit from a little tree.

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Hummingbirds and the Xtreme Hummingbird Xtravaganza

9/19/2011

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Female Ruby Throated Hummingbird

I love hummingbirds. They visit Houston in late summer/early fall along their annual migration south. Some stay over for several weeks building up reserves before crossing the Gulf of Mexico (600 miles!). Every year I put up several feeders beginning in late July to encourage the little travelers to stop in my yard. My whole family gets so much entertainment and pleasure watching their antics as they swarm our feeders, and all for the tiny cost of a few cups of sugar. Dr. Wife and I also try to get good photographs of them, but it's pretty difficult. Boy #1 loves to sit out on the porch and watch them while eating popsicles.

I've tried several types of hummingbird feeders, but in my yard they seem to prefer the Perky Pet Four Fountains feeder (seen in video below) more than any other. I think this is because it very closely resembles the Trumpet vine, a native source of nectar. The recipe for nectar is really simple: 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. No red dye is required, and some research suggests that the red dye might actually be harmful to birds. Change out the nectar every couple of days, and you should have swarms of hummingbirds too. As long as there is red on the feeder, they'll find it.

On Saturday, the whole family went to the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory (GCBO) annual Xtreme Hummingbird Xtravaganza in Lake Jackson, Texas. There were hummingbird feeding stations, opportunities to photograph hummers, and even alligators, snakes, and turtles for the children to see. GCBO staff were capturing hummingbirds by placing feeders in a 3-sided cage. After capture, the birds were carefully placed in mesh bags until they could be measured, weighed, and banded. One volunteer told me that the previous week they had banded 52 new birds, and had approximately 30 recaptures.

The GCBO staff and volunteers were all very friendly, helpful, and informative, with one exception. Dr. Wife was holding Boy #1 up to see a hummingbird being banded. She said to my son, "See? He's putting a band on the hummingbird's leg, like a little bracelet." The man banding the birds looked up and said, "It's not a bracelet, it's a band." Dr. Wife said she knows that, and was just trying to explain it to our 2 1/2-year-old in a way he would understand. The bird-bander then obnoxiously said, "Well maybe you should try teaching him the correct name for it." Dr. Wife was speechless she was so mad. I was elsewhere watching Boy #2, but if I had heard it I would have said something. If any GCBO members read this, please let that guy know that his attitude was not appreciated.

3-Sided cage to capture hummingbirds.

Captured hummingbirds waiting to be banded.

Measuring, weighing, and banding hummingbirds.

Boy #1 and Dr. Wife meeting an alligator.

Boy #1 and native Texas box turtles.

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Recycling Kitchen Scraps

9/14/2011

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Kitchen Scraps

To keep my trash from smelling, and to capture the organic matter and nutrients that would otherwise go to waste, I collect an compost my kitchen scraps throughout the week. We collect fruit peels, paper towels, coffee grounds, etc in plastic 1 quart yogurt containers that we keep on top of the refrigerator. At the end of the week, I empty them all out in to my trash can composters. It has worked out very well overall, but one think I don't like about this process is that I really only have compost to use a couple times a year when the composters fill up.

I would really like to apply a good dressing of compost to all my trees more frequently, but I can't afford to buy the bagged stuff. So I had an idea. What if I blended up the kitchen scraps, and then spread them out on the trees on a weekly basis? Would they stink? Would there would be bugs? Only one way to find out.

We hardly ever use our blender, so Dr. Wife agreed to let me use it for this little experiment. To liquify the scraps, I placed the contents of a 1 quart yogurt container and 1 quart of water in the blender, and then blended until smooth. I then took this slurry, and mixed it with 5 gallons of water in a plastic bucket, and poured it out around a fruit tree. I repeated this with all 8 containers. I kept careful watch on the trees, and didn't notice any smells or excess bugs, so I think I've found a great new way to apply organic nutrients continuously throughout the season. I'll keep it up until the weather cools off, and keep watch for any problems.

Add 1 qt water to 1 qt scraps

Kitchen Scrap Puree

Boy #1 helping daddy.

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Pear Tasting

9/12/2011

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Yvonne setting up the pears.

Sorry for posting this late, but here it is. Back in late August, the Gulf Coast Fruit Study Group held their annual pear tasting. I don't know exactly how many cultivars were represented, but there had to have been at least 30. Pears were provided by the GCFSG demonstration orchard, Dr. Ethan Natelson, and others. John Panzarella and Dr. Randall also brought pomegranates to sample, and over 90 people showed up for the event.

As I said in my last post, my lung collapsed before the tasting began in earnest, but I still got to sample several cultivars. I was not impressed with the Asian pear varieties that I tasted (too watery), but I really liked the 'Rising Star' and 'Atlas Super Orient'. According to the organizers, the crowd favorites were Acres Home, Southern Queen, Southern King, Tennhosui, and Florida 58-45. I didn't get to taste all of these, but I would have to say that the Florida 58-45 is probably the best pear I have ever eaten, and you can be sure that I will be grafting it to one of my pear trees this winter. It is very productive, delicious, and you don't have to ripen it. You can eat it crisp right off the tree. I would say it is to pears what the Honeycrisp cultivar is to apples.