On an unrelated note, Woodlands fruit expert Scott Johnsgard was kind enough to share some of his papayas with me today. I planted them in the big poolside bed that I have named "Kumquat Island". If I can keep them alive through the winter, I think they'll grow very well there.
October is here, which means my thoughts have turned to strawberries. Strawberry planting has become something of a tradition at our house, and usually involves me either trying to plant by flashlight, or trying to shove plants in the ground right before we have to leave for a trip. However, this year everything couldn't have gone smoothly. For starters, I ordered my plants well in advance, and spent the extra money for plugs instead of bare root. That alone made planting go much faster. Secondly, I prepared the strawberry bed and irrigation lines in advance as well. This time around I only ordered Sweet Charlie. Year after year, this variety has shown itself to be an excellent choice for the Houston garden. I've tried Chandler, All-Star, and Cardinal, and they just didn't perform as well.
On an unrelated note, Woodlands fruit expert Scott Johnsgard was kind enough to share some of his papayas with me today. I planted them in the big poolside bed that I have named "Kumquat Island". If I can keep them alive through the winter, I think they'll grow very well there.
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The time to start planting has finally come! I finished installing the irrigation system, we had a big soaking rain last week that softened the ground, and temperatures are slowly starting to come down. The perfect conditions for planting some trees! The boys grabbed their shovels and did their best to help out by digging, squishing chince bugs, and watering. They worked really hard, and I'm so proud of both of them. This will be their orchard too, and I know they'll be so proud knowing that they helped get it started. I was thinking about how I could photograph and document the new trees as they grow, when I had a really cool idea. The other day I found my old iPhone with a cracked screen just sitting in a drawer. The camera still worked fine, and I realized that if I could position it somewhere dry and figure out the timing, I could use it to make a time lapse video of the trees growing throughout the year. Conveniently, I found a time lapse photography app that does just that, so setting everything up was really easy. I set up the phone on a mini tripod in a window overlooking the back yard, and set the app to take one picture everyday at 1:00 pm. If I can resist messing with it, it will be really interesting to see how it turns out. I haven't posted anything in a long time, but don't think I've been lazing around doing nothing. Between two active kids, a new job, and a new house, I've been swamped. I also haven't felt like I've had anything interesting to write about. I'm starting over from scratch at the new house, which means I've been running water lines and other grunt work, but nothing that I would think anyone would care to see or read about. That may all change before too long. I'm almost finished rigging up the irrigation lines, I've placed orders for strawberries and blackberries, and Mary Cummings over at RCW Nursery set me up with a whole new collection of citrus trees. As soon as it cools off a little it will be time to start planting. At this new house, I'm going to try to be a little less crazy about tree density, and make an effort to give each tree enough space to maximize its potential, even if that means planting fewer trees over all. Regarding the blog, I just don't have as much time for posting regular articles anymore, so I'm just going to post when I feel like it. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to chronicle my new orchard on this site, or if I should start another one, but this site will remain up regardless. Too much work went into it to take it down. Starting a new blog would give me a chance to be a little less one-dimensional, and post about my other interests like running, swimming, music, cooking, etc. Here's the tentative list of trees I plan to plant at the new place:
We'll miss you .
It's official, we're moving. After 5+ years of horticultural backyard fun, it's really hard to leave. I put a lot of time and money into my suburban orchard, not to mention a lot of love and care. Planting a tree or a garden really does tie you to the land in a special way. I know it's just a typical lot to most, but I know where the soil is best, where to find geckos and frogs, and where all my different plants like to grow. It was very difficult to do, but I removed many of the fruit trees for the sake of "landscape value". I don't get it, but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I kept what I could in pots to transplant later. I also hate leaving the greenhouse, since I spent so much time and effort building it last year, but it is what it is. I could try to take it down and reconstruct it, but it's pretty heavily reinforced, and I don't know if I could get it to go back together correctly. I'm planning on taking my rain tanks with me, but I haven't figured out how I'm going to do it yet. The good news is, we're not moving far away, and that the new house has an even bigger yard! In early negotiations with Dr. Wife, I claimed all lands south of the house and pool, the perimeter, and the land behind the garage, which means I'll have approximately 50% more land for fruit trees! It also means I'll get to go on one wild fruit tree shopping spree this winter as I re-plant. As much as I love my current home and yard, I can 't help but be exited at being able to start over with a completely blank slate, armed with all of the knowledge and experience that I've gained. Hopefully our house will sell quickly, and I'll be running irrigation lines and planting trees at the new house very soon. Red Tailed Hawk All 16 of my blueberry bushes are loaded with fruit, and lately I've been worrying about how I would be able to protect them from the birds. The robins definitely got their share last year, and I don't want the boys to miss out on any berries if I can help it. I was thinking about rigging up bird netting, but then I remembered my trip to the Messina Hof winery and vineyard this summer. I remember asking the owner how he controlled birds. He paused, held up his finger, and said "Listen". After a few seconds, the scream of a hawk erupted from a loudspeaker mounted on a nearby pole, piercing the morning calm. The hawk recording was played several times every hour, and it had been fairly effective in protecting the grapes. I figured that if it worked well enough for a commercial operation, it should work well in my yard too. There are many products you can buy that will play predator calls, distress calls, and all manner of other things, but I'm too cheap for that stuff. The first thing I did was visit the Audubon Society and other birding websites to find recordings of hawk screams and distress calls. I found some recordings that I thought would work, and mixed them together into a five-minute long mp3, which contained the predator-alert call of the American robin, followed by the scream of the red tailed hawk, and finally by a few minutes of silence. By loading the track on an old iPhone I had lying around and setting it to repeat, the calls would play every five minutes. I'm not sure if this is too much or too little, I'll just have to watch carefully. I got a couple of cheap computer speakers, and spliced in some stereo wire so that they had a very long lead. I then placed them in a plastic 5-gallon bucket with a hole cut out of the side (weather protection), and placed them up on top of the 1,000-gallon rain tank overlooking the blueberries. Once everything was wired together, I hit play and crossed my fingers. Success! The screech of the hawk shattered the silence. If I was a berry-eating bird and I heard that call coming from up above, I'd probably lose a feather or two. I let the track loop for almost six hours today, and I'll probably let it run for eight+ hours each day until blueberry season is over. It's not so loud that I think it will bother any of my neighbors, and I have a feeling that if it did bother anybody, some fresh-picked blueberries would probably smooth things over.
The family and I are in Lake Jackson visiting my in-laws this weekend. I didn't bring my laptop so I can't really put a full post together this weekend. However, I did eat lots of loquats, visit the Genoa loquat mother tree, and try some Indio madarinquats. I'll be back with a full post next week.
Sumo/Dekopon Fruit The Dekopon, marketed in the US as Sumo, is a legendary seedless hybrid between the Kiyomi tangor and a ponkan mandarin. It's unique flavor is all the rage in Japan, and famed fruit journalist David Karp regards it as one of the best citrus fruits he's ever tasted. Adding to the hype, they're really hard to find in the US, and very expensive when you do. To further complicate things, the rights to the budwood are exclusively owned by a family in California (which is under citrus quarantine anyway), so there's no way for home growers like me to buy or graft our own Dekopon trees. All we can do is buy the fruit in the stores when we can find it, and hope that we're one of the very lucky few that finds a Dekopon seed. I had never even seen one before, and just figured that the Dekopons, like the mythical Red Nules, weren't in my future. The other week when I was at my local HEB, I was amazed to find Sumos hiding in a little side display by the bananas. I don't remember how much they were, but they weren't cheap, and they looked absolutely terrible. The peels were bumpy and puffy, typical of overripe citrus, and many were clearly bruised up and battered. Still, not being able to resist, I bought 10 of them and brought them home in the hopes that I might find a seed. When citrus is called "seedless", that doesn't always mean 100% seedless, and occasionally seeds can still occur. I peeled and carefully examined the segments from all 10 of the fruits, but unfortunately didn't find any viable seeds. I found some very tiny, immature seeds, but nothing that I could plant and expect to germinate. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. The fruit is too expensive to keep trying, and even though there are many people selling Dekopon seeds on eBay, I don't trust any of them. Seeds or no seeds, I really like the Dekopon. The fruits are round with a pronounced bump on one end like a Minneola tangelo, and are very easy to peel. Inside, they have a hollow core surrounded by the segments, which are in turn encased in very thin, easy to eat membranes. The flesh is very juicy and soft, again very similar to a Minneola tangelo, but slightly firmer in texture. The flavor is very sweet with just the right amount of acid to balance it, and reminds me of the citrus drink Sunny D. I have to agree with Mr. Karp, the fruit has an excellent flavor. They definitely won the approval of the boys, who gobbled up all they could get. If they're that good from HEB, just imagine how good they would be right off the tree! Collecting pollen from Wekiwa tangelo flower. Ever since John Panzarella told me the story of how he tried to breed a pink lemonade fruit by crossing a Ruby Red grapefruit and an Ujukitsu, I've wanted to try to make a controlled cross of my own. I've planted several open pollinated seeds, but until now I've never tried contolled pollination. It turns out its much more difficult than I thought. Almost all of my citrus trees are blooming right now, so I thought this weekend would be the perfect time to try it. First, I needed to select a pollen donor and a seed parent. Not all citrus produce hybrids, so my choice of potential seed parents was limited to those varieties I have that produce monoembryonic, zygotic seeds: Pummelos, Meyer Lemon, and Ujukitsu. I've never been impressed with pummelo hybrids (like Oro Blanco), and I didn't want a sour fruit, so I chose the Ujukitsu, aka the "lemonade fruit". For the pollen donor, I could use any citrus variety that was currently in bloom. I decided to use the Wekiwa tangelo because it is very delicious, is a complex hybrid itself (grapefruit x Sampson tangelo), and under the right conditions has pink flesh. Who knows? Maybe a Wekiwa x Ujukitsu hybrid would produce the pink lemonade fruit John was trying for? Even if it didn't, they're both delicious fruits, and so I would hope a cross would also be tasty. I found a sharp pair of tweezers, a small mason jar, and got to work collecting pollen from the Wekiwa's flowers. I couldn't shake or disloge the pollen easily, so I just used the tweezers to remove the stamen and anthers and drop them in the jar. I collected the pollen from a total of four or five flowers, and then headed over to the Ujukitsu. I picked out a nice set of the Ujukitsu's flowers to try to pollinate, removed all the nearby unopened buds, and tried to emasculate the flowers so that they wouldn't pollinate themselves. This proved to be very difficult. The stamens hold the pollen so that it faces the flower's stigma, and the surfaces of both are sticky. Every time I would try to remove the stamen with the tweezers, I would accidentally cause some Ujukitsu pollen to stick to the pistil! After the second flower I gave up. I borrowed one of Dr. Wife's paintbrushes and used it to liberally apply Wekiwa pollen to the Ujukitsu stigmas. Once I was finished, I covered the flowers with a mesh bag to prevent any further pollination by insects. Hopefully these flowers will set fruit this year, and will produce some hybrid seeds. The flowers could have been pollinated by me using the Wekiwa pollen, or been self pollinated. I'll need to plant several seeds, let them grow for a little while, and look for any signs of a hybrid plant, such as unusual leaf shape. |
Clayton Bell
I'm a geologist in Houston, Texas who loves growing fruit trees.
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