Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Blooming time for various apricot cultivars in Sacramento Valley

 


Below is the data for 32 cultivars as recorded on March 13, 2024

Some additional cultivars in the orchard might show some flowering buds later. 

The scions of some of the above listed cultivars might be available at reallygoodplants.com during the winter and spring sales.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Cuttings sale in March 2024

This posts describes the cuttings sale on reallygoodplants.com in March of 2024.

The sale will open at 6 PM PST on March 1.

1. All deciduous cuttings and scions were precut while dormant and stored at 40°F.

2. The evergreen species will be cut to order. The wood of white sapote, cherimoya, rose apple, and avocado do not store for a long time. These should be used in under a week or two after receiving.

3. Some cultivars are not linked to descriptions. There are various reasons for this. Some are easily searchable on the web, like many apples, plums, peaches, a couple of Opuntias, etc. And the others are novel in circulation, and we have not yet evaluated them in detail. These are for gardeners looking for new gerplasm to test in their conditions.

4. Most of the material offered here should be grafted, however, there are some accessions that could be rooted. We successfully rooted all Elaeagnus species, Kei Apples, sour cherry PV Hybrid #1, Adara plum, rose apple, and many mulberries. Here is the post on mulberry rooting abilities you may want to check. If you plan on rooting some material, I would still recommend grafting a piece for a backup. This time we also offer the cuttings of Osage orange, which are typical rootstock for Che. These will root and, will grow fast, and can be grafted with Che the following year.

All pomegranates root fine. If you want to graft them, make sure to graft onto strong young shoots. More about grafting in this post.

All Opuntia pads, as well as grapes will root.

5. The length and diameter of the cuttings will depend on the species. We will supply at least 6 inch long cuttings with at least 3 buds. A 6 inch long apricot scion can have up to 20 buds, while some vigorous mulberries might have 6-8 inch long internodes. On average, mulberry cuttings will be longer than avocado, apricots, and feijoa. Some mulberries grow very thick shoots. If you are planning on getting the Himalayan types like Naples, Steve Murray, etc, these may be up to 1 inch in diameter and will require established rootstocks to graft onto, or prepare yourself for chip budding your smaller rootstocks.


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

White Sapote Golden Globe

 This is the most late fruiting cultivar for me in Davis. The tree is very vigorous and fast growing. The fruits are medium in size, excellent tasting. The flavor has caramel notes in it, they are very sweet and creamy, the skin is edible. The fruits in the pictures below were harvested on February 9, 2024. 

The scions are usually available during our spring sale at reallygoodplants.com

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The first fruit trees to bloom in 2024

As of February 14, 2024 I have the following fruit trees blooming.

Orion peach

Katy apricot 

 
Anna apple 

Aussie mulberry 
Also called AustroTurkey, Australian Turkish, etc. 

Himalayan Red Skinner mulberry 

Four Seasons mulberry 

Shangri La mulberry




Sunday, January 7, 2024

Hybrid Hibiscus of Rusanov

 This post describes the hybrid selections of herbaceous hibiscus created by Fedor Rusanov. 

Fedor Rusanov (1895 -1979) was the founder of Tashkent Botanical Garden in Uzbekistan.  He had a long and successful career as a botanist and plant breeder. Sometime around 1940s-50s he created the hybrids of hibiscus which are called by his name now. He was working with three American species, Нibiscus coccineus, Н. moscheutos, and Н. militaris. After multistep crosses he ended up with selections which are very frost hardy, vigorous and have large flowers.  These hybrids can grow to 2.5 - 3 meters (7-10 feet) in one season producing an inch or more thick stems.  However, they will go fully dormant for winter, and all above ground parts will die back. The following spring they will regrow from the roots.  The roots are very thick rhizomes similar in the structure to the vigorous peony roots. These plants need space, sun, and supplementary water in California.  They are also extremely heat tolerant and will bloom over the summer, fall, and until the frosts. 

In my childhood I used to walk through the grounds of Samarkand College of Agriculture which had them planted in masses. I perceived them as just something given, and had no idea that someone worked for years to create these hybrids. I also had one in the backyard of my grandmother. That plant produced very large red flowers.

I started growing these from seeds a few years back and had a number of seedlings with pink, white, and red flowers.  I preserved a selection with very large pink flowers which should segregate into multiple colors.  I just started a number of seeds and hope to select other colors.  I also grow multiple clones of this pink selection, as it is very easy to create new plants from the early summer shoots. They root in a couple of weeks. Below are the pictures of my pink selection.

These are very open plants and combine very well with other plantings, see image below.

I once also had a red selection, and I may have found some seeds from it and will try to germinate them. The red flowering plant is in the below images.


The utility of these hybrids for California is in their heat tolerance and ability to continue blooming when the temperature are above 100F.  However, they might have even more use in the US states with extremely cold winters. They have been shown to perform very well in various regions of Russia and Ukraine.

My plan is to propagate these accessions from seeds and cuttings and distribute through reallygoodplants.com








Saturday, December 30, 2023

Chitalpa tashkentensis, a popular intergeneric hybrid tree

 Chitalpa tashkentensis is a popular flowering and shade tree. It is wide-spread across California and can be found in most landscaping nurseries.

The reason I decided to write about it is that there is a very limited and often erroneous information about this tree (on the English speaking web). I myself got this tree as a 5-6 ft whip in 2001 because I was looking for a flowering tree with fast decomposing leaves. Now, over 20 years later it is a well developed tree that provides light shade for my front yard plants. Below are the day and night pictures from June of 2023.


Only after getting home I checked the tag on this plant and noticed the species name, tashkentensis, which corresponded to the capital city of the country I was born in. Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan. The genus name happened to be a combination of two different genera, Catalpa and Chilopsis. Here I had an intergeneric tree somehow related to Tashkent, now planted in my front yard in California.  I had to figure out why it was named that way.

The searches quickly took to me to the origin of the tree, Tashkent Botanical garden.  However it took me a bit more researching to figure out the Chitalpa's breeder name.  The problem was that there were two great breeders working in this garden, Fedor Rusanov (1895-1979), and later his son Nikolay Rusanov (1938-2017). The most noticeable creations of  Fedor Rusanov are the hybrid hibiscus plants from three American species and his hardy interspecific yucca hybrids.  I will cover the hybrid hibiscus of Fedor Rusanov in another post. 

Now back to Chitalpa. Chitalpa was created by the son, Nikolay Rusanov in 1964 by cross-pollination between Chilopsis linearis and Catalpa bignonioides. I could not find the info on the directionality of his cross(es).  In the end, he selected seven cultivars, five with pink flowers, and two with white flowers. Two selections, 'Pink Down' and 'Morning Cloud' made its way to the US via Robert Hebb of the New York Botanic Garden in 1977. Only in 1991, Thomas Elias and Walter Wisura from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic garden created the name Chitalpa tashkentensis and applied it to both selections. 

This tree is completely sterile and propagated vegetatively through cuttings or root sprouts. 

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Oregon Exotics Che (Zhe) trees, foliage, fruit production, and processing.

This post describes a pretty uncommon, but a wonderful and an easy-to-grow fruit. The Che fruit (Cudrania tricuspidata, Maclura tricuspidata) originates from China, but not even every Chinese will know it. However, the various parts of this tree are used for centuries in the traditional Eastern medicine. This paper summarizes the traditional uses, the chemical compounds isolated from this tree and their pharmacological activities. 

Majority of people who tasted this fruit, never seen a selection producing the fruits as large as the cultivar Oregon Exotics.  This particular accession was introduced by Jerome Black many years ago and was originally distributed through his (now defunct) nursery Oregon Exotics. The fruits are wonderfully sweet berry ripening in November. I started growing this accession about 7-8 years ago, and had my first harvest in 2018.  The first time I described these fruits in this post in November of 2020

My new Che trees in the new orchard turned out to be great producers just after one year in the ground.  I have not weighed the harvest of 2023, but my estimate is that we picked close to 20 pounds from two small female trees.  These are surrounded by two male trees and I suspect that pollinated fruits hold better and definitely grow larger. 

The leaves on the male trees look abnormally rolled in, and this seems to be typical for this male accession.

The male trees grow more vigorously and taller than the female trees. I posted a video on how different the foliage looks like on male vs female trees:  

https://youtube.com/shorts/C5_TvOxZ5ZA?si=rw3KBuHbN95yIm4X

The birds started damaging the fruits in early October, and by October 15 we put the tulle net over the trees to save the harvest. These berries need to be fully ripe before harvesting, and the netting allowed us to harvest the ripe undamaged fruits. Below is the link to a video from mid October with the netting structure. 

https://youtube.com/shorts/tetVJQXG7EA?si=ED49_QUX7vbjT8Yf

Here in the Sacramento Valley, the fruit are getting ready in November. This year I harvested most of the fruits on November 17 and November 18, and the very last batch was harvested on November 25.  In the picture below are the Che fruits along with the very last figs from November 25.

The link below points to my last Che tasting video taken in the orchard on November 18:

These fruits are highly perishable and should be used or processed the same day they were harvested. They are very sweet with chocolaty-watermelon flavors.  Besides consuming them fresh as we would do any other berry, we also juiced them.  The juice can be stored for a few days in the fridge.  

For juicing I used a simple food processor which I also use for pomegranate arils and cut tomatoes. The solids and seeds stay in the crushing bowl, and the juices drain to the large bowl placed under the processor, see the pictures below.
The video link to the YouTube Short showing the process: 

We ended up with a lot of juice and pulp.
The juice is viscous and can be stored for a few days in the fridge.  It’s actually best when consumed cold. Sometimes I add a little of lime juice to Che juice and it becomes a bit brighter.  Otherwise the flavor of Che is intensely sweet with the chocolate and watermelon notes in it.  I like the Che juice without lime better, but my family prefers it with some lime juice. Just use very small amount of lime juice if you want to experiment with it. No more than a teaspoon of lime juice per cup of Che juice.
I also processed the solids after juicing into the fruit leather.  I spread the solids on the wax paper and dried in the oven for 2-3 hours at 170F.  Then I left it overnight in the oven, and dried it again the same way.  Then, I finished the drying outside of the oven for a day.  

The dried leather is mildly sweet and crunchy.  I experimented with adding various flavoring into it, like vanilla extract, lime juice, and cocoa powder.  I liked the lime and cocoa in the dried leather.

I have also froze some amount of fruit in Ziplock bags and planning to juice them later. 

Concluding remarks

I think the main reason why this fruit stays relatively unknown even for the active gardeners is the lack of the easily available rootstocks. Che trees are generally grafted onto the Osage orange seedlings. These are occasionally available from Fruitwood Nursery. Otherwise you would need to grow them yourself using the seeds from the large green balls falling from the Osage Orange trees in fall.  These are commonly planted across California, and can often be found along the county roads.
Last summer I also found out that Osage Orange roots relatively easily from the green cuttings.  We made a number of rootstocks this way, I planted them in the orchard in fall, and they will be grafted in the spring.  This might be a faster way to the production of Che rootstocks.  They become graft-able in under one year. It will be interesting to check if the dormant wood of Osage orange roots too, and I'm planning to test it this winter. 

Normally, you don't want to use Che seedlings as rootstocks as they tent to sprout a lot of suckers. Some people were able to root the Che cuttings too, but the process may not be that efficient, and you will end with many suckers, I heard.

We don't have any extra rootstocks available, but we still have plenty of Oregon Exotics Che scions at reallygoodplants.com and plan to have them every year during our winter and spring sales.


 

Blooming time for various apricot cultivars in Sacramento Valley

  Below is the data for 32 cultivars as recorded on March 13, 2024 Some additional cultivars in the orchard might show some flowering buds l...