Tuesday, December 29, 2020

World's Best mulberry

 The tree seems to be small, but I only have 2 seasons of experience with it in the ground. It fruits all summer long, making it similar in the fruiting pattern to the 4 seasons mulberry. However, the fruits are smaller and not as complex as the 4 seasons mulberry, and they are less juicy. They should have a better shelf life than the 4 seasons.  The fruits have longer petioles than the 4 seasons,  and they separate from the shoots easier with less mess.  The shoots are straight and a little thicker than the 4 seasons mulberry shoots. They root easily from cuttings.


Monday, December 28, 2020

Adara Plum

Adara is a Prunus cerasifera selection with a wide range of compatibility with various Prunus species. Adara is also known as Puente, which is a trademarked name.

Adara is mostly used as intersteam for grafting cherries onto plums.  First, graft Adara onto plum, then graft cherry scions a season later.  It is possible to do both grafts in the same season as I described earlier. 

Adara can also be used as a rootstock and tolerates a wide range of soils.  I have a very good experience using it in heavy clay soils as a rootstock for sweet and sour cherries. The only problem I see with some vigorous sweet cherry selections is that they grow wide faster than Adara rootstock. In the picture below, Coral (left) and Lapins sweet cherries grafted on Adara at 3 years age. Grafting low maybe a better option, especially for vigorous cultivars.


Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com

Late December Mandarins

 I tasted 5 different mandarins today.  In the pictures, they are in the following order, left to right:

Daisy SL
Lee x Nova (Supernova)
Page
Shirokolistvenyi Satsuma
Algerian Clementine

Daisy SL is an excellent sweet and complex mandarin but a week or two past its prime time
Lee x Nova (Supernova) is very sweet and at its peak flavor now
Page is getting ready, sweet and complex, but it will get even better later
Shirokolistvenyi Satsuma very juicy but mild in flavor and the membranes are hard.  This is the first fruiting of this graft on my Algerian Clementine. 
Algerian Clementine is still sour and needs couple more weeks on the tree

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Maple Leaf mulberry

Large fast growing tree with very pleasant fruits in early June. The flavor is intense with high sugar content. It still has some acid, but less than Oscar fruits, that ripen at the same time.

Maple Leaf (left) and Oscar



Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com


Buluklu mulberry

 Large fast growing tree with snow white honey-sweet fruits without any acidity. The fruits are about the same size as Oscar mulberry and smaller than 4 season mulberry. Buluklu is in the lower left corner  in the picture below.

Starting from top left: Pakistan, 4 seasons, Saharanpur Local, Shangri La.

Starting from bottom left: Buluklu, Oscar, FL Big Leaf, Illinois Everbearing.



Buluklu (white) and 4 seasons mulberry (black)


Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com

Himalayan Mulberry, DMOR9

 

This cultivar is a large and fast growing tree.  It produces excellent fruits, sweet with some acidity, and they are slender than Pakistan. Normally, it fruits before Pakistan and produces just one crop in the Sacramento Valley area. However it produced a second small flash of fruits in October 2020.

This cultivar does not root from cuttings, and it should be grafted onto alba or macroura species.


Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

White sapote cv. Vernon

 Vernon is a very good cultivar and performs great in Davis, CA.  My tree came from Home Depot in Woodland in 2015.  It produces every year in November- December.  The tree is still small, around 5 ft tall. 

The pictures are from the 2020 harvest.


Monday, December 14, 2020

Long White Mulberries. Saharanpur Local, Australian Green, and Pakistan White.

 These three mulberries are probably the same accession propagated under 3 different names. Saharanpur Local mulberry came to my garden directly from USDA. Australian Green was donated by a friend, and Pakistan White came from a CRFG exchange.  I do not see any differences in the fruit flavor, shape, or the tree size.  The leaf shapes are identical too.

These are very fast-growing large trees that will require pruning. The fruits are long, very sweet, with no acidity. Occasionally, we have the plant material available at reallygoodplants.com 








Thursday, December 3, 2020

Lubimyi and Girkanets pomegranates

 Lubimyi and Girkanets are late season fruits, ripening from November to December.  Both are hard-seeded and complex in flavor.  

Lubimyi


Lubimyi - Hard-seeded, large seeds, sweet-sour with sweet cherry flavor. Nice flavored, but the seeds are large, probably best for juicing.

Girkanets


Girkanets - Hard-seeded, but the seeds are small, sweet-sour with some tannins. Exceptionally flavored with all attributes of classic pomegranate taste profile. Can be used for fresh eating or juicing.

Girkanets (left) and Lubimyi


The propagation wood is usually available during our winter sale at reallygoodplants.com

Frost tolerance of Himalayan Mulberries

 The past winter of 2023-2024 was the second test for my Himalayan mulberries frost tolerance. I have five two-years old trees of four culti...