Blueberries, the first real harvest

 Blueberries turned out to be one of the most challenging plants to grow here in Davis. This was until about a year and half ago, when I followed an advice to grow them in large pots. Last year I already had some berries from a couple of my potted plants and today I picked a bowl from each Reveille (left) and Southmoon plants. 

The Reveille fruits seem to be larger and sweeter than Southmoon, but this could be due to the sunnier location. This plant has almost full day of sun:

While my Southmoon plant is mostly in the shade:

Both plants grow in a peat moss rich mix with added sulfur and occasionally get a balanced fertilizer. 

Second tasting of loquats in May of 2021

 This is a much smaller set of loquat fruits than I described a few days ago. All fruits here are from my multigrafted tree in Davis. I have more grafts that fruited this year, but these are what the birds and squirrels left for me. 

Argelino still needs more time. It’s an excellent late cultivar, but does not have enough sugar yet.

McBeth  is actually not bad this year, or I may have caught it at the right time. Pretty sweet, dense flesh with some acid.  Mild apple-apricot flavor. Good size.

Shed fruits are coming from a recent small graft. Very sweet, juicy, with intense melon-apple-apricot flavor. Little acidity makes it an overall excellent fruit.

Napa Library is a small but very early and extremely sweet fruit with a flavor of very sweet melon and apple. I do not detect any acidity in this fruit.

My pick from this tasting is Shed.

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

Mulberries in May of 2021

This year we started picking mulberries already in April. The first cultivar to produce was Himalayan DMOR9, the longest berry in the picture below. Here I have (left to right): Pakistan, Oscar, Maple Leaf, Himalayan DMOR9, Pakistan White, Big leaf FL

Himalayan DMOR9 is an excellent mulberry with very high sugar and some acid, a few more pictures below 

The tree is large and vigorous. The cuttings do not root and the propagation is by grafting mostly. I didn’t try the air layering yet, this might work too. The leaves are slightly lobed.

Pakistan  White (Saharanpur Local, Australian Green) produces extremely sweet long white mulberries. No acid in these fruits and they can be consumed even when not fully ripe. The tree is very vigorous. The cuttings do not root and should be grafted.

Oscar is a relatively common cultivar with sweet- sour fruits. They need to be fully ripe to be enjoyable. Just a standard good dark fruit without anything special in it. Large tree that needs pruning every season.  Oscar dormant cuttings can be rooted. Below are the Oscar fruits along  a few Pakistan white fruits.

In two images below I show how Oscar compares to Maple Leaf mulberry fruits. Oscar is on the left in both images.

Maple Leaf is an excellent mulberry and deserves a better distribution. The fruits are long, some can be as long as the smaller Pakistan mulberries. Very sweet with a little acid. The tree is large. It seems it can be rooted from dormant cuttings. The images are above along with Oscar fruits. In the below image, Maple Leaf is the rightmost fruit. Left to right here are Himalayan DMOR9, Pakistan, Oscar, and Maple Leaf.

Buluklu mulberry just started ripening in the end of May. The large tree produces a lot of sweet very juicy fruit without any acidity. I like them very much. This type of the fruit is very common in Central Asia and Turkey.

In the image below, all short white fruits are Buluklu.

Big Leaf FL is the code name for the mulberry that came nameless from Florida. The fruits are relatively large, black, sweet-sour and need to be completely ripe to be enjoyable. The leaves are very large on this tree. In the image above, these fruits are on top of the Buluklu fruits in the container on the right.

More pictures below.

Pakistan is a very good large fruit with a balance of sweet and sour, more on the sweet side. It’s not as intense as the Himalayan DMOR9 however. Here is how it compares to Illinois Everbearing in the picture below. This is a large tree, needs yearly pruning. The dormant cuttings can be rooted.

Illinois Everbearing is just starting to ripen the very first fruits. It’s a later ripening cultivar. The fruits are small, sweet-sour and need to be fully ripe to be enjoyable. The fruits are in the picture above on the right. The tree is large, the cuttings do not root and should be grafted.

Black Prince doesn’t normally fruit in May, but I have a grafted tree in a 10 gallon pot by the Southern wall in my backyard and it produces now. The fruits on my in ground tree are not ready yet. These are excellent, very sweet with a little acid. The fruit size from this potted tree is smaller than the ones from the in ground tree. 

The fruits have a lighter middle core.

I should move this tree to a large pot of I want to keep it in my yard. Here is the tree:

Black Prince trees are large, and it seems that the cuttings can be rooted.

Material availability.  Many of these can be found as cuttings at the winter exchanges organized by the CRFG chapters.  If I have material for sale, I post it at reallygoodplants.com 

 

Loquat tasting in May of 2021

 The pictures and taste notes are all from May 23, 2021.  Please note that this is early loquat season tasting for this location.  All fruits are from Vacaville trees. The later ripening varieties are not ready yet.

Ed’s Delight - sweet with a little acid, soft, juicy, pear flavored

Fletcher White - sweet-sour, needs more ripening time, pear grapes flavor 

Surprise - sour-sweet, strawberry flavored, very juicy, needs more ripening time

Chuck - sweet, apple-grape flavored, dense flesh

Mogi - sweet with a little acid, complex flavor with grape, baked apple, strawberry, very juicy

Jazzy - very sweet, very little acid, grape flavor not complex, a little boring now

Gold Nugget - sweet-sour, mild apricot-apple flavored, juicy

Argelino - more sour than sweet now, very juicy, complex flavor but needs more time to sugar up for flavor perception

Strawberry - very sour and juicy now. There is might be strawberry flavor but needs more time to develop sugar 

Espana - very sweet, some acid , dense flesh, apple-strawberry-grape flavored

My picks from this tasting are Espana, Mogi, and Ed's Delight.  They seem to be the most developed at this date with the best flavors and sugar content.

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

Soursop fruit from a Davis greenhouse

 

Sometime in 2016 or around, I got a small seedling of soursop from a gardening friend.  The first two winters the tree was overwintering indoors by a window. In the fall of 2018 I took this tree to my work greenhouse, and it spent there its last 3 years.  The tree grew enormously fast, and I had to top it last summer, as it reached the greenhouse ceiling. The tree is still growing in a 10 gallon textile bag.  The first blooms showed up last summer, but none made it into a fruit.  The past winter of 2020-21 the tree produced lots of blooms, and it is still blooming now in spring of 2021.  I noticed the first developing fruit in early March 2021.  Here are the pictures from March 3: 

My guesstimate is that the fruit in these first pictures from March 3 is under one month after pollination.  This fruit fell into my hand completely soft and ripe on May 17.  If I am counting it right, soursop fruit develops from flower to ripe fruit in 3.5 months.

The fruit weight was 729 grams.

This fruit was very soft with a low amount of seeds. No strings, just a few in the middle core.

The fruit skin separated very easily from the flesh.

Flavor-wise, it was probably the best soursop I ever had.  The texture was very smooth. My only wish, it could be sweeter, if there is such thing as a sweet soupsop.  I should move this plant to a larger pot and maybe give it a shot of potassium. It is blooming non-stop, but I do not see any other potential fruits yet.

The young persimmon trees decline might be due to very small mites

Update on April 29, 2021 

The digital microscope came on April 29, here is one of the videos from today.  The mites are very small and rectangular.  A few of them here:

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I lost a number of young persimmons last year.  This year I am watching them very closely.  A  young Texas persimmon tree just started to bloom, and I could see some fine webs on the leaves.  After shaking the leaves on a white paper I found a few thrips, an aphid, but could not see any mites.  It took me a good hour and a real camera with a zoom to get a dissent portrait of just one mite.  There are many of them, but I would need a camera stand and maybe a microscope to get better pictures.  I do not know the species name, but hopefully someone can ID these.

February fruits of Sacramento Valley

 Many citrus fruits can be harvested this month. I have the following:

Oranges: Washington Navel, Navellina, Cara-Cara, Boukhobza, Sanguinelli, Tarocco, my fake Cara-Cara, Vainiglia Sanguino.

Grapefruit: Cocktail.  The sweetest grapefruit I ever had.

Pomelo: Valentine (came from a friend's tree, but I should have my own shortly).  This is an excellent selection. 

Tangor: Kyomi. Very juicy mandarine type of fruit.  A parent of Sumo / Shiranui / Dekopon

Mandarins: Algerian clementine, Gold Nugget, Tahoe Gold, Page, Tango

Lime: Palestine acidless, Rangpur

Two tropical guava trees are still fruiting: my Brazilian orange seedling and Malaysian Red

Avocado Royal Wright started shedding the fruits after windy days.  I am picking those that have yellow stems. I think they are better than I expected them to be.  I will compare them agains Bacon in a separate post

I collected some white sapote Vernon fruits from a friend's very large tree in South Bay. It might be possible to have them here in the winter too when my trees get more mature.

Below are four pigmented oranges, starting from the upper left clockwise: Vainiglia Sanguino, Sanguinelli, Tarocco, Boukhobza. 

Vainiglia Sanguino is very nicely flavored acidless orange, Sanguinelli has lots of color and flavor, but low on sugar, Tarocco is sweeter than Sanguinelli.  Boukhobza is an excellent blood orange with the sweetness of a Navel orange.

None of these pigmented oranges had dark red outer color. Sanguinelli and Tarocco (right) are below.

And the last but not least, I believe I harvested the last dragon fruit of the season. Sugar Dragon along with the Palestine acidless lime are below.  Pretty good tasting Sugar Dragon fruit for February. And this lime is very unique and pleasant to eat.

Check our sales site if we have the avocado and white sapote cuttings available reallygoodplants.com