Pear Tree Blooming in November

Yes, I really did just take this picture yesterday morning. Yes, it is November and yes it’s been below 30 degrees at night the past couple of nights. So why in the world is our pear tree full of blooms? We did have a string of cold days in October followed by warm, even hot days which I think it what did it. I can’t seem to find anything online that talks about what happens when fruit trees bloom in autumn. Will this mean that we won’t have much fruit next summer? Will it bloom again in spring? One snippet I found said that trees that are damaged during summer sometimes bloom in autumn, however we haven’t even so much as given the poor tree a sideways glance, let alone damage it. I suppose only time will tell. I’ll report again next spring on how our poor pear tree is doing.

Has anyone else had their fruit trees bloom in autumn?

Just for proof of frost, the next photo in my camera, after the pear tree shot was taken was this one. See? Frosty!

What to Do with All the Fruit?

Despite last weeks reported disappointments, we must be doing something right in other parts of our yard because it is becoming increasingly harder to find counter space in our kitchen. Is your kitchen counter the same each summer? We are truly at that point in zucchini season where you are ready to sneak over and pop a few into the neighbors mailbox and run for dear life. If I knew that our neighbors didn’t already grow plenty of zucchini I would have done so already. In fact our neighbor across the street was the one who inspired us to grow these Portofino zucchini’s which are our favorite by far.

The peach and nectarine tree are ripe this week which means lots of canning, fruit roll ups and of course peach margaritas!

Do you have any ideas for preserving fruit besides canning? Enough people have suggested dehydrating that I might just give that a try this year. We’ve tried freezing bags of cut up peaches, but besides using them in smoothies we haven’t found them to be a very useful. I’d love to hear more suggestions.

UPDATE: Yesterday I made this fantastic peach galette that a former collegue created. It was fantastic! Give it a try.

Peach Leaf Curl

Note to selves: Spray the fruit trees properly next year!

Shame on us for not spraying the fruit trees properly this year. Here I am typing out blog post after blog post trying to sound like we are somewhat competent gardeners and this year, well, we are a great big gardening mess. First the damping off and now the peach leaf curl. What next?

Peach Leaf Curl is another lovely fungal disease that when controlled with proper spraying stays at bay. But when you let it overwinter without spraying it will come and get you once spring hits and the leaf buds sprout. Once that happens, there is nothing you can do until the next dormant season. Since the disease places stress on the tree you can coddle your poor sickly tree by giving it extra fertilizer and proper water. Peach Leaf Curl affects namely peaches, nectarines and in the case of our yard, our Weeping Santa Rosa Plum tree. The leaves become discolored, curl up and much of the fruit also becomes damaged. I fear we won’t have half the nectarine crop or peach crop that we did last year.

To keep peach leaf curl away, you should spray with a copper spray three times during the winter. I’ve been reading that most people can get rid of it with only one spraying, but we’ve been advised to spray three times. First when all of the leaves have fallen off, which often in Sonoma is around Thanksgiving. Then spray again a month later around Christmas and then give it one final spray at the end of January before the leave buds break.

This year we only sprayed in January and then it rained a day afterwards, so I’m sure that most of the copper was washed off anyway. We are paying for it now as all of our peach, nectarine and plum trees are deeply infected with it.

If you’d like to read more about peach leaf curl click over to UC Davis’s website. We get a lot of our in depth gardening info from them.

The First Spring Weekend

Oh what a glorious way to enter into spring. The first tulip bloomed on the first day of spring. There were rain showers, blue, blue skies, billowy white clouds, March breezes, drinks with a new friend, dinner with an old, dear friend and days spent together outside.



The mustard is just starting to fade.

Soon to be cherries.

Soon to be peaches.

Muscari growing wild below our apple trees.
Did you have a good first weekend of spring too?

Signs of Spring

translucent asparagus
It’s admittedly been a very warm winter this year. We’ve had many days touching into the seventies. It has been lovely, but we are predicting a not so great harvest from our fruit trees. This warm weather is causing everything to bud up now and our Santa Rosa Weeping Plum tree is on the verge of exploding with blooms. And it seem all too early for that, last year it didn’t bloom until March. We’ve found that following the coldest winters, we get the best fruit harvests. With this warmer one, I don’t expect much fruit this summer, but who knows. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy these beautiful days and take in the first signs of spring.

our Santa Rosa Weeping Plum tree about to bloom

tulips starting to emerge

the santa rosa plum tree against our blue, blue skies

Citrus Week: Kafir Lime

Are you a thai curry addict? Curry nights are one of my favorites in our house and Scott makes a great one. But when Scott said that he wanted to buy an entire Kafir Lime tree just to make our curries better, I thought that maybe that was a little excessive. Did we really need and entire tree to make an occassional dinner better? However a good nursery sale and the promise of it being a small evergreen patio tree was enough to convince me, so we are now the owners of a kafir lime tree.

While the actual kafir limes are used for their zest, the juice of the bumpy skinned limes is generally ignored. The covetous part of this tree is the leaves which are added to curries to bring an incredible flavor and aroma. I read recently that often in Thailand one tree was plenty to supply an entire town with leaves for their meals. Soon we will be able to supply the greater Sonoma area with leaves. If you live in town or come for a visit, let us know and we’ll share the supply.

That wraps up Citrus Week for us. What citrus do you have growing in your garden?

Citrus Week: Navel Oranges

When we first toured this house five and a half years ago we realized quickly that it fit everything on our ‘must have’ house list. Including a big yard. And just to make the icing on the cake a little sweeter we found an apple, pear, and orange tree. Well, honestly saying ‘orange tree’ is really an exaggeration. It was more of a newly planted orange stick. For years it remained an orange stick with maybe only an inch or two of growth gained per year. It would blossom and fill the yard with it’s sweet scent, but we never had any oranges before. Until we read about how heavily they needed feeding. They have a voracious appetite for nitrogen, so we decided to be good citrus parents and feed it, along with the meyer lemon, with Dr. Earths Organic Citrus Fertilizer. Two years later it’s grown about three times its original size and has probably about a half a dozen oranges on it. Which is about twice as many as we got last year. Six oranges, is just about enough for a batch of marmalade, which has been my passion for a few years now. Frog Hollow, found at the San Francisco Farmers Market is my all time favorite.

Navel Orange trees can get pretty big, which is fine in my book. I wouldn’t mind a huge orange tree in the spot that it is in. However while they are frost tender when young. So while they are small enough, it’s a good idea to throw a blanket over them when the weatherman warns of a freeze. Or you can just look around as you drive through town at the neighboors citrus trees. Come December (in our town) you might notice all sorts of odd blankets and sheets strewn across people yards.

Do you have an orange tree? What do you do with the bounty?

Citrus Week: Meyer Lemons

Well we reluctantly came from Hawaii and while we miss our exotic tropical fruit searches, at least we came home to some ripe citrus fruit in our garden. Since it has been a while since we’ve spent a week in the garden, do you mind joining me out there for a while to look at the citrus? Just before we left the Meyer Lemons turned yellow and now we are meyer lemon heaven. Have you had a meyer lemon before? They are a cross between a true lemon and a mandarine orange which makes their peel smoother and their taste sweeter. Once you try one, it’s hard to turn back. We use them for everything, in baking, for lemonade, and even in our sandwiches below…

As for the tree themselves, they are a compact dwarf tree, so they are easy to fit into a small yard and if it gets too cold where you live (while they are hardy they are still frost tender) you can bring them indoors during winter as a house plant. If you live in a moderate climate, like we do, where freezes are occassional, they are fine left outside. Just throw a sheet or blanket over them when the temperature dips past freezing. Plant them in a sunny location and put them close to a walking path or patio. The scent of their blooms is intoxicating. As with most citrus, they are heavy feeders so make sure you invest in some organic citrus fertilizer.

Meyer lemon trees are grafted onto grapefruit tree rootstock, so make sure to check that you aren’t getting grapefruit limbs growing below the graft. The winter of 2002/2003 was a cold one and our tree was damaged right down to the graft. Without realizing it we let the grapefruit branches grow with wild abandoned and ended up with huge tasteless grapefruits. You will know that they are grapefruit and not lemon branches by the fact that they will have wicked spikes on them. Lemon branches do not have spikes on them.

For you who are already meyer lemon afficianados, have you ever tried one in your sandwich? (This one was made for you Katrina) Not only will it redefine sandwich making in your world, but it will redefine what you can do with meyer lemons in your cooking. This Salami, Arugula and Meyer Lemon Sandwich is to die for.

Slice your meyer lemon as thin as your knife skills will allow, peel and all. Layer on toasted sandwich bread (or crusty sliced french bread) along with mayonnaise (or garlic aoili if you are really fancy), garden fresh arugula, and your favorite salami. I promise you that the lemon slices won’t be bitter at all. It will add a fresh, juicy element to each bite. You are going to love it.

Fruitstands in Kauai

Aloha! I was going to wait until we returned to write a post, but at this point we really don’t want to ever return. We’re ready to ‘go bamboo’ up in Hanalei Bay. Up on there, on the north side of Kauai it is so beautiful that it starts to be a little ridiculous. Really. It is so lush and green with majestic mountains and picturesque beaches. So if you don’t hear from us for a while, you’ll find us up there, probably in front of Java Kai’s or across the street eating fish tacos with an umbrella clad drink. Or maybe just laying on the beach. Although, I suppose living in paradise would get old..at least that’s what I tell myself when flashes of reality come back to us.

Meanwhile, let me show you this incredible fruit we’ve been finding. I underestimated Hawaii a lot. I just always thought of Hawaii as resorts and beaches and coconuts, pineapples leis and luau’s. I didn’t realize how rich and interesting the culture is. It’s like visiting a completely different country in some respects. Nor did I realize how friendly the natives would be. And I really didn’t think that we would discover the little works of natural art that we’d find at roadside stands.

Our first find was bananas. We have a Safeway across the street from us and on our first morning we ventured over to fill up our kitchen. We found regular bananas, the kind we all have at our market, from Equador. And then we found these smaller fatter bananas, called apple bananas. They are creamier have a slightly peachy color when you bite in and do have a bit of an apple taste to them. From that first realization, that there was a whole new world of fruit awaiting us, we’ve become a couple obsessed. When we aren’t sipping frosty drinks, logging in hours in the water, or driving off to another adventure, we are hitting the car breaks to find all sorts of little roadside markets and trucks with odd fruit spilling out the back.

The oranges here are not really orange. They are ugly and heavy….and juicy and the sweetest that you’ve ever had. The avocados are insanely huge. The papayas and starfruit actually have flavor  unlike what you find at the grocery store.

And then there are these things called Rambutans. Unbelievable. Apparently they are widely cultivated in the tropics. And I guess it makes sense that I’ve never heard of them since I’ve never been to the tropics. But oh my. They are golf ball sized and red, with soft, thin spikes. And they smell like lilies. Then you open them up and inside is a lychee like fruit – like a peeled grape. But it tastes like a sweet flower. If you ever run across one, do try it. We are captivated by them.

Then there are Longans or Dragon’s Eyes. Kind of like rambutans, because you peel them and are left with a lychee/eyeball kind of fruit. But these are small and brown and the flavor is much more intense.

So as you can see, between these wonderful finds and all the fresh fish we’ve been having, the eating has been good. In fact everything has been good. And I’m quite sure that I might actually shed a tear or two upon getting back into that plane. But in the meantime, we’ve got more beach walking to do. I hope you had a Happy New Years friends.

Starting the New Year off Right

This year, we have decided to start the New Year off the right way. This year, we are heading out on New Years Eve to the last place in the states to ring in the new year, Kauai. I’ve never been anywhere tropical before. I’ve always thought that hooded sweatshirts and wool socks were typical beach wear. So the thought of sipping Mai Tai’s on warm sandy beaches and swimming in warm ocean water is delightful.

In the meantime, we will return to see these cut nectarine branches in bloom (hopefully), our annual cover crop sprouted (which we just now finally planted!), and the excitement to start a new year. This year will be a good year, I can feel it. I have a lot of fun ideas for this blog space for when I return. Have a very Happy New Year. I’ll drink a mai tai for you all!