Cultivated native California grapes. Seedy & thick skinned but good to eat. Since the birds aren’t.
Orange Grove Update
This year, our Mandarin orange will provide plenty to eat in January. We’re lucky it’s not alternate bearing (this year, anyway). Meanwhile, this is the first year our Meyer lemon has produced more than a couple fruit. Super exciting! It did lose a lot of leaves earlier this summer, though. I attribute that to overwatering. Oops. Finally, our Valencia is also producing more than a couple fruit:
The lemon grass coming in strong. It came back from last year’s planting and a cutting we took.

Anaheim pepper with a surprise mantis for scale. Then a jalapeño. Just popped out of nowhere while I inspected the peppers this morning. It’s protecting our garden!
Garden Update
Experimental pepper garden update: Cayenne, jalapeño, Anaheim, Hungarian wax. We will ripen all peppers to red for making hot sauce and tastier eating. Direct seeded March 29.
Our cultivated native California grapes are ripening! The birds will hopefully soon find them. Or we’ll enjoy them despite their massive seeds.
Our peppers are doing okay despite the very late seeding. Just a bit of brown rot initially but some Jobes organic fertilizer seems to have stopped that.
The last two days of 110°F heat has also resulted in our cultivated native California grapes turning to raisins on the vine.
110°F yesterday and today. The avocados we planted 2-3 years ago transpire water more than they can replenish from the ground and so their leaves desiccate and die. Especially the young leaves on the Bacon (1) variety and random adult leaves on the Mexicola (2) variety. ☹️
Scrub Jay patiently waiting for the grapes to ripen.