Lemon grass is overwintering nicely. This time we dug up the plant to include roots. Last year we rooted a few stalks in water; here’s its progeny 👌 There’s another bunch of lemon grass outdoors. If it survives, that’ll be the second year overwintering outside in native soil. 🌱
We have a lot of citrus in the backyard: mandarins, Meyer lemons, and Valencias. This means it is time for Alton Brown’s Acid Jellies! We don’t coat them with sugar at the end of the cook as we’ve found the sugar is too hydrophilic in humid winters & the jellies get… damp. 🌱
Dutch baby for breakfast. It is really great with Meyer lemons (from the backyard tree; which is great as we can’t get Meyers in town).
Pruned the apricot today. I only kind of know what I’m doing. It looks about right to me. Every year I open it up a bit more and reduce its height. I let it get too big. Before and after.
House Sparrows frenetically bathing under the mandarin this morning.
Mandarins and Meyer Lemons are ripening nicely. Maybe one more month until the Mandarins are sweet enough.
This last orchard growing season, Iwatered using daily fixed schedules that took into account average daily evapotranspiration and estimated daily plant water use. I set up schedules for each month in the summer, since evapotranspiration and water usage changes significantly month to month. Previous years I had used a dynamic schedule determined by Rachio’s Flex Daily algorithm and Advanced Zone settings. The Flex algorithm greatly favors deep waterings and the interval is guided by daily estimated evapotranspiration.
I planted a replacement Lapins Cherry today. Bought it from Stark Bro’s and it has a great unblemished, no prune cut trunk. That is never the case if I buy locally, even from a family operated nursery. As planted, it’s a 42” tall stick. It’ll develop branches next spring. I finally got to use our homemade compost that’s been over a year in the making!
The rainy season in California is right around the corner, so I just cleaned the rain gage & other weather station components of summer’s dust and ash. Meanwhile, the mandarins are slowly ripening.
Tore out the bark beetle infested Lapins Cherry today. It was half dead by beetles girdling it. In November we’ll put in a new Lapins Cherry from Stark Bros.. The old tree was from a big box store and while it provided prodigious fruit it was oddly pruned and I couldn’t fix it.
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