Photos
We brought ribeyes and a cast-iron with us (and the rest of what’s on the plate. Yeah that’s canned baked beans, so what?)👌
Hot chocolate on the North Coast of California.
Moonlight over the Pacific. Above the moon, Jupiter and then Saturn.
Sundown at Trinidad, California. We’re hunkered down here for a few nights, completely self-sufficient and not likely to go anywhere. Not a bad choice with this view. I have a feeling this is the last time we’ll risk going somewhere until vaccinations.
Good morning. This morning’s sun rise almost makes up for my neighbor being obsessive with their sheet metal shelters and sheds.
The Results of the 2020 Home Orchard Fixed Daily Watering Experiment
This last orchard growing season, I watered 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. The trees often suffered on extreme California summer days under the Flex Daily algorithm — it watered too deeply and too infrequently so trees couldn’t get daily access to water with very high summer evapotranspiration rates. Flex does not account for extremely hot days where available water depletes, leaving trees struggling without water until the next day or longer. Fortunately, the Rachio irrigation controller makes it dead easy to create any number of watering schedules. The results of using fixed schedules tuned for each summer month this last growing season were pretty good. While the mandarins are undersized after the previous year’s bumper crop of well sized fruit, our Valencias and Meyer Lemons did great. The pineapple guavas also responded very well to daily watering with a surprising amount of growth. The avocados, while very finicky, did fine too. But it turns out no matter how much water they get, when temperatures go over 100 F their leaves scorch (so we had to rig up shade cloth over the young trees using ladders). Besides the avocados, the trees didn’t suffer greatly from heat stress with daily watering. I do wonder if the fixed daily waterings didn’t penetrate the soil deep enough, resulting in undersized mandarins, so next year I will try watering every other day and doubling the watering times. This should encourage deeper root development and perhaps provide more water to trees from throughout the soil column.
Scorched young avocado leaves despite daily watering:
Toad in our bird bath tonight. That’s a first. We usually empty the baths to keep mosquitoes at bay and keep cats from being too keen on the backyard at night. Not tonight!
Planted a New Cherry Tree Today
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!
Pumpkin pie! And rump roast. Sunday is the best.
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.
Today’s celebratory homemade sourdough loaf and Prosecco
I’m looking forward to winter. Summer was far too long.
For today and a while after the election, Twitter & Instagram apps are removed from my devices. So far I’m avoiding their web counterparts. Instead, let’s enjoy some tiny coyote bush flowers!
Dark-Eyed Junco (Oregon) in the backyard! Had to photograph it through binoculars.
Northern Mockingbird in our backyard. They’re not nearly as brave as the scrub jays but they’re using our backyard more and more.
Got two volunteer conifer seedlings in the backyard — their needles are roundish and pointy, not in clusters. Thinking maybe spruce? 🧐 We’re encouraging them.
TBH, Fall is grilling season here.
A happy scrub jay feasting on some big bird seeds.
Gorgeous loaf of homemade sourdough.
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.
