got three more fruit trees from alden lane nursery. one is a persimmon. the other two are heavily grafted to bear different fruits: a 4-in-1 pluot with promising names such as “flavor grenade”, “geo pride”, “splash”, and “emerald drop” and a 5-in-1 fruit salad with “babcock peach”, “blenheim apricot”, “fantasia nectarine”, “santa rosa plum”, and “july elberta peach”.
Archive for fruits and vegetables
propagating my fig tree
In July and again in October I have had two plentiful fig harvests. Now the leaves are gone and I prune the many shoots growing near the base of the tree. Those cuttings can apparently be used to start small fig trees. After reading up on fig tree propagation I try various ways suggested on the Interwebs.
from chicks to chickens
The girls go through their teens quickly: the 25 lb bag of chick feed slowly disappears while the real “chicken-look” slowly appears. They are a lot less scared: they don’t mind hanging out with the bunny and they enjoy their first hours in the garden. Today I planted an Italian plum tree and three different blackberry bushes (all of them thorn-less varieties) that I got at alden lane nursery.
planting before take-off
My friendly neighbor Dave applies weather-proofing to the raised bed frames while I plow through the soil with bare hands trying to remove as many stones as possible. I want to get the beds ready for the winter rains before taking off to the Caribbean. After covering the beds with straw I plant a few kale, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts seedlings and put in fava beans everywhere else. I also put two olive trees in the strip of land along the curb.
sustainable decoration
Alden Lane nursery is giving away hundreds of sweet pie pumpkins. I load up the Vibe with tens of pumpkins and use them to decorate my house seasonally (hours before dad and Martina arrive). Eventually the decorations will all be eaten and any remains composted. We are talking pumkpin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, pumpkin curry, roasted pumpkin seeds, …
an old fig tree
the most prized feature of the house is the mature fig tree in the backyard. it produces figs like crazy. i easily harvested 10 pounds of figs today. to keep up with the harvest i bought a bunch of canning jars and the first batch of fig jam is bubbling in a big pot on the stove. yum. there are also a young lemon and a semi-mature orange tree. they look and smell nice but their production qualities are yet to be determined. the 3 trees form a good base for starting an urban farm.
creating an urban farm in downtown livermore 