Dallas Fruit and Vegetable Grower

Plums in 2012

It has been an incredibly busy few months which is why I have not been posting very much.  Nevertheless, a lot is going on in our suburban garden and orchard.

We had a huge crop of plums in 2012.

Our biggest producer was the Morris plum, but we also received fruit from our Allred, Santa Rosa, and Bruce plum trees.

The Allred was the first to ripen and produced ripe red fruit  (which  are pictured above)  from approximately May 1st through May 15th.  Our Allred is still a fairly small, young tree.  It produced exceptionally small fruit this year.  The fruit went relatively untouched by the birds because the red leaves of the tree hid the ripening fruit from sight.

The Morris, Santa Rosa, and Bruce ripened approximately two or three weeks after the Allred and essentially ripened at the same time -- from approximately May 20th through June 10th.  The fact that they are ripening at the same time is a bit disappointing to me in that I had hoped to stagger out ripening times to avoid an onslaught of an individual fruit and extend the fresh eating time for each fruit.

The Morris and Allred were planted in 2009 while the Santa Rosa and Bruce were planted in 2010.   The difference in one year has been dramatic, and is even more pronounced because the Morris and Allred were larger trees at planting time.

Prior to this year, I think I may have had a handful of plums on both the Allred and Morris.  When I say a handful, I mean 10 to 20 all of which were devoured by birds, squirrels, possums, etc.

Earlier this year, I posted photos of the Morris in bloom, and it was loaded with blooms:

 

 

 

 

As the Spring progressed into Summer, the Morris became burdened with ripening fruit.  The tree branches which wanted to shoot straight toward the sky like a water-spout became bent and lowered as they were burdened by the weight of the ripening fruit.

 

We harvested a huge amount of fruit over four weekends.  I didn't keep count, but there might have been anywhere from 200 to 400 fruit that we actually harvested.  There was significantly more that was composted or discarded because the squirrels and birds had gotten to them first.

We ate the majority of the fruit fresh and gave away plenty more to good friends.  The rest was made into plum preserves.  Some we just did not get to eat or preserve in time because it was such a large deluge of fruit in a short period of time.

Next year, if I can get prepared, I wouldn't mind trying to make some plum liquour or plum wine.

Additionally, I plan on taking additional steps next year to increase the size of the fruit.  Because we had never gotten a crop of any size in the past, I did not bother to thin the blooms this Spring.  Consequently, we had too many blossoms that turned into fruit which taxed the tree and resulted in smaller fruit.  Next Spring, I will think the blossoms more diligently.

I think I will also prune the tree a little more aggressively this winter.  I will have to read up on pruning plum trees, but I think that pruning more of the smaller branches may help reduce the number of fruit and increase fruit size.  I also want to prune the canopy to keep it lower than 12 feet.  The Morris is now close to 15 or 17 feet.  It was a challenge harvesting all of the fruit with only a 10 foot ladder.

I thought the Morris, Santa Rosa, and Bruce were comparable in taste.  Possibly, the Santa Rosa and Bruce were incrementally superior in taste.  These three varieties were clearly superior in taste to the Allred, in my humble opinion, but I could have been prejudiced by the significantly smaller size of the Allred. 

In going back to an earlier post, here is what I had written about these varieties based upon what others had written on them:

Morris:    A reddish-black skinned, medium-large sized plum with red flesh.  It ripens early, and its flesh is firm, somewhat dry, and crisp with good flavor.  It is a large tree that requires 800 chilling hours and a pollinator. 

Santa Rosa:    Reddish purple skinned, very large plum with reddish/pink flesh.  It ripens mid-season, and its flesh is fine-textured and aromatic and has a very good flavor.  It is partly self-fertile and only requires about 300 chilling hours.  It is a large tree that was introduced by Luther Burbank.

Bruce:    A red skinned, large sized plum with yellow flesh.  It ripens very early, and has good taste.  A medium sized tree that requires a pollinator.  Introduced in Texas, and it is believed to be a cross between Abundance and Excelsior.

Allred:    A red skinned, small plum with red flesh.  It ripens early, and its flesh is sweet-tart that is better for processing.  Its leaves are red making it an unusual and nice ornamental selection.  A medium sized tree that was introduced by Wolf Nursery in Stephenville, Texas.

We are also growing a Toka plum, a Shiro plum, a Cambridge Gage, and a Reine Claude Doree; however, these trees are still very immature.

Here is what has been written about those varieties:

Cambridge Gage:    A green skinned, medium sized plum with greenish yellow flesh.  It ripens in late mid-season with dense, firm flesh and that rich gage flavor.  It is a medium/compact sized tree and partly self-fertile.

Reine Claude (Green Gage):    A green to golden yellow skinned medium-large plum with greenish-yellow flesh.  It ripens mid-season with a richness of texture and flavor and an abundance of juice and aroma.  Considered unsurpassed.  A small to medium sized tree that can be delicate and vulnerable to sunscald.

Shiro:    Bright yellow skinned, medium sized plum with light yellow flesh.  It ripens very early and has a pleasant taste.  Juicy, somewhat melting, sweet and mild flesh.  Medium to large sized tree that can be susceptible to brown rot.  Pollinate with a japanese type plum.  Developed by Luther Burbank.

Toka:    Blue-black skinned, large sized plum with amber flesh.  It ripens late with a mild and medium sweet flavor.  It is a medium to large sized tree that is slightly susceptible to brown rot.

 

Ripe Mulberries in Texas

 

Our mulberry trees have been fruiting for the last 8 weeks.   They are just now finishing up.  

The amount of fruit that comes off these trees is staggering.  The photograph above shows all of the fruit in varying stages of ripeness.  The fruit are difficult to see.

The photograph below is a close-up of the tree branch in the left quarter of the photograph above. You can see the fruit more clearly in it.  At an early stage, the fruit is white.  Then the fruit turns red and is sour.  When fully ripe, the fruit turns a deep blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experts often advise to never plant a mulberry tree near a patio, pool or sidewalk because they are messy.  Those experts are correct.  The trees drop a ton of ripe fruit.  One of our two trees is over the vegetable garden which has decomposed granite paths.  You can see the large number of fruit that had dropped on the pathways in the photograph below.

When the fruit are dropping, we have to check our shoes before walking inside the house because the juice can stain if you walk on the rugs with these on the bottom of your shoes. 

 

 

I am amazed that any of the fruit actually makes it to the ground.  The reason for my amazement is because of the huge flocks of birds that sit all day long in the mulberries gorging themselves on the fruit.  In particular, we have a large flock of cedar waxwings that migrate to our yard each January - February to feast upon the privet berries in late Winter and then move on to the mulberries.  Thes mulberry trees provide nourishment over an extended period of approximately two months or more.

You can see some of the cedar waxwings in the photograph below, if you look closely.

 

 

 

Here is another close-up of that same photograph.

 

 

 

The photograph below shows one of the full sized trees in early, early Spring before the tree has leafed out.   As the season progresses, the trees become very lush. 

 

 

 

These trees were on the property when we moved in.   I suspect that they are morus rubra.  I have been somewhat critical of the taste of the fruit when fully ripened, describing it as being "insipid."  I think, though, that I have been too quick to judgment.  The criticism of the fruit is that it is very, very sweet but loses  its acidity and excitement when ripe.  However, this year, I thought the fruit tasted particularly excellent when eaten straight off the tree.   I think, personally, I prefer the fruit before it is fully ripened, when it still has just a slight  touch of red and, therefore, a bit of acidity.  When I eat it this way, it has a great deal more robustness, and I like it quite a lot.  Furthermore, I think mulberries are just much better eaten straight off the tree as you walk through the garden. Collected in bulk and refrigerated for later eating, it just seems to lose some of the flavor for fresh eating.

Black mulberries - morus nigra - have a much better reputation in terms of taste.  Consequently, I planted four Black Beauty morus nigra mulberries from Burnt Ridge Nursery last year.  They are planted on stocky, low grafted rootstock and should grow in bush form for easier picking.   They are still immature and did not fruit this Spring.  I am looking forward to fruit from them next year.

Blackberries in Full Bloom in Dallas

Our blackberry bushes have been in full bloom for the last three weeks, with some of the earlier blooming varieties already forming small berries and the later varieties blooming in strength.  As previously posted, we have Navaho, Arapaho, and Ouachita.  All are thornless and were developed at the University of Arkansas.

The plants on the south side that get a fair amount of shade have done much better than the plants on the north side of the property that get significantly more sun.

Here is a photo of one of the bushes on the south side.  You can see that it is loaded with blooms.

Here is another photograph of the bed of blackberries on the south side of our front yard.  There are two rows of blackberry bushes interplanted with pear trees.  At both ends of the bed, we have a couple of elderberry bushes.  This photograph was taken shortly after a morning rain, so the plants are heavy with dew.   Blackberry bushes in the landscape have a very arching characteristic.   They have somewhat of a wilder look to them, so you would want to plant them in a side bed as opposed to a planting bed in front of the house.

 

 

Here is another photograph of the same bed taken in 2010, two years ago, from the opposite direction.  The bed has really filled out during that period of time.

 

 

Figs

 

Several of our figs are making some big, good looking breba fruit.  I am expecting a big crop of fruit from our five fig trees this year.

We have three trees that were planted in 2010 as 5 gallon trees from Bob Wells Nursery and now have reached a good size.   This will be the first year of production for them.  They are LSU Purple, Black Mission, and Texas Everbearing.  The photograph above is of an unripe fruit from our Texas Everbearing fig tree.

We have two other fig trees that were planted in 2009 and are really large by now.  When I ordered them, I thought they were Brown Turkey and Celestial varieties.  However, a few other trees that I bought from this nursery were not what the nursery represented them to be, and based on the fruit characteristics, I think these two fig trees were also mislabeled.  The fruit from these two trees has always had a light, yellowish-green skin with a whitish-light pink interior, which is inconsistent with what a Brown Turkey or Celestial fig should look like.   I am not certain what type of fig trees these, in fact, are; however, I suspect that they might be Conadrias or  Lattarula/Italian Honey  or Peter's Honey figs.

Here is an old photograph of a ripe fig from one of these trees.

 

 

Fragrant Spring Flowers and Bushes in Texas

 

When we planned the garden for our Dallas suburban yard several years ago, we wanted to incorporate as many fragrant plants and shrubs as possible.

Many of these are not common to Texas but are still suitable for zone 8.

One of those plants is the Beautybush (not to be confused with the Beautyberry).  It is an old-time favorite that you don't really read a lot about nowadays or find in nurseries.

Now in their fourth year in the ground, our two Beautybushes are blooming for the first time.  They were originally planted as very small one gallon plants.  Today, they are still fairly sparse but reach four to five feet in height with arching branch patterns.  

The photograph above is of a branch filled with Beautybush blooms.  The blossoms are lightly fragrant and can be detected from a short distance away.  As the shrubs get larger over time, they should project much greater fragrance in our yard.

Elsewhere in the garden, our fragrant flowering tobacco (Nicotiana) have the greatest horsepower for filling the yard with a lovely smell in the evenings.  We have approximately twelve of these plants in the back yard, and I would like to plant many more.  When the breeze catches their fragrance in the evening, they fill the entire backyard with their smell.

 

While still fairly immature, our mock oranges are also about to bloom and will be counted on to fill the yard with their citrus-blossom smells.

In the front yard, several Firewitch Dianthus are big-time producers in the morning and late afternoon, and I would love to fill every plant border with them.  They are hardy and drought tolerant and among my favorites.

As the year continues, we will also be counting on the following plants and vines for fragrance in our yard and garden:  magnolia stellata, dwarf fothergilla, confederate jasmine vines, passionflower vines, summersweet bushes, hosta plantaginea, elderberry bushes, butterfly bushes, purple coneflowers, lavender plants, and sweet autumn clematis, among others.

I also have loose plans to start heliotrope, mignonette, and additional flowering tobacco from seed. I would love to fill the backyard borders with them.  With any luck, although the heliotrope and mignonette are not winter hardy, they may reseed.

Red Admiral Invasion - More Butterflies in 2012

One thing is certain for 2012, I have significantly more butterflies this year than in year's past.  Perhaps it is because the caterpillar and chrysalis population fared better with the milder winter .  Perhaps it is because the weeds, herbs and plants, which their caterpillars depend upon, thrived with  the milder winter and have provided a greater food supply.  Or perhaps, we have a smaller wasp population this early in the year permitting more caterpillars to metamorphose into butterflies.  Whatever the reason, we have a ton of butterflies of all different varieties in our garden this year.  (In the last few years, our local butterfly expert, Dale Clark, has written several articles about how past droughts and wasp infestations have impacted the caterpillar populations:  article 1 and article 2.)

The other day, I went out into the backyard where our Little Henry Sweetspire bushes are in full bloom, and I was surprised to see a multitude of beautiful Red Admiral butterflies.

When I say a multitude, I am talking 15 to 25 of these guys flying around in a pretty limited area.

They have remained in this area of the backyard for about a week now.

I don't recall seeing Red Admirals in the past.  Perhaps I have seen them before and just confused them for Commas or Questionmarks.  They are much smaller than I expected.  With a name like "Red Admiral", I expected a large butterfly about the size of a Black Swallowtail or Giant Swallowtail; however, these are relatively small in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 inches -- about the size of a Comma or Questionmark.

The photograph below shows a portion of the area in our backyard where they are feeding.  In this part of the yard, we have Little Henry Sweetspire, Encore Azaleas, and Japanese Maples.  You can see one of the japanese maples that recently died on us during the torrid heat of last summer.

 

 

 

The Sweetspire have pretty, white racemes of flowers that have a mild, sweet smell.  In the evening, you can just barely get a trace of their scent as you pass by.  Up close, the flowers have a noticeable and pleasant smell.

 

 

Here is a photograph of a Red  Admiral feeding on a sweetspire flower.

 

The following video does not do justice to the number of butterflies that we have flying around.  Indeed, you can only see 5 to 6 of them flying around in the video, but you can see them feeding.

 

 

 You can adjust the resolution of this video up to 1080p

 

*** Added on 4/18/2012

If you look around the internet, it appears that Red Admirals are appearing en masse all around North America this Spring.  Interesting.  Check out these sites:

Red Admiral Site 1

Red Admiral Site 2

Red Admiral Site 3

Red Admiral Site 4

 

 

Vegetable Garden Photos - Late March

 

Here are a few photographs of our vegetable garden in early spring.  In the foreground above is our Swiss Chard.  In the second and fourth large beds to the left, we are growing tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers that are still very immature.  In the third large bed to the left, we have sweet yellow and red onions growing.   On the right side of this shot are our herb beds.

 

 

In this photograph, you can see our cilantro that wants to go to seed because of our unseasonably warm spring weather, along with immature fennel, dill and parsley.  You can also see one of our artichoke plants on the right, and our asparagus plants that look mature even this early in the year.  We have cucumbers and squash growing in the middle bed with the support towers.

 

 

 

This photograph shows our sweet yellow and red onions that were planted from starts.  They look to be doing well.

 

Our spring vegetable garden also has some color from the earlier blooming perennials that surround the garden.

 

 

Here is a vew looking west.  The vegetable garden is bordered by pear, peach, pluot, cherry, fig, jostaberry, gooseberry, wolf berry, honeyberry, pineapple guava, huckleberry, and kiwi bushes and trees.

Fauna in the Garden

I have not seen any black swallowtail butterflies flying in our garden this year, but it is evident that they have been visiting.  I noticed today that our fennel plants are getting chomped on by three enormous swallowtail caterpillars.  It the wasps don't get them first, these caterpillars should go into their cocoons in another week or two.

Our two passion vines are really doing much better this year and are starting to get more mature.  In fact, we are getting some nice blooms.

 

I was thinking to myself this morning that the passion vines are doing so well that we should expect some gulf fritillary caterpillars and butterflies in the near future.  Within forty-five minutes of having that thought, this little gulf fritillary butterfly started flying all around the vegetable garden and visiting our culinary sage that is blooming like crazy.

 

 

Our asparagus plants are full sized already and are filled with tiny, dainty greenish-yellow flowers that are really attracting the bees.  The flowers are so small that I would not think that a bee could get much pollen out of them; however, they are plentiful.

The bees working on these flowers this morning appeared unusual to me.  In particular, they all had these bulbous orange sack-looking things on their back legs.  The orange bulbs were different for each individual bee.  Some were larger than others.  Here are a few photographs of different bees in which you can see these sacks.  As you can see, the sack is much more pronounced in the second photograph.  It almost looks like a tiny little orange balloon attached to the leg.

 

 

In doing some looking on the internet, it appears that these bees are just normal bumble bees, genus Bombus, and the orange bulbous looking bags on their hind legs are "loads of pollen and nectar that they pack into their 'pollen baskets.'"  

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Entomology-Study-Bugs-665/2008/6/Multi-coloured-bees.htm

This pollen basket is also called a corbicula.   It is a "polished concavity" surrounded by hairs, into which the pollen is placed.  The pollen is "combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the corbicula . . . ."  A single hair secures the pollen load.  Wikipedia (citing Cedric Gillott, Entomology, Springer, 1995; 798 pages; pg. 79; Dorothy Hodges, The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee, published by Bee Research Association Limited, 1952).

I have been watching bees and insects pretty closely in the garden for at least the last fifteen years or so, and I have never noticed this before.  I am very surprised that I hadn't.  I wonder if it is the particularly light colored pollen that they are collecting from the asparagus that made the pollen basket appear so striking this morning.  Or maybe some of these bees were being overly industrious in filling up their pollen baskets to the point of looking like they were going to explode, that made them more noticeable today as opposed to other days.  I am definitely going to keep my eye out in the future to see if I notice these little pollen baskets on other bees in the garden from here on out.

Apple blossoms

Our apple trees are finally starting to bloom.  Our peaches, plums, apricots, and hybrids have already finished blooming.

Our Anna apple is in full bloom and really has a lot of blooms in comparison to years past and given that it is only three years old.  Our Granny Smith is also starting to bloom, but it does not have anywhere near the number of blooms as the Anna.  Our Newtown Pippin similarly starting to bloom, but I will not allow these blooms to fruit given that the tree is only one year old.  I want the Newtown Pippin to direct its energy to building its root system and branch structure - not fruit.

The remainder of our apple trees have not yet started blooming.

The photograph below is the Anna.  I had a hard time exposing this photograph so you could clearly see the blooms.  Given the background in this photograph, they are difficult to see.

 

Spring Vegetable Garden

Our late winter / early spring vegetable garden has been a little hit or miss.  However, our asparagus is definitely a hit.  This is the third year since I planted our asparagus crowns and they are going bonkers.  This is on target with what the "experts" say; expect your first truly big crop in the third spring.

I left the asparagus unattended for a couple of days, and some of the spears were already too mature to harvest.  These spears are really stout . . . about as wide as a big toe!  And so sweet.  They have so much sugar content that I like to eat them raw.  Our 8 year old daughter even likes them, and she is pretty discerning.  I definitely include asparagus in the category of foods that definitely rewards growing food at home.

The other vegetables that have done well are our perennial artichoke plants.  Over the winter, I moved seven artichoke plants from a flower bed with fairly anemic soil into two of our raised beds.  It is unbelievable how big these plants have gotten in a few short months.  One reason is because we did not have a killing freeze this winter, so the plants did not go dormant.  Additionally, I think the plants have enjoyed the raised bed soil which is heavily enriched with compost and composted manure.

The only problem is that these plants have gotten so large that they preclude me from growing anything else in two of my nine large raised beds.  Consequently, this past weekend, I moved them back into another flower bed.  I cut the leaves way back, but the plants still suffered some shock from the transplanting.  The torrential rain that we received the other night, however, brought them right back, and they look very healthy.

 

 We have some cauliflower, brussel sprouts, lettuce, spinach, and kale growing from seed; however, a lot of the seed did not germinate for me.  I was a very lazy gardener this winter and did not use the greenhouse tunnels.  Nevertheless, given how mild our winter was, I don't really think it impacted the garden that significantly.

Our sweet and red onions that I planted from onion starts are doing great.  They should be ready in another month or so.

It is a different story with the garlic.  I planted my garlic cloves saved from last year's harvest, two months late!  They do not look good.   I am still holding out hope that more will sprout shoots from the ground, but it may be a lost cause.

This is a photograph of our blooming rosemary with a blooming plum tree barely visible in the background.  The rosemary is blooming a lot more than in past years.  In fact, I don't recall it blooming before.  The sage is also blooming, and our cool weather herbs like dill, fennel, cilantro, and parsley are all growing like gangbusters.

 

Our lone, surviving alpine strawberry is already producing its tiny, sweet berries.  I lost the remainder to last years remarkable heat and drought.  I transplanted this plant into the asparagus bed, and I am going to plant about 10 more plants with it.  On the other side of the asparagus bed, I transplanted about 15 musk strawberry plants to make them easier to harvest.

This past weekend, given the warm temperatures that appear to be here to stay, I started interplanting hot temperature vegetables.   I planted my favorite, charentais melon, from seed among the onions.   I am interplanting cucumbers into the garlic.  And I planted about 12 tomato plants and pepper plants (I am shamed to admit that I bought tomato starts from the nursery, but we were too busy to start the plants from seed this january).

I will try to get the rest of my seeds planted in the next few weeks: eggplants, squash, corn, pumpkin, etc.