Tuesday, February 16, 2021

January sky


 Since it never (or rarely) rains in California, we mostly have to trudge along with blue skies.  Sometimes, though, we get treated to a beautiful sunset.    

Sunday, February 14, 2021

The Last Mandarin Orange

Today I picked the season's last piece of fruit from our Satsuma Mandarin Orange tree.  The tree starts bearing in late November and has given us a steady supply of sweet and juicy mandarins all the way through to today.  The great thing about these is that they are easy to peel.  The even greater thing is that they are home grown, we can walk out and pick one anytime from about November - February and they taste far better than anything you can buy at the store.   

The Satsuma Mandarin has been called the "perfect" fruit tree.  For citrus, the trees are hearty and are said to tolerate below freezing temperatures.  They are self pollinating.  And, best of all, the fruit is delicious, super easy to peel and has no seeds.  In our garden, they are also the first of the citrus to bear, which means come Fall the Satsuma Mandarin gives us the welcome first taste of sweet and juicy citrus for the season. The only downside is that the tree tends to be alternate bearing with a heavy crop one year and light one the next.  We had a heavy crop this year, so I'm thinking next year is going to be light.   

Below you can see the loose orange peel that just breaks away clean from the fruit.  


 

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Garden Update

Our cara cara tree was prolific this year -- about 80 oranges.  We picked a lot of the bounty today, but have been eating them for some time. These oranges are, I think, better than the regular Washington navels.  They are just as sweet but with a light tanginess.  Less than a tangarine, but more than regular navel.    Plus the color of the flesh is this deep orangy/red.  

The cara cara has an interesting history.   They are thought to be a cross between a Washington navel and a Bahia navel orange that grows in Brazil.  The orange was discovered in 1976 naturally growing at Hacienda Cara Cara in Venezuela.  So, the cara cara was an unplanned naturally growing hybrid.  It has been grown in the US since the 1980's but is still a speciality item in stores and restaurants.


Here is the Kona Sharwill avocado I picked a couple weeks back.  It seemed ripe enough, so we cut into it today and had it for lunch. This was my first avocado from our 3-4 year old tree.  The seed is a little smaller than other varieties and I thought the taste was excellent, just a bit different from our Fuerte avocados.  Also, this was much easier to peel since the peel on the Sharwill is thicker than the Fuertes.  We have been eating the Fuertes since late December and it is fun to have a slightly different avocado to try. There are a few more fruit on the Sharwill and I am going to leave them for couple more weeks before picking to see if the taste changes at all.   


I am watching the stone fruit trees for flowers and our Eva's Pride Peach is first up.  This tree really produced last year and we had jam, ice cream and froze some peaches.  Hopefully around late June we will have some peaches off this tree.