Recently in Fruits Category

• 4oz Chard @ $3.99 lb = 99c
• 5oz Orange (Valencia) @ 59c lb = $2.95
• 4lb 6oz Peas @ $4 lb = $17.50
• 1oz Spring Onion @ 99c lb = 6c
• 1oz Tomato @ $2.99 lb = 18c
• 2lb 2oz Turnip @ 79c lb = $1.68

I posted last month about our citrus trees being in bloom slightly earlier than usual due to the weird weather. Well now a month has passed since the orange trees bloomed, the bees have moved onto the lemon and satsuma trees and the orange tree is left with hundreds of these:

Some of the teeny tiny oranges will grow into beauties but most will drop off from natural selection. These valencia oranges are really quite nice too, far superior to the store bought oranges you get! I am harvesting oranges, enough for one a day right now. Hopefully the grapefruit and navel oranges ripen soon!

• 3 1/2oz Carrot
• 1lb 14oz Cauliflower
  
• 6 1/2oz Chard
• 3 1/2oz  Collard Greens
• 8 1/2 oz grapefruit
  
• 8oz Orange (Navel)
• 7lb 4oz Orange (Valencia)
• 1lb 14oz Peas
• 2 1/2oz Satsuma
• 1oz Spinach
  
• 1oz Spring Onion

I post last week my first Peachy Keen photo. This tree was a freebie from Freecycle, one of 4 trees we picked up and one of two survivors.Well I have an important update! I mentioned last week that the tree was flowering, not many just a few blossoms that were beautiful, and I have to post the pic again cos it's soooo pretty!

Well I went out Friday to water the plants, potter around in the garden, make sure the trellis was still standing, you know the usual stuff. Anyway I found this:

Is it? Is THAT the start of a fruit? With my limited knowledge of fruit tree gardening (non citrus) that sure looks like it's a pollenated flower that has formed a fruit!!! I have NO IDEA how old the tree is, like I said it was a freebie, but it's around 2-3' high so I'd estimate around 4-5 years old. It's in a 10 gallon pot, and watered 1-2 times a week. Sheesh now I need to do more research I have no idea how to look after a Peach tree, I figured I'd have another year at least before I needed to know. Guess I do have green fingers :)

I've mentioned that 2008 was our first year growing edibles here (aside from the resident citrus trees), and we had little money. One of the things I did was to join up on freecycle and was lucky enough to score some small fruit trees. I picked up a Loquat, apricot, peach and guava. Unfortunately the guava and apricot died but the Loquat and Peach go from strength to strength. I was surprised though to go out into the garden and find this:

That YardCraft readers is a Peach flower! Yep I have flowers on my Peach tree! Now I have NO IDEA how old the tree is, but height wise it's about 2' high so I'd estimate around 4 years? No clue! Anyway, the tree is flowering and putting out new leaves :) Lovely! Even if it doesn't fruit I'm happy that the tree is happy :)

I don't always take pics of the things I harvest from the garden, but I am trying this year to document more about the harvesting. I do weight the produce and plan to keep tallying that up each month, and am already half way to my goal for the year so I need to revise that goal I think! lol! Anyway here are some harvest pics from February starting with Collard Greens, oranges and Broccoli:

Next up are a couple of radish and some beet greens. It was the first time trying beet greens and they are YUMMY! Plus a 2 for 1 veggie in edible root and leaves so well worth it!

Next up is my mutant plant: Mustard Greens. This grew VERY well here! As did the collard greens. Both overtook there alloted area and thank heavens I finally got around to trying them. I like them both, but prefer the collards and beet greens I think.

February was a month of firsts for trying the veg, and I tried swiss chard. Pretty much like a lettuce only more substance to it. Definitely worth growing and I need to look into seeing how heat tolerant it is. I believe it does ok and should be good for salads in summer when we can't grow lettuce (though I am gonna attempt an experiment naturally, lol).

Notice the tomato! Yep I am harvesting tomatoes still! Not many, probably 1 or 2 a month from the remaining plant I had left. That was an experiment (and laziness on my part as I couldn't be bothered to remove the plant from the container). Plus the amazing thing is the plant flowered in Feb too!!! This was a surprising fact and definitely means I'll be overwintering a couple of tomato plants this year too! I will say they didn't taste as nice as summer toms but still better than store bought!

That about wraps up the harvest pics I think, I'll try to take more this month!

I mentioned that the weird hot/cold/wet weather had bought the citrus trees out in bloom early and I thought I'd share a few pics I snapped last week whilst working on the raised bed walkways. As you can see all the blossom is open and boy do we know it! The garden smells DEVINE right now!

The humming birds are visiting it  A LOT as they do every bloom but the amount of bees this year is astounding! Maybe I just didn't notice so much last year or maybe we really do have lots of bees this year. The buzzing on this particular morning was immense!

As you can tell one of my other passions is photography and gardening indulges that passion well! If only the hummingbirds would be so gracious as to stay in the same spot for more than 5 seconds!

Nice shots but finishing off with my favorite! Kinda glad we have all these bees busily buzzing around pollinating the flowers, cos that means MORE ORANGES! I am harvesting enough for approx 1 a day which isn't bad considering the rather crude pruning they got last year!

Naturally more photography to come as and when the critters and weather allow :) We get some interesting 'guests' to the YardCraft garden so should be good for some nature pics! When I was out snapping these some ducks flew past, annoying the life out of the dogs :) Makes a change from last year when they decided that the pool was their pond! Other than ducks we see a host of insects, reptiles, rodents, birds and of course our dogs, the 2 spotty monsters!!! Some days its a positive nature trail out there!

• 5oz Beet Greens
• 2oz Broccoli
  
• 2oz Chard
• 16oz  Collard Greens
• 14oz Mustard Greens
• 27oz Orange (Navel)
• 129oz Orange (Valencia)
• 6oz Peas
• 2oz Radish
• 1oz Tomato

• Orange (N) = 27oz @ 59c lb = 99c
  
• Orange (V) = 129oz @ 59c lb = $4.76
  
• Radish = 2oz @ 59c lb = 7c
  
• Tomato = 1 oz @ $1.99 lb =12c
• Collard greens = 16oz @ $2.99lb = $2.99
  
• Beet Greens = 5oz @  $6 lb = $1.87
  
• Broccoli = 6oz @ $3 lb = $1.12
• Chard = 2oz @ $6 lb = 75c
  
• Mustard Greens = 14oz @ $6 lb = $5.25
  
• Peas = 6oz @  $4 lb = $1.00

We are lucky to have 3 citrus trees on our property, and despite the neglect they received over the first 5 years we lived here, they continue to produce fruit. I try to prune, and shape, remove suckers and water sprouts. Last year the Navel orange tree got a severe pruning that shocked it a little but water sprouts and suckers were taking  over so I had to fight back. It's still a battle but I like to think I'm winning. They say to snap off the water sprouts as they appear and I'm trying! Making a mental note to check the trees weekly. Just seems to be the one tree that we're having an issue with, not sure why that is?

Right now all the trees are laden with fruit but also blossoming. I love the citrus blossom, the smell is divine and the hummingbirds love it so we get to them zipping about from flower to flower, aiding in the pollination and providing me with entertainment!  The blossoming seems a little early this year though, but that's probably the weird weather we've been having here in Southern California. Really warm January with little to no rain, and temperatures touching 80 degrees!  The start of February as I mentioned has been wet so I think the poor trees are pretty confused!

I'm harvesting oranges every few days right now. This means that smaller oranges on the tree will grow bigger, and the tree will put more energy into producing more oranges. Oh and the oranges taste great! I have one every morning with my breakfast and Bob takes some to work for lunch.

Can't wait till the grapefruit get big enough to eat :)

So it's pretty much been raining since Thursday lunchtime, not complaining we sure need the rain in Southern California, after all we are headed for a drought this year! The weather has been so changeable here in Southern California. 80 degree's last week and storms this weekend, the plants are as confused as I am. Yesterday I harvested some oranges, collard greens and broccoli (more details on that coming soon). The broccoli was small but it was bolting, as is some of the lettuce :( The crazy warm temperatures last week and the cooler wetter weather is just wreaking havoc for us freedom gardeners! I guess it's just something to chalk up to experience, make notes for next year to get the broccoli etc started earlier. But with all this rain, what to do when you can't get out and tend to your garden? Well obviously you drool over seed catalogs, do research online, do some planning and go shopping :)

We had to go shopping at Walmart as Bob wanted a duffelbag for his snowboard gear, and naturally I had to stop at the gardening section! Now I still have LOTS to do in our garden but that doesn't stop me buying NOW, lol. Afterall I have my monthly gardening budget burning a hole in my pocket! I had firm idea's of what I wanted and knew that tomato plants were OUT, no tomato plants or seeds Di! I have 12+ varieties to shove in somewhere this year! lol! I knew I wanted mint and lavender, potting soil for all the seeds I bought last month and strawberries. Those were my priorities. So I came back from Walmart with: