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Agricultural Update
May. 8th, 2010 11:37 amI've put out 4 tomato seedlings and my initial tomato plant is growing like crazy, it's now a flowering bush. I pinched off the bottom stems a few weeks ago, this supposedly reserves the plant's vitality more towards fruit production rather than making leaves. The jalapeno pepper plant is also flowering. I have four hills of yellow squash coming up , and soon I'll weed that area and lay down some of the wood chips saved from my Spring tree trimming as mulch. I have space left for maybe some cauliflower and eggplant.
The Stewart avocado has finished flowering, and the flower spikes have withered away, but the new foliage is really lush and green. I don't see the beginnings of fruit on the tree, but I am not familiar with the growing cycle, so it's too early to say if it will bear fruit the first year.
The Zutano avocado is in full flower, and I see bees on it. I don't know if there was cross pollination between the two trees, even though that was the reason to get two different varieties and also to plant lavender around them.
My Nopales cactus has put out lots of new pads, and I'm going to start picking and eating them. Flowers are forming as well, and the flowers develop into fruit called "tuna", and I have found a wine recipe for the cactus fruit in one of my old books, which I might try.
The almond is full of developing fruit and soon I'll have to climb up and rig a canopy of monofiliment fishing line over the entire tree. It acts as a net and wards off the fruit eating birds that will supposedly strip it.
The lemon tree is still flowering and attracts lots of honey bees to the front yard, but I must have adequate pollinators in the side yard as well, because the almond tree is covered with fruit. Almond trees are not self pollinating so the bees not only had to be there, but they traveled back and forth between my tree and another almond tree a block away.
The Stewart avocado has finished flowering, and the flower spikes have withered away, but the new foliage is really lush and green. I don't see the beginnings of fruit on the tree, but I am not familiar with the growing cycle, so it's too early to say if it will bear fruit the first year.
The Zutano avocado is in full flower, and I see bees on it. I don't know if there was cross pollination between the two trees, even though that was the reason to get two different varieties and also to plant lavender around them.
My Nopales cactus has put out lots of new pads, and I'm going to start picking and eating them. Flowers are forming as well, and the flowers develop into fruit called "tuna", and I have found a wine recipe for the cactus fruit in one of my old books, which I might try.
The almond is full of developing fruit and soon I'll have to climb up and rig a canopy of monofiliment fishing line over the entire tree. It acts as a net and wards off the fruit eating birds that will supposedly strip it.
The lemon tree is still flowering and attracts lots of honey bees to the front yard, but I must have adequate pollinators in the side yard as well, because the almond tree is covered with fruit. Almond trees are not self pollinating so the bees not only had to be there, but they traveled back and forth between my tree and another almond tree a block away.
