Agricultural Update

[robby]

I'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.

Comments

[hughknox.livejournal.com]

where i grew up there were lots of almond orchards. they are too beautiful when they bloom.

[robby.livejournal.com]

Yes, the side yard was covered in white as the petals fell. I thought it was a cherry tree at first.

[robby.livejournal.com]

If I recall, you grew up in new Mexico? It's a large, old tree, and I wonder if it's a remnant of some long gone orchard. There is one more, of a similar size and age about 200 feet to the south. Because it's big, it will be hard to net, and I've been reading the agricultural websites and guess the fruit could ripen as soon as late July.

That means I have about a month before I must climb up to run strands of monofiliment line all around it, from the tiptop to the ground. The line isn't really a physical net, but it fools the birds and is said to be as effective as a net.