This is the first installment in a series of posts about our garden this year. Maybe it's because I grew up in Dubai, but I find this whole grow-your-own-food phenomenon pretty fascinating. I'm thrilled when something actually grows and produces edibles! I'm particularly excited about our fruit this year, so that's where I'll start.
She's a beauty, isn't she?!
We have three peach trees--a Mid-Pride, a Babcock, and a dwarf Bonanza. This year (its third in our yard), the Mid-Pride produced about 20-30 peaches. The one above is the first of this year's harvest! Jeremy and I ate it last night . . . and I felt bad about it today when Josiah asked for a snack and said, "Maybe I have a peach?!"
For some perspective, here are a couple of the Mid-Pride peaches in early April:
The Bonanza has a couple peaches on it (this is its second year), but the Babcock didn't produce (it's only a year old). Here's a nice blossom on the Bonanza from a few months ago:
Birds are
our fruit's bane here. They decimate tomatoes, destroy peaches, and
devour grapes. This year Jeremy decided to try paper-bagging the peaches
and grapes (as advised by The Internet) to keep the birds from eating
our beautiful fruit. So far we've lost one or two peaches to the birds, but I think the bags have done their job pretty well. They may inhibit ripening, though.
Next year I hope we have bushels of peaches to harvest and eat and can and freeze!
In addition to peach trees, we have grapevines, apple trees, a potted pomegranate tree, and four citrus trees: a lemon, a Meyer lemon/orange combo, a navel, and a mandarin.
This year the apple trees didn't produce, but the Thompson seedless grapes look promising. Josiah
ate some sour grapes last year before the birds got to the rest of
them, but not one grape made it to ripeness.This year Josiah, Jeremy, and Lydia have sampled plenty of sour grapes. Jeremy bagged some clusters. I hope we'll get to eat some ripe ones this year--we'll see.
The grapevines on the side of the back house
Can you see the little grape buds?
Baby grapes!
The pomegranate was a transplant from a friend, and we didn't expect it to produce. We've had it a couple years now. Previously it budded and flowered, but no fruit ever developed. This year it surprised us! Just take a look at these beauties:
A pollinated flower--see the swelling near the stem?
That's it for now--we'll be back to regular cute-kid programming soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment