A Few Garden Photos with the Olympus OM 35mm f/2

I Piddled around the yard yesterday with the Olympus OM 35mm and took a few pictures of things going on.  Stuff is starting to bloom. Here they are:

Buds on the Valencia Orange.  You can see it has fruit on as well.

New growth on the Moro blood orange.  It's going nuts.

Peach Blossoms on La Feliciana.

More Peach Blossoms

Flower buds on Ein Shemer apple.  Ein Shemer was developed in Israel and is supposed to be good in the central Texas climate.

 

Spring Has Sprung

La Feliciana awakens early

     Well, It's February second, and I hate to say it, but it appears that spring has sprung. We've had incredibly warm weather for the last couple of weeks. I was wondering the yard this afternoon and low and behold, to my horror, my peach trees have broken dormancy.

     Why is this bad? Peach will lose all their flowers and/or fruit if there is a late season frost.  Here in Austin we aren't out of the woods until about March 15th, so we've still got a month and a half to go. Yikes! Fingers are crossed.

     Also, usually I wait until late February to prune.  The break in dormancy means I need to do my pruning now, and it also means I missed my dormant anti fungal spray.  I guess this year will be an experiment to see if I can get away without doing one.  I usually prefer to avoid chemicals if possible. 

Junegold saying hello to spring

   
      Homegrown peaches are the most amazing thing in the world. No kidding.  Texas is a great place to grow peaches.  I firmly believe that everyone should have a peach tree in their yard.  I have four.

     When choosing a tree for your yard, make sure and pick one that is right for your area.  http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/files/2010/10/peaches.pdf  is the place to go for good peach growing info if you live in Texas.  They have a pretty comprehensive list of varieties along with chilling hours and ripening times.  You'll need to figure out what chill zone you live in a choose a variety appropriately.  Austin is in the 700 chill hour zone. If you get multiple trees, get them with staggered ripening times so that you have a longer harvest season.  Ripening times are relative compared to the ripening time of the Elberta variety.

     The four varieties that I planted are:

     Junegold   - 650 chill hours - 46 days before Elberta
     Harvester - 750 chill hours - 26 days before Elberta
     La Feliciana - 600 chill hours - 18 days before Elberta
     Redskin - 750 chill hours - 2 days before Elberta

     So in theory, my peaches ripen over a period of a month and a half (44 days to be exact) starting in June, although with the warm weather, and if there isn't a freeze, the harvest will probably start earlier.  La Felicina and Junegold, my lower chill varieties, are the two that have broken dormancy, but the Harvester and Redskin look like they aren't too far behind.

     Having a variety of trees is a good way of hedging your bets.  If there's a frost before my late chilling trees break, they should be fine, even though I might lose the fruit from the low chill trees.

     Last year was an early spring as well, but not this early.  I had a good harvest.  La Feliciana and Junegold gave the biggest and highest quality crops.  Harvester and redskin haven't hit their stride yet.  Maybe this year will be the year.

 
  

Oh My Darlin', Oh My Darlin': 2012 Clementine Report

Clementine: Canon 5D, 85mm f/1.8 USM

     Well, December is finally here. It's the Holiday season as well as the citrus season.  I picked my first clementine mandarin today.  It's also know as the Algerian orange. These aren't your grocery store cuties, although I wouldn't complain if they were. Those are generally Nules Clementines, which are related, but not the same.  I haven't been able to find Nules Clementine in Texas.

    I guess I should preface that I live in Austin, TX, and part of this blog will be chronicling my successes and failures at trying to grow citrus here. Citrus, in general, are easy, so hopefully, there will be more successes than failures. The biggest challenge is the weather.  Austin lies at a transition zone, climate wise.  Citrus North of here is pretty much north of here is pretty much bound to fail.  As you go progressively south, things become increasingly favorable, the Rio Grande Valley being the heart of the Texas citrus industry.

   I've had my clementine tree for about 3 years, and it was probably about a year old when I got it.  It spent its first year in a pot and its first winter in the garage, along with all my other citrus.  The garage did not work out so well, so most of my citrus, including this tree were planted in the ground on the southeast side of the house, where the micro-climate should theoretically be the warmest.  So the tree is 4 years old and this is its second season in the ground.  It produced a few clementines,which were smaller and tastier than this batch, that first year in the pot.  I had none last year.  This year I had 9 fruit which were about tennis ball sized, maybe a wee bit smaller.

Meet Clementine: Canon 5D, Contax Zeiss 135mm f/2.8

     The little squiggles on the fruit are leaf miner trails.  A moth lays and egg, the larva hatches and burrows under the surface and eats til it is mature.  Usually they attack the leaves and not the fruit, but not this year apparently.  This is the first time that I have seen any evidence of them since the big freeze two years ago.  It apparently killed off the larva that were chilling in the soil waiting for spring, and they are only just now making their way back from warmer climates.  Leaf miners generally don't cause much trouble.  They just make things a little uglier.  This fruit is perfectly fine inside.

Leaf Miners: Canon T2i, 40mm f/2.8 STM

Canon T2i, 40mm f/2.8 STM

     The one below and on the right is the one I picked.

The one I picked: Canon 5D, Contax Zeiss 135mm f/2.8

 

 

    

     So naturally, I brought the one I picked inside, and we did a photo-shoot.

"That's right, smile for the camera, Darlin'!": Canon 5D, 85mm F/1.8 USM

It's what's inside that counts: Canon 5D, Olympus OM Zuiko 28mm F/2

   And then I cut it in half to see what was inside;  Disappointment.  So it wasn't bad, it just wasn't anything special.  It was juicy, but not running-down-the-side-of-your-arm juicy.  It was only slightly sweet, and there was no acidic tang at all.  The best was to describe it was: bland. It was also full of seeds.  I counted 19.  I figured it wouldn't be seedless. Seedless is a product of both genetics and monoculture, neither of which I have. I did, however, hope for a little better than this.

Canon 5D, 50mm f/1.4 USM

19 Seeds: Canon 5D, Olympus OM Zuiko 28mm F/2

 

     Despite my disappointment, I do remain hopeful for this tree.  This is its first crop in the ground, and citrus trees usually produce better fruit as they age, so next year might be better, and maybe the year after that.  More citrus reports to come. Is this enough citrus for you, Kai?