Wednesday, April 23, 2008

mini orchard

Ordered 2 apple trees and a Peach tree with 3 types of peaches grafted on one trunk. Now, we've gotta prepare the soil for their arrival. The area we are planning to prepare will take a LOT of grunt work, ripping out old crusty succlent type plants, and the soil under it is hardened clay. We need a truckload of compost for this dirt to be usable.... sigh... someday this soil will be nice and soft and crumbly...

Right now, we have several mature fruit trees; Persimmon, Apple(unknown variety), Valencia Orange, Tangerine, Grapefruit and Avocado. The Grapefruit is never good, always really sour and bitter. So we are contemplating if we should just yank it out. The Persimmon, Tangerine and Orange are great producers. The Avocado(green skinned kind) seems to have acquired some kind of disease where the bark starts to fall off... not good. The apple has yet to produce a good crop.

Our baby asian pear tree is off to a great start. It's vigorously producing new leaves. Which makes me happy. :-)

I have been soaking some fuji apple seeds and they have sprouted... I understand that the seed will not be the same kind of apple as the parent tree because the apple needs cross-pollination to bear fruit, so these seeds are a hybrid with a mystery apple. I planted them outside this morning to see if they will grow. I'm not sure what I'll do with them once they start growing a lot. I might pot them and sell them at a yard sale...

I've been soaking a Haas Avocado seed as well. I think that Avocados need cross-pollinization as well, so I wonder what kind of fruit it will bear when it's mature.... oh well. I just like growing things... my Mom and I seem to have a similarity there.

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