Tag Archives: plum near storage

A Little Bit of Winter Gardening…

Posted on by

I got a little bit of gardening done this weekend. I went through the cell packs I planted in the late fall and got rid of the pots which failed to grow seedlings. I found some Mushrooms in some.

Mushroom Mushroom Mushroom...

There were Celtuce that surprisingly survived, so I planted those into a large Daiso pot.

Transplanted Celtuce

I also pulled a lot of weeds near Veggie Beds 1 and 2 and pick off damaged and dead leaves from plants.

Litchi Tomato Flower Buds

As I was weeding I noticed that there was another volunteer Litchi Tomatoes, making the total to three plants now. They are also starting to form flower buds. These are sure strong plants… or maybe they like cooler weather. I’ll have to pot these up into a large container and give Litchi Tomatoes another try.

Calendulas

Around the beds, volunteer Calendulas and Daffodils are blooming.

Daffodils

Spring Starflower

I even caught the first Spring Starflower to bloom, which means there are about 100 more to come.

Fruit Flower Buds

Also starting to bloom are some fruit trees, including the two unknown Asian Plums, the grafted Inca Plum and surprisingly a very very early grafted Anna Apple. I’ll have to start grafting Plums next weekend.

I wish I had more time to garden.

Busy Gardening Day…

Posted on by

It was a busy gardening day. I started by planting a few Green Onions bottoms with the others I planted last week.

Planting Green Onion Bottoms

I start grafting onto our two Asian Plum trees:
– Bubblegum Plum (which I’m really interested in tasting, so I grafted it in two locations)
– Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
– Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’

People Watcher

This bird kept watching me as I was grafting scions onto our Plum tree. I thought it would fly away if I moved, but even after I walked around and climbed the ladder, it just stayed there. It eventually flew away.

I wanted to graft some Cherry scions, but I couldn’t find any good sites to graft onto… So I left it, and I’ll check our Cherry tree later.

Planting Swiss Chard, Beets and Mesclun

I had some plant that have been in cell packs since the fall, and they are still alive, so I planted the Swiss Chard into 5 gallon fabric pot and Beets ‘Chioggia’ into a large Daiso pot. I had two leftover Flat Leaf Parsley which I planted into a 3 inch pot for now, until i find a permanent place for them in the garden. Hopefully, these plants will grow big despite being left in their cell packs.

I also did a bunch of seed sowing. I sowed all of the Zesty Salad Mesclun Mix into a medium Daiso pot. I don’t think these grew well in the past and I just wanted to get rid of the seeds.

Sowing Spring Greens/Flowers

I planted the rest into cell packs:
– Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearls’
– Agrostemma ‘Milas’
– Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
– Bok Choy ‘Purple Choy’
– Kohlrabi ‘Early White Vienna’
– Bok Choy ‘Summer Boy’

Kiwi Leafing Out

A couple of the Kiwi plants have started to leaf out. I was worried that they died in the winter at their new location, but they seem to have pulled through. They was a couple dead/dried out branches which I trimmed. The rest of the blue bin where they were was empty, so I decided to plant a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas.

Sowing Sugar Snap Peas

Afterwards, I did a major trim of the European Plum tree in back of our storage. There were tons of dead limbs and limbs that sagged down. I tried to clear the bottom so we had walking space and just get rid of too much of the mass. I think it looks better now and hopoefully will grow better. Unfortunately, the Kirke Blue Plum that I grafted to it dried up.

So Many Fruits…

Posted on by

I just updated the What’s Growing? page and didn’t realize how many fruit trees we have until I listed them all down. Below is the list so far, not even including all the grafts that I have made.

Continue reading →

Another Busy Gardening Day…

Posted on by

I started the day off harvesting some Swiss Chard ‘Green’ for lunch… My Mom used it in Filipino dish called Nilagang Manok, which literally translated means Boiled Chicken. I really love Swiss Chard, including the stems which remains firm when cooked. They are not stringy like some Bok Choy stems.

After lunch, I when to the garden and did a bunch of seed sowing. A few years ago, I experimented with winter sowing. I used milk jugs as containers, but didn’t have such good luck. I think the base didn’t have enough soil and it dried out too quickly. This winter, I’m going to use 6-8 inch pots as the minimum size. I also used standard 1-gallon containers. I filled the pots lower than if I were to plant a plant in them. This will leave some protection when the seedling emerge. I used plastic covers with elastic sewn in the edges to cover the pots. These were pretty cheap; I think the box came with 12-18 covers for $1. This will keep the soil from drying out and I think the elastic may even help keep the slugs out… which is another problem I had previously. I sowed the following seeds:

– Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearl’
– Alyssum ‘Gold Dust’
– Zinnia (Fall 2005)
– Mystery Flower (maybe Gazania Daisy?)
– Sunflower Lemon Queen (old seeds that I found hidden away in storage)

I wanted to get rid of some really old seeds like the Sunflower above and I also found two packets of Radishes from 1984!!! I emptied the two packets (Radish ‘Red Deveil B’ and Radish ‘White Icicle’) into a 12 inch pot… I don’t really expect them to grow, but if any are still viable, here’s their change to grow.

I planted a 10 inch pot with lots of Cilantro seeds that I harvested last year. I hope the Cilantro grows densely so we can harvest a lot. I then replenish one of the 3-gallon GeoPots that we harvested the Purple Bok Choy from and planted a bunch of Lettuce ‘Wildfire Mix’ that I bought a few days ago. I still had a bunch of seedling, so I potted to into large cell-packs to plant out later.

I’m not sure where to plant the other new plants I got, so I divided the small-packs of Kale ‘Rainbow’ and Kale ‘Siberian’ into 3 inch pots, so they can grow a bit before I figure out where to plant them. I was surprise how healthy the young seedlings were. I was able to divide the Kale ‘Rainbow’ into 17 individual pots!!!… and I’ll give some away to friends and relatives.

I also started grafting, since our Asian Plum tree near the storage is starting to bloom. I grafted four total today and will do more later:

– Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’ (Graft 2012-01)
– Plumcot ‘Burbank’ (Graft 2012-02)
– Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’ (Graft 2012-03)
– Apricot ‘Canadian White’ (Graft 2012-04)

I hope these take.

First Batch of Grafts…

Posted on by

I did my first batch of grafts this year onto the Asian Plum (near storage) Folia that has already started to set buds. They include:

– Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
– Plumcot ‘Burbank’ Folia
– Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’
– Apricot ‘Canadian White’

Plumcot 'Burbank' Graft

Asian Plum Breaking Dormancy + Asian Plum Grafts Update…

Posted on by

Last week, my Mom showed me that the Asian Plum (near the storage) is starting to bloom.

Asian Plum Starting to Bloom

This Asian Plum tree is always our first deciduous fruit tree to break dormancy… This means that I need to start grafting to it… and I haven’t even sorted the scions that I got this year, so I have to do that soon.

Asian Plum Tree

I took inventory of all the grafts that I made on this particular Plum tree and I’m happy that many are still alive. These include:

– Asian Plum ‘Elephant Heart’ (Graft 2009-04) Flickr
– Plumcot ‘Apex’ (Graft 2010-05) Flickr
– Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’ (Graft 2010-04) Flickr
– Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-01) Flickr
– Apricot ‘Large Early Montgamet’ (Graft 2011-04) Flickr
– Asian Plum ‘Sierra’ (Graft 2011-03) Flickr
– Pluot ‘Flavor Queen’ (Graft 2010-02) Flickr

Asian Plum 'Sierra'

It’s kinda neat how this one tree now has Plums, Plumcots, Pluots and Apricots.

Sadly two grafts did not make it:

– Aprium ‘Mark’s Seedling’ (Graft 2010-03)
– Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-02) which is ok because this was a duplicate graft

I also took some time to prune some on the limb back, especially the ones that hang too low or crossed other branches.