Messages from your deciduous fruit trees after the chilly winter
Deciduous fruit trees demand to spend their winters in certain ways. Peaches, plums, apricots, apples, cherries, nectarines, they like to get chilly in the fall, then shed their leaves and stay chilly for a certain length of time, then warm up in the late winter or...
Pruning avocado trees to keep them small
I think of my Hass avocado tree as small even though it is far bigger than the newly planted trees above. As I looked at my Hass last week, it stood 17 feet tall. It was time to prune. I prune it every year in order to keep it down to 15 feet. This post is about...
Spring Collection of Yard Posts, 2019
Spring has sprung! After a relatively long, rainy, and chilly winter for Southern California, plants are bursting their buds to soak up some sun. I can't recall a winter around here that actually lasted until the end of the calendar winter. But March 20 has passed and...
Would you rather garden in the tropics?
A couple weeks ago I grew tired of protecting baby mango trees from frost and of watching more leaves on my banana plants brown due to cold nights. This has been a persistently chilly and rainy winter for us in Southern California. At my house, only once did we go a...
The Lamb/Hass avocado tree: a profile
In 2013, I planted a Lamb/Hass avocado tree because its fruit was said to be ready for harvest in summer. I didn’t know much else about the variety, and I’d never tasted its fruit (knowingly). During the past five or six years I’ve learned a lot more about Lamb --...
Before killing it, name that weed
I was walking with a friend through his fruit tree orchard a couple weeks ago when he knelt down to pull up a weed. “Oh, I love that plant,” I said. “These things are everywhere. What is it?” “It’s called deerweed. It’s a native plant. It has little yellow and orange...
Should you grow vegetables from seeds or plants?
This year, I happen to be growing all of my vegetables from seed, which is a throwback to when I started vegetable gardening. In the interim, there have been years where I grew entirely from plants purchased at a nursery. During most years though, my vegetable garden...
Grafting a pollenizer branch into your fruit tree
Cherries are tricky in Southern California. Only a few varieties will fruit here with our relatively warm winters. Six winters ago, I planted two cherry trees for my mom in her backyard. The two needed each other in order to fruit. The flowers of Minnie Royal could...
List of all Yard Posts
Recent comments