Failure one: Sowing old onion seed
In late October, I sowed about 150 onion seeds. Only eight germinated.
I suspected that I might get reduced germination because the seeds were from last year. I knew that onion seeds didn’t have long viability, but I thought I would get at least half of them to sprout, and I didn’t want to waste seed. But no: 8/150 works out to only 5%. That’s terrible.
On the heals of this failure, at the beginning of November, I rapidly ordered new onion seeds and have already sown them. Fortunately, early November is not too late to sow onions.
Failure two: Too many Kishus
Now that the nights of fall are chilly and the Kishu mandarins are mature, I’m able to see the tree’s heavy crop. The little orange globes are glowing, and they are many. Too many.
The tree is stressed from carrying so much fruit and some branches are dying back. I’ve made this mistake before, the mistake of not reducing the crop on this tree. It has a habit of trying to fruit itself to death. With trees like this Kishu, I need to think of thinning the crop as a practice no less essential than irrigation. Not thinning the crop harms the tree.
A few years back, I did not thin the crop on my second Kishu tree, and it had similar die back. In order to rejuvenate it, I removed the entire crop the following year. And the tree recovered beautifully. I will follow the same protocol with this original Kishu tree.
Success one: Consistent Lamb avocado crops
The Lamb variety of avocado has a few weaknesses, and one of them is its tendency to alternate bear. One year it will have a branch-breaking crop and the next it will be nearly barren.
A few years back, I decided to try to manage this alternate bearing through girdling. So far, so very good. It has been four years now of consistent, moderate cropping.
(See my post, “Girdling Lamb avocado trees to get fruit every year.”)
Today, the tree still has some black, mature fruit on it (shown in the photo above), and it also has a developing crop to be harvested next fall. And just about a week ago, I girdled a few branches again with the hopes of forcing them to flower and set a future group of avocados that we will eat in the fall of 2028.
Success two: Making coffee happy
I have lost count of how many young coffee bushes I’ve killed.
They were easy to grow when I lived and gardened by the beach in San Diego, but in 2013 I moved inland to the hills of Ramona.
Right away, the strong sun here killed the first few coffee plants I put out even though they were in a bit of shade. So then I planted the next group in full shade under a large orange tree’s canopy. They grew well until February 21, 2018. I was out of town that night, when the temperature dropped to the mid 20’s, and I came back to find all of the coffee plants frozen dead.
So now I have a coffee plant growing in a spot that gets both shade from an avocado tree and also stays relatively warm on winter nights because it is at the south side of a huge boulder. For a couple years now, the Laurina coffee plant has been flourishing in this spot. I believe I’ve finally found the happy place for coffee in my yard.
(Here is my post with a few tips on growing coffee in Southern California.)
Often while out in the yard I am reminded of this quote from Yeats: “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
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