Mock Orange
posted 10/23/12
Something
has gone dreadfully wrong with my fruit trees.
I bought the tiny twelve inch saplings for $9.00 each at Lowe’s on
special. This was my first mistake. But how could I resist the thought of
kumquat, Mandarin orange, lemon and tangelo trees gracing the pool deck in
summer and perfuming my sunny studio in winter?
I brought them home and lined them up for inspection. Everybody looked healthy, and so I planted
them in matching pots and set them outside for their first summer. No blooms, but plenty of green leaves
happened. And then they came inside to
spend the winter with me in the studio. So far so good. After a month or so, a couple of them even
bloomed! How thrilling!
It must be
said that I am not too successful with houseplants, and all the pests in town
know it. Soon I had the local tribe of
aphids and spider mites move in, and that was the end of the flowering season. Still, by the end of the winter, I was
delighted that one of the trees, the Mandarin orange, had managed to set two
fruits! There they were, little green
balls at the end of two thin branches.
To be honest, I can’t really call them branches. Twigs is more like it. I wondered how they would be able to hold up
the mature fruit, but figured they would likely be sort of miniature sized, on
account of the tree’s young age and all.
Summer
rolled around again and out the trees went to the pool deck where it was nice and
hot and Mediterranean-like. They loved
it. More green leaves happened plus a
little more height. And those two crazy
oranges grew and grew. Long about July
they turned light orange. Not much
longer to wait, I thought to myself.
Wrong. They kept growing. The poor stick branches began to droop
holding up such weight. Let’s give it a
little more time, I reasoned. Surely they’ll turn
dark orange any day now. Right?
That was
two months ago. I am now willing to
admit the error of my ways. First of
all, I am not convinced I purchased four different fruit trees, as labeled,
from Lowe’s on special. I have a
sneaking suspicion these are the ones whose grafts failed and Lowe’s had to
dump them on unsuspecting gardeners, like me.
If I’m really honest, I will admit that three of the four trees I bought
have wicked sharp spikes protruding from various branches, which I’ve now come
to learn are evidence of rootstock suckers overwhelming the graft.
I am also
willing to admit that I am not about to harvest two Mandarin oranges. What is growing appears to be two rock-hard
mutant oranges that bear no resemblance to a Mandarin whatsoever. They don’t have that thick, bumpy, dark
orange skin with a cute dimple at the stem.
These are pale, shiny and hard, like Christmas ornaments. In fact, the poor tree looks like something
Charlie Brown would have purchased. I
might just throw some holiday lights on it and see if that improves
things. I can’t imagine what else to do,
since I’ve also learned that the fruit that has been developing for nearly nine
months is inedible. It is called a ‘sour
orange’, in fact.
Time to
start over, I say. But this time, I’ll
head to the nursery instead of the bargain close-out shelf at Lowe’s!
Brussel Sprouts
posted 6/16/11
Every year for the past four years my little vegetable plot has grown larger, as I set out to grow more and more of our own produce. We are still talking small. I currently have two raised beds and one long bed, for a total of about 100 square feet. That is not a lot of space. It is delightful to see what can be produced in a space that small. However, I seem to be learning the hard way what is worth growing in a such a small space and what is not. Case in point: brussel sprouts.
Since space is at a premium in the vegetable patch, I will only grow things we're crazy about eating. Therefore, no radishes. We adore brussel sprouts, so naturally they are on my list of things to try to grow. It is a cool season crop, something you plant in March around here. And so I bought a little flat of eight young plants this spring as an alternative to last year's broccoli (which grew beautifully, until they were completely demolished by cabbage worms).
The brussel sprout plants grew impressively. I had no idea what to expect, but up shot eight spikes three feet tall, with long stemmed leaves growing in all directions. They were certainly crowded in their allotted four foot by six foot space, but they managed. Excitement grew as we noticed tiny buds at the base of each leaf: the baby brussel sprouts! Apparently, the sprouts mature from the base of the spike up, and you pick them off as they are ready. Each spike can produce a quart of sprouts. That's eight quarts of brussel sprouts in twenty four square feet -- my idea of a decent yield.
What I forgot to account for were the cabbage worms. Those pesky critters that showed up last year and ravaged the broccoli. I suppose word gets out somehow that a cruciferous vegetable habitat is free on offer at our place, and cabbage butterflies from far and wide come to lay their eggs. Last year when I noticed them, and noticed what they were doing to the broccoli, I made a futile attempt to pick them all off. There were hundreds. Maybe thousands. I almost gave up my comittment to organic gardening. In the end I gave up on the broccoli. So this year, when the first caterpillars appeared, my heart sank. It was a race to the finish line -- Would the sprouts get big enough to pick before the bugs got them? I hosed them down, I sprayed with organic spray, I mulched and fertilized. Grow, baby, grow!
Yesterday, sadly, I realized the tide had turned against me and I was going to lose the battle again. I would have to harvest my crop, pull up the plants and concede defeat. It was a pitiful sight, the plants a mere skeleton of their former selves, the stalks yellowing from stress, most of the puny sprouts covered in worms and worm droppings and I don't know what all. And what was I left with? Well, I'll show you:
This is it. Twenty five percent of my entire vegetable garden devoted to plants that yielded this?! A mere handful of inferior brussel sprouts?! They looked more like mutant peas. Would anyone even eat them? After triple washing and severe inspection to make sure they were bug-free, I cooked them up as if they amounted to something, and served them to Henry without making any comment. And do you know what? He loved them! This goes to show, if you use enough garlic and butter, even a puny, disappointing harvest of brussel sprouts can be properly appreciated.
But next year come March, I'm planting KALE!!!
###
Note to Self
(posted 7/28/11)
As far as vegetable gardening goes, don’t ever give in to
the plants . . . Be sure to let ‘em know who’s boss. In my vegetable patch, I have several raised
beds and practice intensive gardening, which is a nifty way to cram a lot of
things in a small amount of space. It
requires careful planning and planting to avoid chaos and confusion, but the
yield is spectacular. My rule of thumb
is this: if sprouts emerge in a tidy grid, I know I planted them; and if I am
really lucky, I remember what it was. If
something singular and foreign appears in the ranks, it is probably a
weed. Then I pull it out. This isn’t rocket science, after all. I do adhere to this rule pretty well, and a couple
of months into the growing season, I’ve got a handsome patchwork quilt of
different vegetables bursting out of the raised beds.
Sadly, I strayed from my principles this spring, and my
garden is presently overrun with something I never planted in the first place. I am sure I am not the first to experience
this. Here is what happened: In front of a stone wall, one of my little
vegetable beds is about 12 feet wide and three feet deep. This spring I planted a block of snap peas at
the back, intending for the vines to climb up a trellis against the wall, and I
planted Japanese eggplant in front.
After a week or so, things started sprouting and all seemed well.
After several more weeks, the seedlings were
thriving. The little pea vines were vine-ing
and the little eggplant plants were heading up, up, up. Until one day I noticed INTERLOPERS. There, in between the peas and the eggplants,
at fairly regular intervals, was a plant that looked familiar, looked like a
vegetable seedling, and most of all looked very healthy. It practically grew before my eyes! Was it a cucumber? A melon?
A squash? I knew it was something
along these lines, but what? And how did
it get here in a nice long row? Did I
forget that I actually did plant these seeds?
Did I garden in my sleep? Did I
somehow mistakenly plant a second crop on top of the first? Am I losing my mind??
While I was debating my sanity, worrying that amnesia or
dementia had taken hold, the plants, whatever they were, were clearly
establishing themselves without any attention (or permission) from me. In fact, within a week, they were larger than
the other plants and showed no signs of slowing down. I had a decision to make: pull them out or
let ‘em go. Curiosity got the better of me,
and I decided to let them do whatever they wanted. After all, they were clearly doing better
than the now puny pea vines and bug-ridden eggplants. So I treated them as if they were welcome,
watering them along with the rest of the garden.
Silly me. In short
order, the squash plants (I guessed by the orange blossoms), had completely
filled the 12 by 3 foot bed and began working their way across the mulch path
and into the next raised bed. I kept
trying to redirect the vines back towards the stone wall, or over to the side
where they could wend their way through the grass. Nothing doing. Who wouldn’t prefer lovely, loamy,
compost-rich, weed-free topsoil just a
few feet away? One particularly hot day
I almost yanked them all out in frustration until I noticed the little squash
babies peeking out from under the leaves.
Turns out it is acorn squash, for the most part, and one butternut I
think (unless it is a mutant acorn squash, which wouldn’t surprise me one
bit.) Well, I can’t rip out perfectly
good food, even if I don’t care for it that much. So the squash got a new lease on life while I
watched the babies grow.
We went away on vacation last week, and upon our return
the first thing I did was run out to the garden to see what happened while I
was away. What happened was the squash
took over. I’d say about 40 percent of
my garden is now in squash. Continuing
to claim more territory, it has worked its way down all three mulch paths
between the beds, and into two of them.
Only one bed remains squash-free, but . . . Wait a minute let me check .
. . Nope, that one is invaded as well.
It is like Jack’s Beanstalk. It
is like a freaky sci-fi movie. What do I do now?? Well, the only thing I could think to do was
to check and see if all this profusion of vines and leaves was producing
anything. To my shock and amazement, I
discovered a few fat squash which appeared fully mature! And it is only the end of July!
So this is where I lose my head in the vegetable
gardening business. Like a mad woman (well, it turns
out I actually am one), I rifled through the big leaves and found eight
more. In great excitement, I yanked them
all cleanly from their vines and piled them up in a heap, like victory spoils. Aha, I thought, all’s well that ends well… at
least we’ll enjoy a huge harvest. I got
the wheelbarrow to move the bounty back up to the house, and then a niggling
thought crossed my mind. When are you supposed to harvest acorn squash
anyway? Aren’t they a fall crop? Hope I
didn’t jump the gun here.
“Harvesting
How: Cut the squash
from the vine, leaving as long a stem as possible, at least 2 inches. Then set the fruit out in the sun to cure for
a few days, protecting it at night when frost is in the forecast.When: Harvest after the first light frost, which will kill the leaves and vines, and after the main vine wilts, but before a very hard frost. . . ”
Oops. So let’s get
this straight… I allowed stray seeds in my compost to germinate and grow in my well-planned
vegetable garden. The vines subsequently
took over the better part of the garden, and threatened to swallow the entire landscape,
and then yielded a bumper crop of fruit.
Unfortunately, I harvested them in July, three months early, so they are
worthless. Well, not entirely
worthless. I will at least throw them in
the compost pile.
On second thought…
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