Orchard
House Sparrows frenetically bathing under the mandarin this morning.
Mandarins and Meyer Lemons are ripening nicely. Maybe one more month until the Mandarins are sweet enough.
The Results of the 2020 Home Orchard Fixed Daily Watering Experiment
This last orchard growing season, I watered using daily fixed schedules that took into account average daily evapotranspiration and estimated daily plant water use. I set up schedules for each month in the summer, since evapotranspiration and water usage changes significantly month to month. Previous years I had used a dynamic schedule determined by Rachio’s Flex Daily algorithm and Advanced Zone settings. The Flex algorithm greatly favors deep waterings and the interval is guided by daily estimated evapotranspiration. The trees often suffered on extreme California summer days under the Flex Daily algorithm — it watered too deeply and too infrequently so trees couldn’t get daily access to water with very high summer evapotranspiration rates. Flex does not account for extremely hot days where available water depletes, leaving trees struggling without water until the next day or longer. Fortunately, the Rachio irrigation controller makes it dead easy to create any number of watering schedules. The results of using fixed schedules tuned for each summer month this last growing season were pretty good. While the mandarins are undersized after the previous year’s bumper crop of well sized fruit, our Valencias and Meyer Lemons did great. The pineapple guavas also responded very well to daily watering with a surprising amount of growth. The avocados, while very finicky, did fine too. But it turns out no matter how much water they get, when temperatures go over 100 F their leaves scorch (so we had to rig up shade cloth over the young trees using ladders). Besides the avocados, the trees didn’t suffer greatly from heat stress with daily watering. I do wonder if the fixed daily waterings didn’t penetrate the soil deep enough, resulting in undersized mandarins, so next year I will try watering every other day and doubling the watering times. This should encourage deeper root development and perhaps provide more water to trees from throughout the soil column.
Scorched young avocado leaves despite daily watering:
Planted a New Cherry Tree Today
I planted a replacement Lapins Cherry today. Bought it from Stark Bro’s and it has a great unblemished, no prune cut trunk. That is never the case if I buy locally, even from a family operated nursery. As planted, it’s a 42” tall stick. It’ll develop branches next spring. I finally got to use our homemade compost that’s been over a year in the making!
The rainy season in California is right around the corner, so I just cleaned the rain gage & other weather station components of summer’s dust and ash. Meanwhile, the mandarins are slowly ripening.
Tore out the bark beetle infested Lapins Cherry today. It was half dead by beetles girdling it. In November we’ll put in a new Lapins Cherry from Stark Bros.. The old tree was from a big box store and while it provided prodigious fruit it was oddly pruned and I couldn’t fix it.
Lemongrass came back this year after dying back over winter (we also took cuttings over winter and one managed to take). So here’s homemade lemongrass ice cream topped with praline. 😋
Been a few years since we first wanted to mulch the backyard. Weather got nice so here we go with 10 cu yd of chips!
Metallic ribbon and a fake bird of prey truly keeps the birds away from our figs.
This western milkweed bug stuffing itself into the eye of the Brown Turkey Fig is decidedly not cuddly and I do not like them ruining my figs! We actually cut into a fig the other day, decapitating a milkweed bug that got inside.
With the incoming heatwave in California, we will filter out direct sunlight to help keep these little avocado trees from scorching to death. Also: save the U.S. Postal Service. ✉️
Mantis on the cherry tree.
… and peppers! Though ants are trying to farm aphids on them.
Today’s harvest. Brown turkey figs and a small ripe jalapeño.
Orange Grove Update
This year, our Mandarin orange will provide plenty to eat in January. We’re lucky it’s not alternate bearing (this year, anyway).
Meanwhile, this is the first year our Meyer lemon has produced more than a couple fruit. Super exciting! It did lose a lot of leaves earlier this summer, though. I attribute that to overwatering. Oops.
Finally, our Valencia is also producing more than a couple fruit:
The lemon grass coming in strong. It came back from last year’s planting and a cutting we took.
Here’s a drooping Brown Turkey fig — means it’s perfectly sweet & tender for eating. Don’t wait too long after a Brown Turkey fig reaches this stage else it may start to ferment and/or critters will get to it first.
Brown Turkey figs are rapidly ripening. Patiently waiting for them to start drooping as a sign of ripeness.
110°F yesterday and today. The avocados we planted 2-3 years ago transpire water more than they can replenish from the ground and so their leaves desiccate and die. Especially the young leaves on the Bacon (1) variety and random adult leaves on the Mexicola (2) variety. ☹️
So many Brown Turkey Figs!
Lunchtime snack: Sweet Cherries fresh from the backyard tree.
