Fall

Well, since that last storm its finally starting to look like fall around here, with some leaves turning yellow and the leaves on the seedling rootstocks even giving some honest-to-goodness red and orange fall color (rare here in Southern California).  Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like fall as today was 74 degrees and I was in a T-shirt all day working in the yard.  Terry Winter is about ready to pick, and I’ll polish off the rest of the GoldRush, but we still have some stubborn holdouts that need another month or two to ripen up.  I’ll be reviewing them as we pick.

So enjoy our fall foilage photos below (and no snickering from you folks back East, or I’ll start talking about how nice the weather was today again).

Persimmon

Just so I’m not accused of being narrow minded, today’s post will be on a different fruit, in this case Fuyu Persimmon.  There’s a lot to like about this tree, not the least of which is this typical fruit load on a 2-year-old tree.  It does this no matter the weather, and isn’t bothered in the least by insects or disease.  Soon the leaves will drop off but the colorful fruit will hang on another month or two, slowly ripening to delectable lusciousness.

This is a hard persimmon, one that can be eaten in several stages of ripeness.  Since there is no pollinator around, it is seedless and once you pull the tough stem off you can consume it completely, right through the core. 

We also have a Hichiya persimmon, the astringent type that must be squishy-soft to be edible.  It has the annoying habit of growing 30 feet tall with fruits out of reach that decide to drop with laser accuracy to splat you just as you’re walking underneath; I prefer the hard type.  Either way this is a remarkable fruit we are also investigating sending to the tropics.  It is also another fruit that adapts well to frigid Eastern winters,  just like apples!

Rain

I know some of you back East are going to snicker, but it rained this weekend, which is a big deal for us.  We haven’t really had a good soaking since April, and it’s enough for me to pause and stare out the window at the wonder of it.  The above photo is some soggy Terry Winter apples superimposed against my neighbor’s Valencia Orange, and streaks of rain in the background.

I mean, water just falls out of the sky!  You don’t have to pump it or carry it, you can drink it without treating it, and you don’t have to worry about salt content or if it will corrode your pipes.  It falls everywhere watering everything, and you don’t even have to run drip tubing or worry how you’re going to irrigate. 

On the other hand, it really makes a mess here as we’re not accustomed to it.  If you drive through certain parts of town tomorrow you’ll see a bunch of blue tarps on roofs that need repairing.  We’re also used to leaving stuff out for months with no worries that is now soaked and ruined, and there’s mud and flooding everywhere.  We’ll get breathless TV news anchors reporting on STORMWATCH 2009 with ominous graphics, and some reporter will find a car stalled out in a flooded underpass somewhere and do a report on the terrible conditions.  After the shoot is done a city worker will wade in and pull the debris off the storm drain grate and the water will disappear again and the car will be towed off.

But on the other hand the clouds will clear out next week and we’ll get a glorious view of blue sky and snowcapped mountains as a backdrop to blossoming orange groves.  We can go play in the snow, ice, and misery until our heart’s content and then drive home and watch the ice melt off the car in the driveway while we BBQ in our shorts.  Winter is not a bad time to be growing apples and oranges here.

GoldRush

GoldRush is constantly mentioned as one of the best-tasting and best-keeping apples for the home grower today.  We tried it here in Southern California and it was precocious (bore early in its lifetime) and very productive, the tiny tree producing a nice bundle of apples. 

In colder climates it is famous for being battery-acid tart until fully ripe, when it becomes delightfully tart-sweet, and the flavor only improves in storage.  But our climate seems to rob it of all the tartness, leaving only pleasant sweetness, reminiscent of a good Fuji.   Indeed, it was very crisp and juicy, and if I didn’t see the classic “old gold” of the peel, I would think that I was eating Fuji. 

A product of the Purdue, Rutgers, and University of Illinois breeding program, GoldRush is very resistant to scab and a good choice for those who have disease problems growing Fuji.  I’m sad it doesn’t have the same “bite” as in other climates, but it is a worthy apple none the less.  Train the tree so that it shades the fruit, as it is prone to sunburn.  It ripens in the second week of December in these here parts.

Dave Wilson Nursery Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jwtYhS2Qcs

Our good friend Tom Spellman with Dave Wilson Nursery came and did some filming last October and produced several videos from the footage.  If it looks like we were having fun, we were!

Late Fall

 

All the leaves on the Asian pears have turned golden and are dropping off, and the persimmon leaves are also starting to turn.  But except for a couple crabs, the apples are still in full swing.  I’m doing some “late summer” pruning before they start to go dormant.

The tree in front is Goldrush, and it still needs a few weeks.  Sundowner and Lady Williams need about six more weeks.  The roses are thankful the heat is over and will be peaking now through Christmas, blooming even through the rains.  Speaking of which, we got our first real shower since April this morning, along with some very rare thunder (which we paranoid Californians mistake for earthquakes at first).

Silverwood Lake Historic Orchard

Silverwood Lake is part of the California State water system and is situated in the northern side of the San Bernardino Mountains.  It was built in the 1970’s on the site of the former community of Cedar Springs, which was razed in order to build the lake.

One of the few remnants of this community is an old apple orchard near the entrance station that dates from about 1900 to the 1920’s.  We were contacted by a State Park Ranger who is interested in preserving and restoring the orchard to honor the memory of Cedar Springs and to display a part of our mountain heritage.  He was kind enough to show us around the lake today and tell us his hopes and plans for the future of the orchard; we had a wonderful time on this perfect fall day, and what better way to spend the day but at a lake playing with apples?

He has a formidable partner in the form of the park maintance head, who also shares a passion for history and nature.  Together I believe they have the energy and ambition to make this project happen, and the resources to back it up.  We’ll be happy to be a part of it and supply whatever trees and advice are needed, and I’m sure there will be opportunity for other volunteers to help out as well, so stay tuned for more details to come!

 

Pressing Cider

We made cider this weekend and taped it for our YouTube channel.

Big Apple

This 150 year old monster big apple tree is over by the stables at Yosemite National Park.  Easterners are probably used to seeing apple trees this size, but out here this is a honking big tree.  From what I found on the ground I think it was Rome Beauty.

The Park Service is at a quandry about what to do with these trees.  They consider them non-native exotics, and usually would remove them from the Park.  On the other hand, they are more historic than the Ahwanee Hotel and pre-date it by decades.  They are one of the oldest artifacts from the Pioneers in the Park, and so they still tolerate them.  However they do consider them an unnatural food source for bears, and so enlist a small army of volunteers in August to pick the apples off so they don’t attract bears in the fall.

I would argue this point, but just to my right there was a bear up in the neighboring apple tree feeding his face with apples, and we beat a hasty retreat.

Out With the Losers

I shredded an apple tree today.  Our trees are really small and so it didn’t take very long, and it all fit easily in my electric shredder.  I was able to dig the root ball out in about 10 minutes, and all that’s left now is a hole in the ground waiting for a new tree to arrive in the mail this week.

We live in a city lot and the apple trees must be irrigated almost year round, so I don’t have room for losers.  Poor Lord Lamborne made the fatal mistake of producing inferior apples three years in a row, so I cut it down and shredded it in front of all the other apple trees to warn them what happens around here if you don’t produce (my mother-in-law says she noticed this too and tries to pull her own weight so she doesn’t get tossed out also).

If you’re wondering why I don’t just topwork the tree, grafting another variety onto the rootstock, its because our warm climate stifles the vigor of the tree and more often than not it lacks the vitality to recover.  The scion will send out a nice shoot but the bark on the other side of the trunk dies to the ground and borers inevitably move in to finish it off.  I’ve learned through bitter experience its best to just plant another tree, which will bear in a year or two anyway, even if started from a benchgraft. 

We’re planting Cameo in its place to give it the torture test of our hot climate.  I have about a dozen other trees ordered that will need holes also, and so I’m looking around for other underachievers to pull out to make room.  Tough time to be an apple tree around here…