And Grafting Starts

It was such a nice day to work in the garden. Temperatures were in the mid to high 70s and I could here the bees buzzing around the flowers that were blooming in the backyard.

Inca Plum Blooms

Some of the fruit trees, specifically the Plums trees, were starting to flower and bud, so it was time to start grafting. I took the scions out of the refrigerator and inventory of what I got.

2016 Scions

I collected the Plums, Plucots, Pluots, Apricot, Cherry and Avocado scions… found my grafting knife and grafting tape… got my camera and started grafting.

I did a total of 11 grafts including:
– Asian Plums: Elephant Heart and Black Splendor
– Apricot: Canadian White
– Plumcot: Apex
– Pluot: Prosser and Dapple Dandy (Dinosaur Egg)
– Cherry: Coral
– Avocado: Mexiola

So Many Fruits…

I just updated the What’s Growing? page and didn’t realize how many fruit trees we have until I listed them all down. Below is the list so far, not even including all the grafts that I have made.

Continue reading

Another Busy Gardening Day…

I started the day off harvesting some Swiss Chard ‘Green’ for lunch… My Mom used it in Filipino dish called Nilagang Manok, which literally translated means Boiled Chicken. I really love Swiss Chard, including the stems which remains firm when cooked. They are not stringy like some Bok Choy stems.

After lunch, I when to the garden and did a bunch of seed sowing. A few years ago, I experimented with winter sowing. I used milk jugs as containers, but didn’t have such good luck. I think the base didn’t have enough soil and it dried out too quickly. This winter, I’m going to use 6-8 inch pots as the minimum size. I also used standard 1-gallon containers. I filled the pots lower than if I were to plant a plant in them. This will leave some protection when the seedling emerge. I used plastic covers with elastic sewn in the edges to cover the pots. These were pretty cheap; I think the box came with 12-18 covers for $1. This will keep the soil from drying out and I think the elastic may even help keep the slugs out… which is another problem I had previously. I sowed the following seeds:

Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearl’
Alyssum ‘Gold Dust’
Zinnia (Fall 2005)
Mystery Flower (maybe Gazania Daisy?)
Sunflower Lemon Queen (old seeds that I found hidden away in storage)

I wanted to get rid of some really old seeds like the Sunflower above and I also found two packets of Radishes from 1984!!! I emptied the two packets (Radish ‘Red Deveil B’ and Radish ‘White Icicle’) into a 12 inch pot… I don’t really expect them to grow, but if any are still viable, here’s their change to grow.

I planted a 10 inch pot with lots of Cilantro seeds that I harvested last year. I hope the Cilantro grows densely so we can harvest a lot. I then replenish one of the 3-gallon GeoPots that we harvested the Purple Bok Choy from and planted a bunch of Lettuce ‘Wildfire Mix’ that I bought a few days ago. I still had a bunch of seedling, so I potted to into large cell-packs to plant out later.

I’m not sure where to plant the other new plants I got, so I divided the small-packs of Kale ‘Rainbow’ and Kale ‘Siberian’ into 3 inch pots, so they can grow a bit before I figure out where to plant them. I was surprise how healthy the young seedlings were. I was able to divide the Kale ‘Rainbow’ into 17 individual pots!!!… and I’ll give some away to friends and relatives.

I also started grafting, since our Asian Plum tree near the storage is starting to bloom. I grafted four total today and will do more later:

Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’ (Graft 2012-01)
Plumcot ‘Burbank’ (Graft 2012-02)
Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’ (Graft 2012-03)
Apricot ‘Canadian White’ (Graft 2012-04)

I hope these take.

Asian Plum Breaking Dormancy + Asian Plum Grafts Update…

Last week, my Mom showed me that the Asian Plum (near the storage) is starting to bloom.

Asian Plum Starting to Bloom

This Asian Plum tree is always our first deciduous fruit tree to break dormancy… This means that I need to start grafting to it… and I haven’t even sorted the scions that I got this year, so I have to do that soon.

Asian Plum Tree

I took inventory of all the grafts that I made on this particular Plum tree and I’m happy that many are still alive. These include:

Asian Plum ‘Elephant Heart’ (Graft 2009-04) Flickr
Plumcot ‘Apex’ (Graft 2010-05) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’ (Graft 2010-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-01) Flickr
Apricot ‘Large Early Montgamet’ (Graft 2011-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Sierra’ (Graft 2011-03) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Queen’ (Graft 2010-02) Flickr

Asian Plum 'Sierra'

It’s kinda neat how this one tree now has Plums, Plumcots, Pluots and Apricots.

Sadly two grafts did not make it:

Aprium ‘Mark’s Seedling’ (Graft 2010-03)
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-02) which is ok because this was a duplicate graft

I also took some time to prune some on the limb back, especially the ones that hang too low or crossed other branches.

Peaches and Apricots…

My Peach ‘Stark Saturn’ Folia graft (from 2008) is finally bearing fruits. Below is one of the two fruits.

Peach 'Stark Saturn'

The Peach ‘Elberta’ Folia that the Peach ‘Stark Saturn’ is graft to is not fruiting that much this year, but we still have a few fruits. These two are young Peach ‘Elberta’ fruits.

Peach 'Elberta'

Our Apricot Folia tree, on the other hand, has tons of fruits this year.

Apricots

Grafting 2011 Batch 1

Our Japanese Plum (near the storage) is starting to bloom, so I started grafting some of the Japanese Plum and Apricot scion, which I believe are compatible to Japanese Plum.

– Graft 2011-01 Plum ‘Inca’ scion grafted onto Japanese Plum (near storage)
– Graft 2011-02 Plum ‘Inca’ scion grafted onto Japanese Plum (near storage)
– Graft 2011-03 Sierra Plum scion grafted onto Japanese Plum (near storage)
– Graft 2011-04 Sierra Plum scion grafted onto Japanese Plum (near storage)
– Graft 2011-05 Apricot ‘Large Early Montgamet’ scion grafted onto Apricot

Plum 'Inca' Graft

Apricot 'Large Early Montgamet' Graft