Been busy moving into the new house. Just spoke with Tim and I won't be taking my order till May 1 2015. The trees wouldn't be sized enough for this year, and I'd have to worry more about the winter protection, so they'll be in better hands with him till the next season. Also got the chance to find out about some of his other fruits he's working on, so I can look forward to other opportunities later.
Did a bunch of pots with the DIY MicroKote. Not sure if I should've used a better paint, but it doesn't adhere terribly well to the injection molded pots (PE?). Enough to stay put before I fill them, but it does flake off easier than I'd want. I'll probably still be able to reuse them with only minor touch up for big flakes. I wasn't sure of coverage thickness, but I decided to put it only pretty light. Will see how it goes when I repot the smaller ones next year. I used about half the copper and 1 gal of paint and used up not even a third of the gallon on 22 x 1g, 13 x 3.4g, 20 x 5g, 2 x 15g, 7 x 20", 6 x half barrel, 1 x 20g, and 1 x 40g pots, so it's going a long way.
Tried to dig up the guava, but it's looking to be more work than I expected. I'm just going to get a new guava and kill this one. Already put in the replacement manila mango, but I don't think I'll dig out the existing one just yet. Sampled some dropped fruit and it was still yummy. Might as well let that one keep going until the new trees need the space. I didn't realize the true trunk damage until recently though. Apparently earwigs have made a huge nest right under the bark. The trunk is at least 2/3's girdled, yet the tree continues to hold several small fruit and is still pushing new growth. I'm waffling on whether I'm going to mulch this bed at all now since I don't want to have future earwig problems.
Got papaya seeds from U of Hawaii, but not yet sure where to fit them in the garden yet. Will probably intercrop them in between the future mango sites.
Ordered some stuff from Florida Hill and Wellspring - emerald and jewel blueberries; sugarloaf, white gold, elite gold pineapples; mulberry, kiowa blackberry, purple possum passion fruit, allspice, tea, katuk, and ylang ylang.
Picked up some citrus, to stay potted - pixie, moro, cara cara, and meyer. Still looking for a kishu, and that will probably be it.
Pomegranates have space in the suboptimal front yard but hoepfully enough to get something - parfianka, angel red, and eversweet. The parfianka had immature fruit on it already, but it was so yummy already when I removed it.
Tried my first fresh jackfruit - yummy! I planted some of the seeds just for kicks. I don't think I'll ever be able to fit it anywhere.
Another experiment is that I'm going to try growing gold kiwi seedlings all along the brick walls. Might as well cover up the walls and maybe one day something will come out of it, or not.
Also tried some lychees that were just too good. Now I must find one of these, but I'm not sure what variety to get since it wasn't labeled at the grocery.
Also still looking for a good raspberry variety for this area. Seems like Baba would be good, if I could find it.