Author Topic: My coastal southern California garden  (Read 3371 times)

Victoria Ave

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #25 on: December 01, 2021, 12:08:24 PM »
What a homie little garden. I think many of us strive to have orderly little orchards and your food forest is just perfect

JCorte

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #26 on: December 01, 2021, 12:27:16 PM »
Pedroboy,  I can’t help but want to try everything for myself regardless of what I read.  I’ve had a lot of casualties, but the successes are worth it.

ScottR, we love our Don Gillogly!  I’m really surprised that more people aren’t growing it considering how good it tastes.

Satya,  I can’t imagine dealing with that type of weed pressure.  My garden doesn’t get enough water for them to thrive like that.  I’ve always wished it would rain during the summer here and for more sun, but I guess there are always tradeoffs.  Black gold is priceless!  I think of my soil and plants as investments in appreciating assets.

MorroBay,  upside of this cooler weather is that my passiflora antioquiensis is doing great and I’ll likely be able to share a cutting with you next summer if you haven’t found one yet.

Nate, I just finished my morning coffee walking through the garden before checking out the forum.😁
My trees are densely planted, most are 3 to 5 feet apart.  My mango is on turpentine ordered from pine island in Florida.  I have a seedling of Keitt, as well, that I planted around the same time, but it’s always struggled with powdery mildew.  I think I’m going to finally remove it.

Janet


JCorte

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #27 on: December 01, 2021, 12:29:02 PM »
Thank you Victoria Ave!

John B

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2021, 01:35:18 AM »
Very nice garden. You do indeed have an ideal microclimate there. Spent most weekends in Laguna and San Clemente in the '90s. Lovely place. Glad you're keeping its charm!

spaugh

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #29 on: December 02, 2021, 10:34:45 AM »
Janet your pla ts look great.  I wish we had some of that moisture out here. 
Brad Spaugh

simon_grow

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #30 on: December 03, 2021, 12:24:08 PM »
Wow, your garden looks absolutely amazing! Everything is so thoughtfully placed and so well maintained. Your beautiful pictures deserve to be in a gardening magazine to inspire others that an edible landscape that also adds beauty is absolutely possible. Absolutely spectacular!!!

Simon

joe_OC

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #31 on: December 10, 2021, 11:50:57 PM »
Hi Janet - Looks like you have an amazing micro-climate.  Congrats on creating your own private fruit forest.  Of all your fruits, which one stands out as your favorite?

JCorte

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #32 on: December 11, 2021, 12:52:01 AM »
That’s such a hard question!  I love all my fruits, but if I had to choose...

Flavor grenade is one of the best, grows effortlessly, fruits every year, texture is different than other plums, it’s firm and has a crispness, it’s super sweet with acid to balance the sweetness, and will hang on the tree after it’s ripe.

Double Delight nectarine is the best yellow nectarine, but Maria’s Gold is so good and is unlike any other nectarine.

Yoinaishi asian pear is the best variety I’ve ever tasted, so good, but I’m trialing a few more at the farm just in case there’s one better.

Plus all the varieties I’m growing that haven’t fruited yet but taste amazing in my imagination.

Yeah, maybe I can’t choose because I want to keep listing more fruits and nuts too, the Tuono almond tastes like the almond paste in almond croissants.

Janet

joe_OC

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #33 on: December 15, 2021, 01:47:13 AM »
It's really interesting to hear about all your stone fruits.  I hadn't considered growing them because I always thought that I did not have enough chill hours to get good fruit.  My yard until last year was fruitless (except for my Thai Nam Wah bananas).  I had been collecting rare tropical plants for the past 13 years.  As my palms grew up, there was a lot of understory space available.  That's when I found out about Plinias, Myrciarias, and Eugenias.  And why not sprinkle in some mangoes too? 

JCorte

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #34 on: December 15, 2021, 09:54:21 AM »
I would highly recommend adding some stone fruits, fruits are so delicious and easy to grow and can’t compare to anything bought at the store.  Plus they are so beautiful.  When I first started planting my garden, I planted several mangoes, dragonfruits, papayas, bananas as well as stone fruits, blueberries, etc. At that time, there wasn’t much information available on how to grow mangoes or dragonfruit.  I lost a lot of plants due to my heavy clay and lack of heat, but kept planting anyway because I wanted to grow all my favorite fruits.  I’ve lost a lot more plants than have survived. The stone fruits were the easiest depending on the rootstock and variety.  Even high chill apples like Spitzenburg and Ashmead’s Kernel fruit well.  I don’t think the science on winter chill requirements is settled, there must be some other factors. 

I have a large collection of Japoticabas, Garcinias, and Eugenias growing in containers as well, but they have not fruited yet.  The Garcinias have been the most challenging, but I keep selecting for the survivors.  I have more seeds on order.  The jaboticabas have been growing well.  I’ve grafted newer varieties of mangoes onto my Glenn and I’m hopeful now that it’s finally matured and growing well that I’ll get some of the top tier mangoes to fruit as well.  I love my Glenn tree and am amazed how sweet the fruit gets in my cooler weather. 

We bought a farm in Fallbrook last year, so now I’m considering removing a lot of my stone fruits and figs once the varieties are established out there, and planting out my Jaboticabas and other rare plants at home.  Such a difficult decision to remove mature plants, but my space is limited, and I would love to see my other plants have room to grow.  I use to think there was an end goal of getting my garden all set and then I would just maintain the varieties I have.  I was wrong, I keep learning of new fruits I want to try and grow, especially since I discovered this forum a year ago.

Janet

roblack

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #35 on: December 15, 2021, 07:53:20 PM »
Pics of your garden have set my imagination running.

So beautiful too. You have created something special.

Going to go out and kick some of my trees...

RollingInTheWeeds

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #36 on: December 15, 2021, 10:51:22 PM »
Janet, do you have to spray your stone fruit?  That's one thing that has discouraged me about growing them.  I loved the plums we got from the old Santa Rosa tree that came with the house, but then I did a bad job of pruning it and it died.  When I replaced it, the young tree had difficulty with peach leaf curl.  The disease is treatable, but calls for spraying every year -- a couple of times per year, if I remember right.  I'm just not willing to go through all that trouble.

I'm fine with fertilizing, mulching, trimming, watering ... but mixing chemicals and spraying, then cleaning up the sprayer afterwards is too loathsome a job.  Because of that, I'd rather buy stone fruit at the farmers' market than grow it myself.  Having said that, I do miss the flowers.

JCorte

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Re: My coastal southern California garden
« Reply #37 on: December 16, 2021, 09:14:18 AM »
I do not spray any of my trees and never have.  I have two cats and a dog and kept chickens until a couple years ago and my children were really young when I planted the garden.  We all spend more time in the garden than inside so never wanted to risk spraying.  I have never seen leaf curl issues on the plum, pluot, apricot, or almond trees. Mostly the early peach and nectarine will get some leaf curl but they all outgrow them.  The rootstock really matters and really makes a difference in the health and vigor of the trees.  Nemaguard rootstock does the best for me, the trees grow vigorously enough to outgrow the leaf curl.  When I thin the fruit on the trees, I just remove any affected leaves that don’t fall off.  All the trees I grew on Citation and Lovell were stunted and eventually died of disease issues.  I have not had any issues at all with the plum and pluots they are effortless to grow.  I don’t know what rootstocks they are on because I didn’t pay attention to rootstocks when I first began planting.  The Santa Rosa plum and Goldkist apricot are on rootstock that suckers which I don’t really like, but they are easy to cut down and the trees are really healthy.  The pluots (Flavor King and Flavor Grenade) are the easiest and roots don’t send out suckers.  The only stone fruit I’m still trying to figure out are cherries.  All of the commercial cherry rootstocks do not do well on my clay, alkaline soil.  This year I’m experimenting with grafting them onto Adara plum as a rootstock and interstem.  I think it will work, plus it may make a great rootstock for the all the other stone fruits and almonds as well.  I plan on doing a lot of experiments on the Adara.
https://journals.ashs.org/downloadpdf/journals/hortsci/30/6/article-p1316.pdf

Janet