Now I've done it.

I was at Home Depot buying tree-rings for two miniature apple trees on Thursday. They are reasonably cheap, cement-composite edging that will keep grass away from the tree trunks, hold in the compost and mulch, and make my life slightly easier, less maintenance. I also installed them on Thursday, my day off, removing grass from around those baby trees, and applying a mulch of compost. While at the store, I saw bare root fruit trees. Well, sort of bare root, they have been placed into large plastic containers with potting soil so they look like container-grown, but I think they are really bare root.

I don't know what's got into me. Yesterday I returned and bought a Montmorency Cherry and a Stanley Plum. The cherry is another tart (pie) cherry. I don't know if it is red juice - something I like. Rationale is as with the other tart cherries, later bloom less likely to be killed by frost, compared with sweet cherries. Plus I enjoy making pies and it's hard to find real pie-cherries at the grocery store. The pic is from Edenbros.com. References list Montmorency as self-pollinating as well, so no concerns about going from flower to flower and tree to tree with a paintbrush. Plan is to keep it pruned small as I do all of my fruit trees. I don't know where I will plant it. Dumb idea to buy a tree not knowing where it will be, even though I've thought about it for several days.

Similar for the Stanley Plum. Not sure where I will plant it. This is also listed in most references as self pollinating. Unlike my other plum trees, which are Asian plums, this is a European plum, not the same species at all so really qualifies as a totally different beast. So I'm not replicating other fruits. Pic is from EdibleLandscaping.com, which I like very much but is too far from me.This pic of Stanley Plum flowers also from EdibleLandscaping.com. Which kind of makes the point, my "backyard" orchard isn't all about fruit, it's about flowers, fragrance, growing stuff, puttering, and super-slow food, and a "green" thing to do. I'll find a spot for it, I have several places in mind.

Part of my rationale is I suspect the genetic dwarf peaches won't last too long, and I'll want replacements. Peach Leaf Curl is too much hassle. It takes a few years to get fruits, so I want a head start. I can move them next Spring if needed, they won't be too big. The trees are actually quite large, though, 6 foot. I will prune them back severely once Spring is here, to promote low branching, "Backyard Orchard Culture" low branch training.

Monday off, with chores

I forgot that I had today off, and went to work. After insisting that I was scheduled, I looked at the schedule and... oops.

So I came home, cleared some more grass-invaded border, hauled a truckload of prunings and brush to the recycling & composting center, and returned home with a half cubic yard of composted yard trimmings. Moved two roses into a better spot. Neither had great roots, but they should be OK. This will be a "Darwin year": where survival of the fittest means they either make it with the care that I can give, or they don't. No pampering for fruits and roses and shrubs that don't thrive. Even so, I surrounded the moved roses with compost, then did the same with the night-planted Indian Free peach and Almaden Duke cherry. Placed circular concrete aggregate border around 2 miniature apple trees (Liberty and Jonagold), clearing / weeding the center and adding a couple inches of compost. So no more grass invasion, or at least minimal. I'm gradually installing edging to prevent grass invasion along the entire front border, but it's a lot of work pulling out the old grass, so it takes time.

What else.... moved a yellow shrub peony to a raised location, above a retaining wall. It only grows to about a foot tall, and the flowers, while very beautiful, huge, and fragrant, droop and can't be seen unless the viewer is on their knees. This is a weird peony, not big enough to be a "tree peony" but with woody stems that add an inch or two per year, not dying down like other peonies. It's nice as a cut flower. I'm convinced it's an intersectional, a cross between tree peony and herbaceous peony, much like this one - Garden Treasure. (Wow, these cost a fortune! It came with the house, I'm too cheap to pay that much or a plant!) Peonies don't like being moved, but it's been moved before and did OK after a year of sulking. This peony sends out underground stolons with new stems, so it spreads laterally instead of vertically. I cut off a couple as a gift, maybe they will survive too. The main plant was also given a liberal ground covering couple of shovel fulls of compost.

Oh, planted 2 half-barrels with the new Seascape day-neutral strawberries. That's about a dozen plants, so I need to figure out what to do with the other dozen.

Orchid Show at Missouri Botanical Garden

This weekend I paid a visit to my ill mom in the midwest. On the trip back, I stayed overnight in St. Louis. My choice of dates was interesting - this was just after one of the greatest blizzards in recent history. Still, Saturday the snow stopped and the roads cleared and I had a chance to visit the Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This is something I was looking forward to, a lot.


My photos don't do it justice. It was amazing. The orchids were huge, the room was filled with fragrance, and the displays were awesome. I would make the trip just for this alone.

This Phaius may be recognizable from a recent posting, under an entirely different name. From the illustrations from the "Temple of Flora". Interesting coincidence.

Love the Cymbidiums.

The displays dwarf the visitors.

There are various Mayan-inspired displays. Makes me wonder if Bateman's "The Orchids of Mexico and Guatemala" was the inspiration. Too much coincidence not to be the case.

The orchid show was not in the climatron, but afterwards I walked around the botanical garden, and this was a nice scene of that massive tropical "flying saucer". Much of the garden was almost abandoned - it was serenely beautiful.



Oh, that's me.

Planting in the dark

Wow, the Almaden Duke Cherry and the Indian Free (Blood) Peach came yesterday via UPS. I knew they would be coming because UPS sent an email

No chance this weekend to plant them. I dug the holes before work, and when I got home there was the package. So I planted them in the dark, via flashlight.

Nice looking trees, as usual for Raintree.

The strawberry plants are in the fridge until I can plant them.

New Fruits for 2011

I've been cleaning up the front border, basically a renovation after a couple of years of neglect. In the process I'm moving towards less ornamental and lower maintenance. I'm putting in edging to keep grass invasion limited (a challenge and the biggest weed problem), and mulching with a medium bark nugget for decreased cat digging - seems to be working so far.

I cut down a Golden Delicious apple tree that has been in place for 8 years without bearing a single edible apple. Each year it blooms then disease strikes. It's not good for my garden/climate and time to get over it. Plus, I cut down a volunteer Japanese maple, nothing special, and taking "forever" to make a nice size. A fruit tree would be perfect in that spot, would look better, bloom nicely, be the perfect size, and provide sustainance. I've calculated that there is space for 3 eventually well-pruned fruit trees as a result of this cleanup.

Among the challenges here in my Portland Oregon - area yard, mild winter combined with late frost leads to some of the biggest fruit-growing disappointments. Sweet cherries bloom early, and last year the frost took a lot of them. Even so, we had several big bowls-full. Sour cherries have great flavor, and bloom later. I have added a "Sure-fire" sour cherry that looks like it will have a good year this year (3rd season) and now will add another variety.

This is Almaden Duke from Raintree Nursery. I'm hoping for a sort of wild-cherry flavor. It's on Gisela-5 dwarfing rootstock. After placing the order, I've been looking online for this variety and it isn't discussed much. I'm suspicious it's more in the sweet than tart cherry category, but I don't know what that will mean about bloom time.

This is Beauty Plum. The pic is from Dave Wilson Nurseries. I hope that my Shiro and Hollywood both bear this year. Last year (2nd or 3rd year, I forget) the HOllywood had one and the Shiro had none. It's probably their youth, but reading about pollination I get very conflicting data. Shiro is either self pollinating, or partial, or not at all, depending on the website. Same for Hollywood. Plus they don't pollinate each other. So, I'm adding Beauty, which Raintree Nursery states pollinates both Shiro and Hollywood, and is very precicious, bearing in the nursery row. So probably at least blooming in the first year and more likely second year, to provide pollen for the other varieties. Plus of course they claim wonderful flavor.

Raintree lists Beauty as one of its earliest ripening plums, Shiro in mid-season, and Hollywood as late. That should provide a spread of harvest as well as color and flavor. (Arggh, just now, looking at Raintree, Beauty won't pollinate Shiro. I can't win!) Here is a site (Wolcott Garden Treasures) claiming that Shiro can be pollinated by Hollywood and Beauty, and vice versa. WSU Extension lists Shiro, Hollywood, and Beauty as good for Western Washington.

The Peach-leaf-curl has also been a source of disappointment. This Indian Free peach is reported as resistant. I think I don't really need a genetic dwarf variety if I prune carefully. Also from Raintree. Needs a pollinizer; other peaches are nearby. Here's a website with a gorgeous pic of this peach; amazing. This peach is very well-regarded on the Dave Wilson nursery website as well, although being a commercial site, I doubt that they wouyld describe any peach negatively. " For some tasters, the unique white (and red!) peach ‘Indian Free’ (or Indian Blood Free - origin obscure) is still unsurpassed among the white fruits. The intense aroma and tart-sweet flavor of a fully tree-ripe Indian Free has to be experienced to be believed. " Apparently the "Indian Free" and "Indian Cling" are different varieties, and my be referred to as "Indian blood" as well. Not self fertile, but apparently many have been grown from seed, which would mean they are genetically diverse.

Interesting article about the history of Peaches in the American colonies of the SouthEast here: "Historians believe that peach trees were first introduced into the colonial settlements of the United States by the French explorers in 1562 at territories along the Gulf coastal region near Mobile, Alabama, then by the Spaniards who established Saint Augustine, Florida in 1565 on the Atlantic seaboard. The peach trees were planted from peach seed imported from Europe in an effort to establish a self sustaining, agricultural. fruit tree product to feed the colonists. American Indians spread the planting of the peach trees throughout vast territories by transporting the peach seed to other tribes that lived in the interior regions. This new crop of fruit was fast growing, producing a delicious peach two or three years from planting. The trees were so productive and vigorous that sometimes, widespread impenetrable thickets became established from the peach seeds that fell to the ground from fruit unharvested. The illusion was formed by settlers after 1600 that the peach trees were native to the United States, since they were so widely spread and grew so vigorously everywhere. " also "In December of 1795, Jefferson planted 1151, peach trees after he had experimented with planting in 1807, the "black plumb peach of Georgia," (Indian Blood Cling Peach). This naturalized peach wonder had been planted throughout the State of Georgia by the Indians and was a dark-red velvety color with tiger-like striping. This fragrant peach was extremely desirable because of its rich coloring and taste... Jefferson believed that this Indian cling blood peach was a cross between naturalized peach trees and a French cultivar peach, "Sanguinole."

Finally, the strawberry borders are invaded by grasses. I've learned that I like having a harvest spread out, not all at once. So I am adding Seascape Strawberry, also from Raintree. These will be in containers. As it happens, I left containerized cannas outside this winter and they froze, so will have a convenient place to plant the new strawberries. It's hard to find a reasonably unbiased review of strawberry varieties - here's a comparison on growingstrawberriesguide.com; they seem to like Seascape. Of course it's all person- and locality-dependent, but most of the other "reviews" that I could find were really just ads. I may also try a local source of another variety, to compare and increase my odds of getting some good berries.