The Variegated Thumb

Our peach tree was planted in April 2007, as a congratulatory gift when I got my real job after graduation.  It was about 3 feet tall then.  Three years later, it’s pushing 15 feet and covered in blooms every spring.  This year we noticed something a little different after the blooms had all been blown away.

Very young peaches on the tree

Our tree is covered in fruit.  Up until this point I had been referring to our tree as a “Flowering Peach” because I thought it was a flowering only variety.  The fruits were growing quickly in the early Summer, but did not get big enough to eat this year.  Now they’re beginning to litter the ground and get squished on our driveway.

Little more mature peach. They didn't get much larger than this - maybe 2" in diameter.

I’m hoping that next year we might actually have some fruits mature enough to eat.  The hot and dry latter half of the Summer might have contributed to the small fruits, but I don’t know very much about that.

Does anyone know if Peach trees (or any other fruiting trees) take some time before producing mature fruits?

Well, I’ve learned that I am better at growing ornamental sweet potatoes by mistake than I am at growing regular potatoes intentionally.

A large sweet potato that formed underneath my ornamental sweet potato plants (Ipomoea batatas 'Blackie')

My regular potato crop this year netted me a small bowl full of potatoes. On the other hand, my ornamental Sweet Potato vines that fill the tulip bed after the tulips are out of season produced a large crop of some pretty big potatoes!

My crop of ornamental sweet potatoes

I have read that these potatoes are actually edible, though they’re not very tasty. Rather than suffer through a bunch of bland potatoes, I plan to save these potatoes and plant them next Spring to fill the tulip bed once again. It will save us some money. In fact, the reason I found these large potatoes, is because I was digging up a couple of the sweet potato plants (Ipomoea batatas ‘Blackie’) to keep in the greenhouse over the winter and replant it next Spring.

I put a couple of plants in a hanging basket in the greenhouse and will try to keep them happy over the winter. But now I have a large group of backups that will probably produce even better for me next year.

I just hauled in my first crop of potatoes.  I didn’t get them in the ground as early in the Spring as I had meant, but they grew anyway.  I was surprised to see the nice, little purple blooms they produced in mid-Summer.

Purple blooms on my potato plants

The plants died about a month ago, so I decided to go ahead and try sticking my fingers in the soil to see what was there.  I was happy to find about 10 potatoes, ranging from small pebble to fist size.

My first potato crop, washed and ready for cooking

Since my first crop isn’t all that plentiful, I cooked them all together in the crock pot with a pork loin and some other veggies.

Crock pot dinner: pork loin, carrots, onions and potatoes

They were great!

In the next month, I’m going to work some compost into the veggie garden soil, so that the dirt is a little looser for next year.  Next Spring, I’ll be trying to get them in the ground as soon as the freezes are over – mid March – and keeping them watered so the plants stick around a little longer and the potatoes can get larger.

Maybe after one more successful crop of cheap seed potatoes, I’ll order some different fun varieties to experiment with, like “All-Blue” or “Fingerlings.”

About a year ago, my parents-in-law brought a small key lime tree back to me from their vacation to Florida.

My Key Lime Tree (Citrus aurantifolia) covered in buds, summer 2008. Even though the buds are pink the flowers are solid white when they open.

It bloomed all summer long and developed fruit at the end of the summer, much to my surprise and satisfaction.  There were four full-sized key limes, just a little smaller than the average lime.

Small key lime buds developing over the winter.

I was even more surprised to see that the plant continued to develop buds and bloom inside through the entire winter, sitting on the counter in my bathroom.  The first several winter blooms did not develop fruit, but I was very happy to have the bright little flowers filling the bathroom and hallway with their potent fragrance.  You could smell them just casually walking by the plant.

Mature key lime bud that formed this winter. Notice this bud is solid white, while the summer buds were pink.

I think the fact that this plant bloomed at all throughout the winter was due to the copious amounts of fertilizer pellets that were worked into the soil by the grower.  I just repotted this little tree yet, and there is still plenty of fertilizer left in the soil for its growing and fruiting pleasure.  [Imagine what my other plants might look like if I actually fertilized!  I'm going to try fertilizing some of my plants this summer.  I have a couple of plants that have never bloomed for me, even though they seem to be large and healthy - a grapefruit tree, a bougainvillea, apostle plant/walking iris, a shell ginger, and a white bird of paradise.]

Winter key lime open blooms. These are the most fragrant blooms I have ever smelled.

The last of the winter blooms started to dry out the first week of Spring – around March 23rd.  I casually glanced at one of the blooms, brown petals falling to the floor and Hark!  What the heck is that!?! There was a lime developing at the base of the center stamen!

Key lime fruit beginning to develop at base of stamen. (mid to late March 2009)

Lime developing at base of a different stamen after petals have fallen away. I have about 10 pictures, trying to get one in focus. Alas, this is the best it got.

How could this be?  There weren’t any pollinators around, except for the occasional moth that flew into the house on nice days when we left the door open.  I’m kind of doubting that one of those moths managed to pollinate my lime tree before I hunted it down and escorted it back outside (preferably alive, sometimes dead).  I am suspecting that this is one of those self-pollinating varieties that I have seen available for other fruiting plants.  [I am planning on growing some kiwi from a self-pollinating vine.]

Key lime fruit starting to develop

No doubt about it, there was definitely a little key lime beginning to form.  I’m really happy that I happened to notice it at this stage.  The first fruits that formed last summer caught me completely off guard and I don’t think I got any pictures of them until they were full grown and cut into slices!  But not this time around.

Key lime fruit starting to develop - different angle

Something starting to resemble a small lime (last week of April 2009)

When I started writing this post, I expected I would be picking my lime and slicing it over some chicken sometime in mid-May.  In actuality, it is now late July and I haven’t yet picked it.  But I think it is about ready to be picked now.  Maybe Monday night we’ll have some lime seared chicken for dinner!

A full sized key lime, ready for the plucking (late July 2009)

FYI: I found another blog where the inflorescence -> infructescence process was photo-documented.

Do you have any citrus trees that have produced fruit?

This weekend the weather was beautiful.  Christie and I spent several hours outside, cleaning up our yard and preparing our side flowerbed to be a vegetable garden.  The flowerbed runs the length of the side of our house – about 2′ by 20′.  It has been filled with daylilies for years, and since the flowerbed is not full sun, the daylilies have not been blooming, only multiplying.  We dug up about a third of the daylilies last year and tackled about half this time around.  So now there is just a small remnant of daylilies on the other side of the Nandina bush.

The side flower (soon-to-be-vegetable) bed after having the daylilies removed

We have been transplanting the daylilies to a very sunny location at my wife’s parents’ business – the Thunderbird wedding chapel.

The Daylilies ready to be transplanted

Our vegetable gardening plans for this year consist of potatoes in this side bed with a self-pollinating kiwi vine growing up trellis mounted on the wall.  We are also going to plant tomatoes in pots so they can be moved to the sunniest locations.  And I think I will try growing broccoli in pots this year, too.  I might try making the plantings ornamental, with some flowers around the broccoli plants.

We bought our first seed potatoes, but decided not to plant them yet since there are more freezing nights in this week’s forecast.  The two potatoes I bought are Red La Soda and Red Norland.  I think I would like to buy a large white potato variety as well, but there weren’t any available this weekend.  I had planned on ordering my seed potatoes, but when I saw these in the store, I realized I could save a heck of a lot of money by buying them here.  I spent 93 cents on my two seed potatoes.

Red Morland and Red La Soda seed potatoes

I’ve got lots of cooking plans for my potatoes, so I hope they produce well for me.