Suncrest Peaches & White Peaches

A Suncrest Peach.

We now have Suncrest peaches ripe at the orchard.  Suncrest peaches are a sweet, juicy yellow heirloom peach that are difficult to find.  Since they don't ship well or keep for an extended period of time, they aren't sold in major grocery stores.  We can sell soft and ripe Suncrest at the fruit stand because the peaches are picked into boxes and brought directly to the fruit stand, there's no need for packing and shipping. 

Saving Suncrest peaches and his family farm is the subject of the David Mas Masumoto's book,  Epitaph for a Peach--Four Seasons on My Family Farm.  David Masumoto has written a lot of other good books related to his farm and his family history that are worth reading, too.

We also have a lot of white peaches at the fruit stand right now, including Babcock, Nectar, White Lady, Arctic White and Donut peaches.  White peaches have less acid than yellow peaches, so they have less tangy-ness and more sweetness comes through in their flavor.  Ripe white peaches are also difficult to ship, because they're very delicate and show damage easily.  

A Suncrest peach on the left, an Arctic White peach on the right.

Fruit Stand & Meat Buyers Club

The Massey Ferguson 135, parked in front of a Bartlett pear tree.  It still runs and gets used at the orchard.

Here's what's at the fruit stand now:

• Peaches--Flavor Crest, Red Haven, (yellow free-stone varieties); Babcock, White Lady, "Donut" type (white free-stone varieties)
• Plums--Santa Rosa, Frontier, Satsuma
• Blackberries
• Vegetables--zucchini, summer squash, green beans, eggplant, cucumbers (Japanese and Lemon), Swiss chard, herbs (basil, oregano, rosemary, mint)
• Eggs
• Local Honey--from bees at our orchard

The next delivery from the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club will be at our orchard from 3:30- 5:00 on Friday, July 22nd.  Orders need to be received online by Friday, July 15th at 5:00.  Through the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club you can order local naturally grown pork and lamb, grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, eggs and honey.  The Placer County Real Food Cookbook can be ordered and delivered through the Meat Buyers Club, too.  Monthly deliveries are at our orchard in Granite Bay, at Community Ink in Truckee and at Confluence Kitchen in Auburn.

Orchard Update

A row of winter squash with buckwheat.

We have a lot of peaches and plums now.  The peaches tend to grow bigger and be more flavorful as we pass from the middle to later varieties of the summer. The peach varieties we're picking now are Red Haven and Flavor Crest.  We also picked the first blackberries this week, which illustrates how the unusually cool weather has affected our crops.  Usually blackberries have dried up and we're through picking them by this time. Out in the orchard the last of the pomegranate blossoms are flowering with red trumpet-like flowers,  the jujube have clusters of tiny yellow-green flowers and persimmon fruits are still small, green and hard on the trees.

In my garden this past week I cut down some of the buckwheat that was interplanted with the winter squash. I planted the buckwheat during the last few weeks of May, then planted the winter squash in the buckwheat seedlings at the beginning of June.  The buckwheat acts as both a cover crop and as a living mulch.  Every week or so I've been weeding the rows and  trimming any buckwheat that shades the squash seedlings too much.  The buckwheat stalks are laid down as mulch around the squash plants, and I leave some of the buckwheat growing if it's not going to interfere with the growth of the squash.  Throughout the season, the buckwheat resprouts and reseeds itself as the winter squash plants grow.  Now the squash plants are big enough that I shouldn't have to weed the rows anymore, because the squash will shade out weeds.

We're still waiting for a bigger tomato harvest.  So far each garden has produced only a few ripe tomatoes.  The first eggplants and cucumbers are ready from the gardens and with the cooler weather it looks like we'll be able to harvest beans for a while still.

Blenheim Apricots & Santa Rosa Plums

Black Beauty, Dark Green, Kusa, Success PM Straightneck & Goldy varieties of zucchini

We now have apricots and new varieties of plums and peaches ripe at the orchard, and zucchini is ready from the gardens. You can still pick up ume (Japanese plum), too.

Here's what's at the fruit stand now:

• Plums--Santa Rosa, red beaut, Frontier
  
• Peaches--Bon Jour, Flavor Crest (yellow free-stone varieties)
  
• Apricots--Patterson, Blenheim
• Oranges--Valencia (juice oranges)
• Vegetables--zucchini, Swiss chard, red onions and herbs (basil, rosemary, oregano, mint)
  
• Local Honey--(from bees living at our orchard)
• Eggs

Ume

As the ume ripen, they have a pink blush, then turn yellow.

We have a supply of fresh ume at the fruit stand now.   Ume is a small sour type of Japanese plum that is preserved to make umeboshi and other types of Japanese pickles and condiments. Umeboshi (pickled ume) are sometimes put in the center of rice balls (onigiri).  Ume is very fragrant, sour, sweet and usually salty. Ume fruit is actually more closely related to an apricot than a plum, and the tree is the first of the year to blossom in January. 

Helen makes umeboshi most every year using a process that involves pressing the fruits and salt in a container with a heavy weight on top,  drying the preserved ume in the sun on a cloth for a few days and then putting them in liquid again with purple shiso (perilla).  Customers who have ordered ume in past years have brought us samples of what they've made, too.  We've gotten to taste ume pickled in different ways, ume flavored miso, ginger preserved in ume pickling juice (beni shoga), and ume flavored shoyu, all of which are very delicious.   Most years we sell out of ume so we don't write about it on the website, but this year our neighbors the Koyamas brought us a lot from their trees, so we have enough to mention.  If you want to order ume, you can call the orchard at (916) 791-1656 or stop by the fruit stand.

Red Beauts and Biwa

The first plums of the season are finally ready.  Red Beaut plums are the first plums of all the varieties in the orchard to ripen.  As you can see in photo of the Red Beaut at the left, they're red with slight mottling on the skin and yellow and juicy inside. 

The loquat (or biwa) are ready now, too.  Loquats are a sweet yellow-orange tropical fruits that grow in bunches on the tree.  In the center are two smooth dome-shaped brown seeds that split apart.  Loquats are hard to find fresh, but you can find them canned at Asian markets.

Viviano and a loquat

In the garden the first zucchinis are almost ready, so we should have enough to pick soon.  

At the fruit stand we have cherries, Red Beaut plums, loquats, pink and yellow grapefruit, Valencia oranges, Swiss chard, herbs (oregano, mint, rosemary), honey from bees at the orchard and eggs.

Cherries

The first cherries are ready at the orchard.  These are the first new fruits of the summer season.  At the fruit stand you can find both red and yellow Royal Anne cherries in limited supplies.

We still have Valencia oranges, white grapefruit, Swiss chard, fresh herbs, honey and eggs, too.

Hail, Lacewings & Praying Mantises

We've been having strange weather lately with hail and rain last weekend and yesterday it rained heavily all afternoon.  At the left you can see the view looking out from the fruit stand during last weekend's hailstorm.  Hail almost the size of peas is collecting in the hay by the flowers.  Leaves of plants in the gardens were damaged, but not too badly.  We'll have to wait and see what the hail did to the fruit on the trees because the marks won't show until the fruit grows bigger.  

In the orchard we have been finishing thinning persimmon blossoms and checking and fixing the irrigation.  Chris and Michie have been continuing to sprinkle lacewing eggs on the trees.  The eggs are supposed to hatch into lacewing larvae that will prey upon caterpillers of various orchard pests.   

The gardens are all planted for summer vegetables now. We've been spending time weeding and mulching. Next to plant will be Winter squash and pumpkins. When I put tomato cages around the plants this year I noticed quite a few praying mantis egg cases attached to the wire.  This weekend I saw that one had opened and tiny praying mantises were climbing all around the cage.  Below is a photo I tried to take of them.

Late Spring, almost Summer

Persimmon flowers being visited by bees.

Citrus trees have been blossoming and the wind has been carrying the perfume scent of the flowers around the orchard.  Persimmons trees started flowering and bees have been visiting the clusters of small yellowish flowers. When you stand by a citrus or persimmon tree you can hear the bees buzzing. In the orchard we're continuing to mow and to thin fruit from the apple and nashi (Asian pear) trees.  Chris has been putting out parasitic trichogramma wasp eggs and lacewing eggs in the trees because they are beneficial insects that prey upon larvae of orchard and garden pests.  We finally finished planting summer vegetables and seedlings in the gardens. Because of the late rains and cool weather this spring the gardens got put in later than usual.  

We have stopped mail orders for hoshigaki (hand-dried persimmon) until October.  The temperatures have now warmed enough that the coating of natural powdery sugar on the outside of the persimmons is at risk of melting during shipping. We have hoshigaki strips and small amounts of hoshigaki for sale by request to pick up at the fruit stand only.  

At the fruit stand we also have grapefruit, Valencia oranges, lemons, Swiss chard, fresh herbs (oregano, mint, dill, thyme, lemon balm, rosemary, catnip), local honey from bees at the orchard and eggs. Peas and Harmony has organic tomato, pepper, cucumber, zucchini and melon seedlings for sale at the plant stand. 

The next delivery for the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club will be at our orchard from 3:30- 5:00 on Friday, May, 20th. Orders need to be received by Mon., May 16th at 5:00.  Through the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club you can order local naturally grown pork and lamb, grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, eggs and honey.  The Placer County Real Food Cookbook can be ordered and delivered through the Meat Buyers Club, too.  Monthly deliveries are at our orchard in Granite Bay, at Community Ink in Truckee and at Confluence Kitchen in Auburn.

Spring Planting and Thinning

Organic vegetable seedlings from Peas and Harmony  are now for sale at the fruit stand.  There are healthy tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings, basil plants and other herbs in 4 inch pots.  We also have oranges, grapefruit, lemons, hoshigaki, eggs and honey at the fruit stand. 

At the orchard, wisteria is blooming and green persimmon flower buds are about to pop open.  Zucchini, summer squash, beans and cucumber are sprouting in the gardens.  We started planting tomato seedlings but are holding off on planting more until the night time temperatures warm up a little.  Cherries and ume Japanese plums are getting big, but the fruits are still green.  On the peach trees we've been pulling off pink lumpy leaves affected by peach leaf curl and hand-thinning the fruit.  Thinning the fruit by leaving only 1 or 2 fruit per small branch allows the tree to put energy into growing less fruits of a bigger size.

If you stop by the fruitstand you may notice a cherry tree by the house by the edge of the parking lot.  In the tree is a vinegar trap Chris made to attract and catch spotted wing drosophila (also called cherry vinegar fruit fly).  She also tied agribon around a few of the branches and fruit to see if it works to protect the fruit that was not yet affected by the fruit fly.  This type of fruit fly is a new pest in Placer County that affected a lot of people's cherry crops for the first time last year.

Spring at the Orchard

The path leading from the back of the fruit stand to Obaachan's garden.

It seems to have stopped raining for a while, so we've been able to get started thinning the fruit on the trees and planting the vegetable gardens.  Although most years it's safe to plant tomatoes by tax day (April 15th) here, this year it still seems too wet and cold.  Hopefully next week there will be warm sunny weather for the gardens.  

The next delivery date for the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club is Friday, April 22nd from 3:30-5:00.  Through the Meat Buyers Club you can order locally raised, hormone-free meat, eggs and honey online, then pick it up your order at the orchard.  There are other two other delivery sites in Placer County, too, if the orchard isn't convenient.  To order for the April 22nd delivery,  your order must be sent in before 5:00 PM on Monday, April 18th.

At the fruit stand we have oranges, grapefruit, lemons, kiwi, hoshigaki (Japanese hand-dried persimmon), honey, and eggs. 

Orchard in Bloom

Viviano pretends to eat a pink peach blossom.

The orchard is now blooming with white and pink blossoms from the peach and plum trees.  Come out and visit to take a walk soon, while the blossoms are still out.  Next to bloom should be cherry, Asian pear and apple trees, but since there are less of those in the orchard, the blossoming is not as dramatic.  Persimmon trees bloom after that with hard to see tiny yellowish-green flowers.

Tree planting and pruning are finished now, so we've been doing other work before the busy season begins.  We're starting to prepare the vegetable gardens for next month's planting.  Tosh and others have had time to work on remodeling the fruit stand building to finish up the hoshigaki drying room and to improve access to the public restroom. 

At the fruit stand we have navel and blood oranges, grapefruit, Eureka lemons, local honey, eggs and hoshigaki (hand-dried persimmon).  You can also still order hoshigaki through mail order if you follow the link to the order form here on our web page.