Loquat

We just picked loquat (biwa) and Royal Ann cherries over the past few days.  We also have the first red beaut plums.  Red beaut plums have red skin and yellow interiors, and are the first variety that we grow to ripen for the year.  We expect to have apricots by next week.  Because of the cold weather this spring, all of these fruits are a week or so later getting ripe than usual.  

Last weekend, for the second time I had to replant about two rows of tomato plants in the garden because they had frozen in a frost the week before.  It was really helpful that Julie and Alison from Peas and Harmony had big tomato plants they could give me so that I could replant both times. Otherwise I would have had only about a row of plants alive to produce tomatoes for the fruit stand. Now I can concentrate on getting the winter squash planted in the rows that are left in the garden. 

In the orchard now the olive and persimmon trees have just finished blooming.  The pomegranate trees are still blossoming.  Pomegranate trees have very distinctive reddish orange flowers, as you can see in the photo above.    
 
Here's what's at the fruit stand now:

Plums-Red beaut
Cherries-Royal Ann
Loquat (biwa)
Oranges-Valencia
Grapefruit-white variety (last ones)
Organic Plants from Peas and Harmony-tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, winter squash, basil and other herbs 
Honey--from our bees
Eggs--from our chickens

Cherries & Sactown Magazine

We picked the first cherries this week and they're now for sale at the fruit stand.  We had to pick them a little earlier than we wanted, because rain was expected again.  It has continued to be cool here with many record lows for the month so far.  Some of the tomato plants I replanted even frosted again this past weekend.  I pruned off the frosted parts, but if the plants survive the tomatoes will probably still be delayed. 

A nice article featuring our orchard comes out in this month's Sactown Magazine  "Best of the City" issue.   The article is called "Home Eat Home" and it's about 10 local farms and their specialties.  Otow Orchard is noted for persimmons.  The article isn't online, but you can find the magazine for sale in a lot of places throughout our area.

At left is a photo of ripening loquat (or biwa) on the tree.  Most are now yellow to orange and a little riper than this, so they should be ready to pick soon. 

Oranges

Lately we've been busy thinning fruit from the peach and plum trees, planting the vegetable gardens and fixing irrigation problems.  There were two cold nights this past week that killed some of the tomato plants in the colder parts of the orchard, so a lot of the tomato plants we planted a few weeks ago partially froze.  Probably they'll have to be replanted.


At the Fruit Stand we now have: 
--Oranges (Valencia) 
--Grapefruit (White variety)
--Lemons (Eureka) 
--Organic Vegetable Seedlings from Peas and Harmony--tomatoes, peppers,  eggplant, cucumber, squash, herbs 
--Eggs 
--Honey 

At left is a photo of  the Valencia orange tree at the orchard. 

Unusual Events

This weekend, while we were busy planting the vegetable gardens and thinning peaches from the trees, a few unexpected things happened.

The first was that we found a snake curled up on the window sill in the basement.  As far as anyone could remember, no rattle snakes had ever been seen at the orchard, but we were still worried that maybe that's what it was.  When Tosh looked closely at the snake he could see by its markings that it was actually a young gopher snake.  He picked it up carefully and took it outside to a gopher hole in a garden.  Above is a photo of Mizuki looking at the snake. 

Also, the neighbors' turkey attracted a wild turkey and they both wandered around the orchard together.  The neighbors' turkey is a male and it spent hours showing off the for female wild turkey by trying to intimidate people at the orchard.  He would puff out his feathers, drag the tips of his wings on the ground to make a hissing sound, and go anywhere there were people and circle around them.  Eventually the neighbor came over to make the turkey walk home and the wild turkey followed. In the photo above, the turkeys are in the parking lot by the fruit stand, the male is in front. 



The third unusual thing that happened was that I found something strange rapidly growing and spreading in my garden.  Early Saturday morning during the 4-H organic gardening group, we noticed something that looked like gooey curdled milk spilled on the edge of a garden bed.  The kids poked it and it turned reddish brown within a few minutes.  Later in the afternoon I went back to the same garden bed and found that the gooey patch was gone from where it had been, but that another patch of something was a little ways away down the bed.  It was spreading along the lines of irrigation tape in the rows. This patch wasn't gooey-looking, but instead was bumpy and whitish yellow like tiny cauliflower.  You can see a photo of it above, growing near some bean seedlings. 

I showed the thing growing in the garden to Toshio and he thought maybe it was a type of slime mold.  At home we looked up information about slime molds and found that what was in my garden matched the description and photos of a type of slime mold actually called Fuligo septicam or "dog vomit slime mold".  Wikipedia had an article with photos of examples of  "dog vomit slime mold". 

The next morning when I went to the garden, the patch was smoothing out and turning darker, from whitish yellow to yellowish brown, like browning meringue.  By the end of that day it was marbled light brown. All of this fits the description of what dog vomit slime mold is supposed to be like, so it seems likely that that's what it is.  This type of slime mold feeds on bacteria, and doesn't usually grow on living plants, although it can do that.  Since the mold wasn't growing on any live plants and it was probably helping the compost break down, I left it as it was.  I did decide not to water that area for a few days though, because maybe this mold formed because conditions had been too wet in the garden bed.  Below is a photo of how it looked late Sunday afternoon. 
  

Seedlings and Sad Chicken News

Above is a photo of our chickens earlier in the winter out in a garden.  You can see the door of the chicken dome to the right.  For most of the winter the chickens were able to get out in the orchard during the day.  Near sundown they would return to the chicken dome to roost. 

Peas and Harmony now has organic vegetable seedlings for sale at our orchard.  They have many kinds of healthy organic tomato, pepper, eggplant, squash and other plants that are ready for planting .  Their website is now set up so that people can also order and pay for plants through the Peas and Harmony online and pick up your order later at the fruitstand. Of course, you can also still just stop by the orchard and look at the plants and pay at the fruit stand.

The sad news about the chickens is that a few days ago some dogs came over to the orchard and killed most of our chickens. The chickens were not even out in the orchard, a dog actually got into the chicken dome.  Eight chickens and our rooster were killed, so now there are only two chickens left to live in chicken dome just by themselves.

Now we have to decide what to do.  Do we want to raise more hens from chicks or try to get adult laying hens somehow so we can keep having enough eggs to sell?   If we start with chicks now, they won't lay eggs until about August.  Also, maybe we have to build a new pen or have more than one smaller pen that we could move around the orchard more easily.  The chicken dome we have now requires three people to move it and it's now  bent a bit from the wind.

The fruit stand is still open regular hours, although it hasn't been very busy lately.  Hours are 9-6 Tues.-Sat., 10-6 on Sunday.  Mondays we're closed. 

Here's what we have for sale at the fruit stand now:  

• Organic Vegetable Seedlings from Peas and Harmony 
• Grapefruit--white variety
• Oranges--navel
• Lemons--Meyer, Eureka
• Asian Pear--okusankichi (small quantity left)
• dehydrated fruit from our orchard
• Eggs
• Firewood--seasoned firewood (peach, plum, pear, persimmon)

Spring at the Orchard

In the photo above you can see a newly planted tree that replaced the old plum tree lying on the ground behind.  The plum tree that was pulled out was partly hollow inside, but still flowered.  To see a set of photos taken of Spring at the orchard, click here.  

We are still spending time planting trees and pruning some of the later trees like the persimmons and olive.  In a few weeks we plan to start planting the vegetable gardens with tomato and summer squash.

At the fruit stand we now have grapefruit (yellow and pink), navel oranges, lemons (Eureka and Meyer), Okusankichi Asian pear, honey and eggs.  

Blossoming and Rain

Trees are still blossoming, even though we've been getting a lot of rain the past few weeks.  

If you look closely in the photo at the left, or click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see a bee visiting cherry blossoms at the orchard.   

Lately we've been digging holes to plant new trees and finishing up pruning and raking brush.  We've also been planting and watering  vegetable seedlings growing in our small greenhouse.  We hope to be able to plant seedlings in the gardens during the first few weeks of April.  We started some ourselves, and we're also ordering some seedlings from Peas and Harmony.

The chickens have been enjoying roaming around in the orchard every day.  We're not sure if they can still be free-ranging after we plant the gardens, though.  Maybe we'll have to just find a way to block them from the garden beds while the plants are still small.

Orchard in Bloom

A lot of the orchard's trees started blooming this past week.  White and pink flowered plum and peach trees are spread throughout the orchard.  The apple, pear and persimmon trees will be later to bloom, just as their fruit is ready later, also.   The fruit stand is still open regular hours, and people are free to come visit the orchard any time we're open.  It's a nice time to come out and take a walk.  The fruit stand produce variety is at its minimum because only a few fruits are in season.

Here's what's at the Fruit Stand now:

• Grapefruit--white variety
• Oranges--navel
• Lemons--Meyer, Eureka
• Asian Pear--okusankichi (small quantity left)
• Kiwi--small quantity left
• dehydrated fruit from our orchard
• Eggs
• Honey--raw, untreated honey from bees at our orchard
• Firewood--seasoned firewood (peach, plum, pear, persimmon)

Chickens and Eggs

This  past weekend we found that two of our new chickens have been laying clutches of eggs around the orchard.  Near the house Viviano discovered a nest of blue-green eggs (in the photo at left).  We have since noticed that one of the new Americana chickens named "Ruby" runs straight out to this nest every morning as soon as she gets let out to lay a new egg there.


One of the new black sex-link chickens also had a clutch of eggs at the back of the garage that she had been laying.  On Monday night she didn't return to the chicken dome with the other chickens and instead stayed out to sit on her eggs.  She's been sitting on the nest since then, so it seems that she's trying to hatch them now.  This chicken chose a semi-protected spot in the tall grass next to the building, inside a roll of chicken wire that was lying on its side to make her nest.  To help keep the rain off I leaned an old piece of a fiberglass shower wall against the building above her.  Hopefully a coyote doesn't want to bother with coming so close to the house and getting through the chicken wire to eat her during the three weeks she'll have to be sitting there on the nest. 

Above you can also see Viviano offering grass to the new Maran hen at the edge of the garden.  

Budding Branches

Above you can see a branch on a plum tree, with blossoms just about to burst open. The ume (Japanese sour plum) trees were the first to blossom a few weeks ago. When you walk under the ume tree by the house you can hear it buzzing with bees.

It has rained quite a bit during the past few weeks. After about 3 years of low rainfall, it seems that the rainfall in our area is now at about average for this time of year. Lately we've been spending time pruning the trees, raking brush and preparing garden beds. We just got in an order of new trees this weekend, so soon we'll have to start planting them in the orchard.

Here's what's at the Fruit Stand now:

• Mandarins--owari satsuma (very last ones)
• Oranges--navel
•  Grapefruit--white variety
•  Lemons--Meyer, Eureka
•  Asian Pear--okusankichi
•  Kiwi
•  Apples--Pippin
•  Eggs
•  Honey--raw, untreated honey from bees at our orchard
•  Firewood--seasoned firewood (peach, plum, pear, persimmon)

Otow Orchard on California Country

We will be featured on an episode of "California Country" that's showing this week on ABC television stations throughout California. The episode features some of the different types of persimmons we grow, the orchard and our family. It will be shown locally on KXTV channel 10 Sacramento on Friday, Jan. 22 at 11:30 AM.  The episode is also about celery, brussel sprouts and winter gardens.  Click here for a link to the website.  California Country magazine also did a very good article about hoshigaki (dried persimmons) at our orchard a few years ago.  Click here for the link to the article.

At the fruit stand we now have small amounts of hoshigaki for sale.  We finished sending out mail orders, called people on the waiting lists and found that we actually have a little bit of hoshigaki left.  Mandarins are gone, but we now have clementines, navel oranges, grapefruit, lemons, apples, kiwi and soft persimmons. 

Winter Transition Time

Last week we picked the first grapefruit and naval oranges.  These are the last two fruits of the winter that we'll be picking. As these last citrus fruits are ripening at the orchard, the blossoms on the ume trees are about to pop.  Ume is a small, sour Japanese plum, and one of the first spring fruits.   We expect the late spring/early summer fruits such as ume, loquat, cherries, and apricots in May. 

The last few sticks of hoshigaki are drying on the racks and we are trying to get the last orders packed and sent out.  Most of the persimmons are soft now, so the week and the next will probably be the last few weeks we'll have any available.  

Here's what you'll find at the fruit stand:

• Mandarins--owari satsuma
• Oranges--navel
• Grapefruit--white variety
• Lemons--Meyer, Eureka 
• Persimmons--hachiya (soft), fuyu (softening)
• Asian Pear--okusankichi
• Kiwi
  
• Apples--fuji, pippin
• Eggs
• Honey--raw, untreated honey from bees at our orchard
  
• Firewood--seasoned firewood (peach, plum, pear, persimmon)