Archive for September, 2008
Our black mission fig tree is full of a second crop of figs this month. A first small crop comes in June, but the September crop is always much larger. Fig trees are one of the few fruit trees I know of that produce multiple crops in a single year. Lemons are another example.
Figs trees can get very large. Our neighbor has a big fig tree. However, our fig tree is crammed into a narrow alley between our house and a fence where it barely has enough space to grow. Yet, it still gets decent crops of figs every year. I don’t know why the former owners thought that this was a good spot to plant a tree. I wouldn’t have planted it there. But now that it’s there and somewhat mature, I am going to leave it there, rather than try to transplant it.
I keep our fig tree trimmed to about 8 feet tall and about 6 feet long. That also makes the tree easy to net and maintain. Netting the tree is a must as the fruit begins to ripen, because the squirrels in our area love to eat figs. They often take one bite out of each fig and then discard it. That’s frustrating, because it’s such as waste.
The figs I have seen for sale in grocery stores sometimes look shriveled. Our home grown figs are so tasty and fresh. I can’t imagine buying shriveled ones. I rarely have a craving to eat more than one or two figs at a time. So I have been learning what they can be used for. Apparently, figs can be used in a wide variety of recipes, including fig newtons and fig bars, which are my favorite fig treats.
September 11 2008 | Figs | No Comments »
This is another photograph that I took today. It’s a picture of a cape plumbago bush in our yard. It is full of light blue flowers right now. It started blooming in July.
This plant is amazing, because it grows and thrives with so little water. I rarely water this plant, and it hasn’t rained here since February! Yet, it grows and blooms anyway. Maybe it gets some hydration from nearby plants that I do water.
Cape plumbago grows fast and needs regular trimming. It’s an incredibly resilient plant. I transplanted it once and didn’t get enough of its roots. After that transplant, it wilted and died back to the ground. But it regenerated a few months later.
Cape plumbago is frost sensitive. This bush died back again during freezing weather in January 2007. I thought it was dead then. But only a few months after the freeze, it started to grow back yet again.
September 06 2008 | Plumbago | 1 Comment »
This picture is a photograph of an eggplant that is growing in one of our two raised garden beds. The eggplant variety is Lavender Touch. I selected this variety because the fruit looks so different from a typical eggplant.
I planted three eggplants as transplants in our garden on July 4. I have been watering them every few days and fertilizing them with water soluble fertilizer once a week.
I was a bit skeptical that these eggplants would produce fruit, because they were planted so late. I have never grown eggplant before this year, and I am thrilled at how easy they are to grow. They have grown substantially, especially in the last few weeks, and they are producing fruit. They seem to be thriving in the hot weather we have been experiencing. The high temperatures here have been mostly in the 90s for the past two weeks.
I have read that, in our climate, many warm weather annual fruits and vegetables can be planted from early spring through early summer, including beans, corn, and squash. I am thinking about spacing out my plantings of some annual fruits and vegetables next year. Perhaps if some transplants are set in the ground in March, some in May and some in July, I can have harvests over a longer season.
Eggplants and peppers seem to require several months of warm weather. Gardening publications typically recommend setting eggplant and pepper transplants in the ground in mid-to-late spring. However, my experience shows that eggplants planted in early summer can produce fruit, at least in our climate.
September 06 2008 | Eggplant | No Comments »
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