Dallas Fruit and Vegetable Grower

Ripe Mulberries in Texas

 

Our mulberry trees have been fruiting for the last 8 weeks.   They are just now finishing up.  

The amount of fruit that comes off these trees is staggering.  The photograph above shows all of the fruit in varying stages of ripeness.  The fruit are difficult to see.

The photograph below is a close-up of the tree branch in the left quarter of the photograph above. You can see the fruit more clearly in it.  At an early stage, the fruit is white.  Then the fruit turns red and is sour.  When fully ripe, the fruit turns a deep blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experts often advise to never plant a mulberry tree near a patio, pool or sidewalk because they are messy.  Those experts are correct.  The trees drop a ton of ripe fruit.  One of our two trees is over the vegetable garden which has decomposed granite paths.  You can see the large number of fruit that had dropped on the pathways in the photograph below.

When the fruit are dropping, we have to check our shoes before walking inside the house because the juice can stain if you walk on the rugs with these on the bottom of your shoes. 

 

 

I am amazed that any of the fruit actually makes it to the ground.  The reason for my amazement is because of the huge flocks of birds that sit all day long in the mulberries gorging themselves on the fruit.  In particular, we have a large flock of cedar waxwings that migrate to our yard each January - February to feast upon the privet berries in late Winter and then move on to the mulberries.  Thes mulberry trees provide nourishment over an extended period of approximately two months or more.

You can see some of the cedar waxwings in the photograph below, if you look closely.

 

 

 

Here is another close-up of that same photograph.

 

 

 

The photograph below shows one of the full sized trees in early, early Spring before the tree has leafed out.   As the season progresses, the trees become very lush. 

 

 

 

These trees were on the property when we moved in.   I suspect that they are morus rubra.  I have been somewhat critical of the taste of the fruit when fully ripened, describing it as being "insipid."  I think, though, that I have been too quick to judgment.  The criticism of the fruit is that it is very, very sweet but loses  its acidity and excitement when ripe.  However, this year, I thought the fruit tasted particularly excellent when eaten straight off the tree.   I think, personally, I prefer the fruit before it is fully ripened, when it still has just a slight  touch of red and, therefore, a bit of acidity.  When I eat it this way, it has a great deal more robustness, and I like it quite a lot.  Furthermore, I think mulberries are just much better eaten straight off the tree as you walk through the garden. Collected in bulk and refrigerated for later eating, it just seems to lose some of the flavor for fresh eating.

Black mulberries - morus nigra - have a much better reputation in terms of taste.  Consequently, I planted four Black Beauty morus nigra mulberries from Burnt Ridge Nursery last year.  They are planted on stocky, low grafted rootstock and should grow in bush form for easier picking.   They are still immature and did not fruit this Spring.  I am looking forward to fruit from them next year.

Blackberries in Full Bloom in Dallas

Our blackberry bushes have been in full bloom for the last three weeks, with some of the earlier blooming varieties already forming small berries and the later varieties blooming in strength.  As previously posted, we have Navaho, Arapaho, and Ouachita.  All are thornless and were developed at the University of Arkansas.

The plants on the south side that get a fair amount of shade have done much better than the plants on the north side of the property that get significantly more sun.

Here is a photo of one of the bushes on the south side.  You can see that it is loaded with blooms.

Here is another photograph of the bed of blackberries on the south side of our front yard.  There are two rows of blackberry bushes interplanted with pear trees.  At both ends of the bed, we have a couple of elderberry bushes.  This photograph was taken shortly after a morning rain, so the plants are heavy with dew.   Blackberry bushes in the landscape have a very arching characteristic.   They have somewhat of a wilder look to them, so you would want to plant them in a side bed as opposed to a planting bed in front of the house.

 

 

Here is another photograph of the same bed taken in 2010, two years ago, from the opposite direction.  The bed has really filled out during that period of time.

 

 

Figs

 

Several of our figs are making some big, good looking breba fruit.  I am expecting a big crop of fruit from our five fig trees this year.

We have three trees that were planted in 2010 as 5 gallon trees from Bob Wells Nursery and now have reached a good size.   This will be the first year of production for them.  They are LSU Purple, Black Mission, and Texas Everbearing.  The photograph above is of an unripe fruit from our Texas Everbearing fig tree.

We have two other fig trees that were planted in 2009 and are really large by now.  When I ordered them, I thought they were Brown Turkey and Celestial varieties.  However, a few other trees that I bought from this nursery were not what the nursery represented them to be, and based on the fruit characteristics, I think these two fig trees were also mislabeled.  The fruit from these two trees has always had a light, yellowish-green skin with a whitish-light pink interior, which is inconsistent with what a Brown Turkey or Celestial fig should look like.   I am not certain what type of fig trees these, in fact, are; however, I suspect that they might be Conadrias or  Lattarula/Italian Honey  or Peter's Honey figs.

Here is an old photograph of a ripe fig from one of these trees.

 

 

Fragrant Spring Flowers and Bushes in Texas

 

When we planned the garden for our Dallas suburban yard several years ago, we wanted to incorporate as many fragrant plants and shrubs as possible.

Many of these are not common to Texas but are still suitable for zone 8.

One of those plants is the Beautybush (not to be confused with the Beautyberry).  It is an old-time favorite that you don't really read a lot about nowadays or find in nurseries.

Now in their fourth year in the ground, our two Beautybushes are blooming for the first time.  They were originally planted as very small one gallon plants.  Today, they are still fairly sparse but reach four to five feet in height with arching branch patterns.  

The photograph above is of a branch filled with Beautybush blooms.  The blossoms are lightly fragrant and can be detected from a short distance away.  As the shrubs get larger over time, they should project much greater fragrance in our yard.

Elsewhere in the garden, our fragrant flowering tobacco (Nicotiana) have the greatest horsepower for filling the yard with a lovely smell in the evenings.  We have approximately twelve of these plants in the back yard, and I would like to plant many more.  When the breeze catches their fragrance in the evening, they fill the entire backyard with their smell.

 

While still fairly immature, our mock oranges are also about to bloom and will be counted on to fill the yard with their citrus-blossom smells.

In the front yard, several Firewitch Dianthus are big-time producers in the morning and late afternoon, and I would love to fill every plant border with them.  They are hardy and drought tolerant and among my favorites.

As the year continues, we will also be counting on the following plants and vines for fragrance in our yard and garden:  magnolia stellata, dwarf fothergilla, confederate jasmine vines, passionflower vines, summersweet bushes, hosta plantaginea, elderberry bushes, butterfly bushes, purple coneflowers, lavender plants, and sweet autumn clematis, among others.

I also have loose plans to start heliotrope, mignonette, and additional flowering tobacco from seed. I would love to fill the backyard borders with them.  With any luck, although the heliotrope and mignonette are not winter hardy, they may reseed.

Red Admiral Invasion - More Butterflies in 2012

One thing is certain for 2012, I have significantly more butterflies this year than in year's past.  Perhaps it is because the caterpillar and chrysalis population fared better with the milder winter .  Perhaps it is because the weeds, herbs and plants, which their caterpillars depend upon, thrived with  the milder winter and have provided a greater food supply.  Or perhaps, we have a smaller wasp population this early in the year permitting more caterpillars to metamorphose into butterflies.  Whatever the reason, we have a ton of butterflies of all different varieties in our garden this year.  (In the last few years, our local butterfly expert, Dale Clark, has written several articles about how past droughts and wasp infestations have impacted the caterpillar populations:  article 1 and article 2.)

The other day, I went out into the backyard where our Little Henry Sweetspire bushes are in full bloom, and I was surprised to see a multitude of beautiful Red Admiral butterflies.

When I say a multitude, I am talking 15 to 25 of these guys flying around in a pretty limited area.

They have remained in this area of the backyard for about a week now.

I don't recall seeing Red Admirals in the past.  Perhaps I have seen them before and just confused them for Commas or Questionmarks.  They are much smaller than I expected.  With a name like "Red Admiral", I expected a large butterfly about the size of a Black Swallowtail or Giant Swallowtail; however, these are relatively small in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 inches -- about the size of a Comma or Questionmark.

The photograph below shows a portion of the area in our backyard where they are feeding.  In this part of the yard, we have Little Henry Sweetspire, Encore Azaleas, and Japanese Maples.  You can see one of the japanese maples that recently died on us during the torrid heat of last summer.

 

 

 

The Sweetspire have pretty, white racemes of flowers that have a mild, sweet smell.  In the evening, you can just barely get a trace of their scent as you pass by.  Up close, the flowers have a noticeable and pleasant smell.

 

 

Here is a photograph of a Red  Admiral feeding on a sweetspire flower.

 

The following video does not do justice to the number of butterflies that we have flying around.  Indeed, you can only see 5 to 6 of them flying around in the video, but you can see them feeding.

 

 

 You can adjust the resolution of this video up to 1080p

 

*** Added on 4/18/2012

If you look around the internet, it appears that Red Admirals are appearing en masse all around North America this Spring.  Interesting.  Check out these sites:

Red Admiral Site 1

Red Admiral Site 2

Red Admiral Site 3

Red Admiral Site 4

 

 

Vegetable Garden Photos - Late March

 

Here are a few photographs of our vegetable garden in early spring.  In the foreground above is our Swiss Chard.  In the second and fourth large beds to the left, we are growing tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers that are still very immature.  In the third large bed to the left, we have sweet yellow and red onions growing.   On the right side of this shot are our herb beds.

 

 

In this photograph, you can see our cilantro that wants to go to seed because of our unseasonably warm spring weather, along with immature fennel, dill and parsley.  You can also see one of our artichoke plants on the right, and our asparagus plants that look mature even this early in the year.  We have cucumbers and squash growing in the middle bed with the support towers.

 

 

 

This photograph shows our sweet yellow and red onions that were planted from starts.  They look to be doing well.

 

Our spring vegetable garden also has some color from the earlier blooming perennials that surround the garden.

 

 

Here is a vew looking west.  The vegetable garden is bordered by pear, peach, pluot, cherry, fig, jostaberry, gooseberry, wolf berry, honeyberry, pineapple guava, huckleberry, and kiwi bushes and trees.

Fauna in the Garden

I have not seen any black swallowtail butterflies flying in our garden this year, but it is evident that they have been visiting.  I noticed today that our fennel plants are getting chomped on by three enormous swallowtail caterpillars.  It the wasps don't get them first, these caterpillars should go into their cocoons in another week or two.

Our two passion vines are really doing much better this year and are starting to get more mature.  In fact, we are getting some nice blooms.

 

I was thinking to myself this morning that the passion vines are doing so well that we should expect some gulf fritillary caterpillars and butterflies in the near future.  Within forty-five minutes of having that thought, this little gulf fritillary butterfly started flying all around the vegetable garden and visiting our culinary sage that is blooming like crazy.

 

 

Our asparagus plants are full sized already and are filled with tiny, dainty greenish-yellow flowers that are really attracting the bees.  The flowers are so small that I would not think that a bee could get much pollen out of them; however, they are plentiful.

The bees working on these flowers this morning appeared unusual to me.  In particular, they all had these bulbous orange sack-looking things on their back legs.  The orange bulbs were different for each individual bee.  Some were larger than others.  Here are a few photographs of different bees in which you can see these sacks.  As you can see, the sack is much more pronounced in the second photograph.  It almost looks like a tiny little orange balloon attached to the leg.

 

 

In doing some looking on the internet, it appears that these bees are just normal bumble bees, genus Bombus, and the orange bulbous looking bags on their hind legs are "loads of pollen and nectar that they pack into their 'pollen baskets.'"  

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Entomology-Study-Bugs-665/2008/6/Multi-coloured-bees.htm

This pollen basket is also called a corbicula.   It is a "polished concavity" surrounded by hairs, into which the pollen is placed.  The pollen is "combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the corbicula . . . ."  A single hair secures the pollen load.  Wikipedia (citing Cedric Gillott, Entomology, Springer, 1995; 798 pages; pg. 79; Dorothy Hodges, The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee, published by Bee Research Association Limited, 1952).

I have been watching bees and insects pretty closely in the garden for at least the last fifteen years or so, and I have never noticed this before.  I am very surprised that I hadn't.  I wonder if it is the particularly light colored pollen that they are collecting from the asparagus that made the pollen basket appear so striking this morning.  Or maybe some of these bees were being overly industrious in filling up their pollen baskets to the point of looking like they were going to explode, that made them more noticeable today as opposed to other days.  I am definitely going to keep my eye out in the future to see if I notice these little pollen baskets on other bees in the garden from here on out.

Apple blossoms

Our apple trees are finally starting to bloom.  Our peaches, plums, apricots, and hybrids have already finished blooming.

Our Anna apple is in full bloom and really has a lot of blooms in comparison to years past and given that it is only three years old.  Our Granny Smith is also starting to bloom, but it does not have anywhere near the number of blooms as the Anna.  Our Newtown Pippin similarly starting to bloom, but I will not allow these blooms to fruit given that the tree is only one year old.  I want the Newtown Pippin to direct its energy to building its root system and branch structure - not fruit.

The remainder of our apple trees have not yet started blooming.

The photograph below is the Anna.  I had a hard time exposing this photograph so you could clearly see the blooms.  Given the background in this photograph, they are difficult to see.

 

Spring Vegetable Garden

Our late winter / early spring vegetable garden has been a little hit or miss.  However, our asparagus is definitely a hit.  This is the third year since I planted our asparagus crowns and they are going bonkers.  This is on target with what the "experts" say; expect your first truly big crop in the third spring.

I left the asparagus unattended for a couple of days, and some of the spears were already too mature to harvest.  These spears are really stout . . . about as wide as a big toe!  And so sweet.  They have so much sugar content that I like to eat them raw.  Our 8 year old daughter even likes them, and she is pretty discerning.  I definitely include asparagus in the category of foods that definitely rewards growing food at home.

The other vegetables that have done well are our perennial artichoke plants.  Over the winter, I moved seven artichoke plants from a flower bed with fairly anemic soil into two of our raised beds.  It is unbelievable how big these plants have gotten in a few short months.  One reason is because we did not have a killing freeze this winter, so the plants did not go dormant.  Additionally, I think the plants have enjoyed the raised bed soil which is heavily enriched with compost and composted manure.

The only problem is that these plants have gotten so large that they preclude me from growing anything else in two of my nine large raised beds.  Consequently, this past weekend, I moved them back into another flower bed.  I cut the leaves way back, but the plants still suffered some shock from the transplanting.  The torrential rain that we received the other night, however, brought them right back, and they look very healthy.

 

 We have some cauliflower, brussel sprouts, lettuce, spinach, and kale growing from seed; however, a lot of the seed did not germinate for me.  I was a very lazy gardener this winter and did not use the greenhouse tunnels.  Nevertheless, given how mild our winter was, I don't really think it impacted the garden that significantly.

Our sweet and red onions that I planted from onion starts are doing great.  They should be ready in another month or so.

It is a different story with the garlic.  I planted my garlic cloves saved from last year's harvest, two months late!  They do not look good.   I am still holding out hope that more will sprout shoots from the ground, but it may be a lost cause.

This is a photograph of our blooming rosemary with a blooming plum tree barely visible in the background.  The rosemary is blooming a lot more than in past years.  In fact, I don't recall it blooming before.  The sage is also blooming, and our cool weather herbs like dill, fennel, cilantro, and parsley are all growing like gangbusters.

 

Our lone, surviving alpine strawberry is already producing its tiny, sweet berries.  I lost the remainder to last years remarkable heat and drought.  I transplanted this plant into the asparagus bed, and I am going to plant about 10 more plants with it.  On the other side of the asparagus bed, I transplanted about 15 musk strawberry plants to make them easier to harvest.

This past weekend, given the warm temperatures that appear to be here to stay, I started interplanting hot temperature vegetables.   I planted my favorite, charentais melon, from seed among the onions.   I am interplanting cucumbers into the garlic.  And I planted about 12 tomato plants and pepper plants (I am shamed to admit that I bought tomato starts from the nursery, but we were too busy to start the plants from seed this january).

I will try to get the rest of my seeds planted in the next few weeks: eggplants, squash, corn, pumpkin, etc.

 

Early Fruit Set

After being out of town for close to a week, I came back to find several of our fruit trees having set small immature fruit.

When I left, the majority of our spring blossoming fruit trees and bushes were blossoming with the exception of our apples and a few of our pear trees.  Upon our return, most of them continue to bloom, including the peaches, several  of our pears, plums, cherries, nanking cherry, blueberries, honeyberries, and grape vines.  Our apricots have finished blooming.  Several of the earlier blooming peach trees are starting to have their blossoms fade.

But in walking through the garden, I was very, very surprised to see many of the earliest blooming fruit trees already setting fruit on March 18th.  This is much earlier than in years past.

The photograph above is of some of the immature fruit on our Reliance peach.  I frankly do not remember the reliance producing very many blooms, so I was surprised to see these fruit.  Our other peaches are also showing immature fruit, but on a much smaller scale.

 

Both our Moorpark and Blenheim have also set a lot of small immature apricots.  This is gratifying to see given that we really did not have any production from either of these trees last year.  The photograph above is from the Blenheim.

 

 

Our hybrids are also showing small fruit, including the pluots, apriums, and nectaplums.  The fruit in the photograph above is from our Spice-Zee Nectaplum.

 

Our figs are also starting to show some breba fruit.

 

I am just blown away by how early the fruit are coming in.  I was somewhat worried by our mild winter and early spring that we would not get much fruit this year.  However, it appears that some of my fears were misplaced.  While the jury is still out on how our apples and pears will do, we should get a pretty good crop from our apricots, plums, hybrids, and peaches . . . as long as we can fend off the varmits and insects.

This also goes to show that pollination was not an issue.  Our local insect population is doing their job, whether it be honeybees, mason bees, other bee types, or moths.