- Author: Donna J. Seslar
Once my husband and I had gotten the upper hand on preventing spotted-wing fruit flies from ruining our delicious Lapin cherries, we still had the problem of birds chowing down on them. In previous years, we had covered the tree with bird netting, but needless to say this was always a difficult procedure – both putting it up and taking it down. The bigger negative was that more than one bird got caught in the net…a traumatic experience for all concerned!
So one day while driving through the wine country and observing the balloon-like oddities suspended above the rows of grapes, inspiration struck! The balls had “evil eyes” printed on them and they were moving in the breeze. Putting two and two together: I had previously been advised by Gary Bogue (retired wildlife columnist for the Contra Costa Times) that hanging a yellow smiley-face balloon in the almond tree would keep squirrels at bay. The problem was that the balloons, though seemingly effective for a time, eventually ran out of gas, faded and got stuck in the tree.
We came up with our own solution: a volleyball which we painted with an “evil eye” on each side. It was suspended just above the tree top via a PVC pipe and Voilà! Out of 60 pounds of cherries, about a dozen of them had bird pecks , and these came from the lower branches where I suppose the eye wasn’t visible.
Later in the summer, we hung the volleyball eye above our almond tree and it seemed to keep the squirrel away as well. Our squirrel-crazed bird dogs alerted us every time it hit our neighbors’ almond tree…maybe that had something to do with it too.
- Author: Rich Zimmerman
A pleasure of the autumn garden is the sight of a pomegranate bush with its multiple red fruit in contrast against its still green foliage. Late September is the time that pomegranates ripen in our area and the fruit and juice can be used in many recipes from salads to dessert. The bright red fruit also make colorful additions to autumn displays from table decorations to wreaths.
Pomegranates, Punica granatum, originated in Iran and have spread throughout the Middle East and areas with a Mediterranean climate including California. They are both colorful and drought resistant. Pomegranates grow as a bush or small tree and can reach a height of 10 to 16 feet but can be kept smaller with judicious pruning. The bushes are generally deciduous and bright scarlet flowers appear among young leaves in spring. The set fruit appears as relatively inconspicuous globes until late summer when the exocarp or covering turn a deep red. When ripe, the fruits are generally between three and five inches in diameter with a distinctive calyx. Pomegranates are harvested by clipping the fruit just above the stem end rather than by pulling or twisting. While pomegranates are beautiful on the bushes, they should be picked before autumn rains since the excess water will split the exocarp and spoil the fruit. Pomegranates can be stored under refrigeration for up to seven months but will dry out over time if left at room temperature.
Pomegranates are easily planted as bare root plants in early winter and many cultivars are available from local and mail order nurseries. The cultivar Wonderful is the primary commercial variety in California. A light harvest is available from the second year on and mature bushes are highly productive. Pomegranates are relatively disease and pest free. The fungal diseases Alternaria fruit rot and Aspergillus fruit rot can appear if rain occurs during bloom and grey mold, Botrytis cinerea can occur on harvested fruit. The primary insect and mite pests of pomegranates are aphids, omnivorous leaf roller, leaf footed bugs and citrus mites, The greatest threat to pomegranate bushes in home orchards comes from vertebrate pests including gophers and ground squirrels which scour roots and girdle trunk stems. A gopher cage is effective measure to allow a young bush to grow without interference.
Pomegranate fruit are actually berries. The red, fluid filled arils that surround individual seeds are held in place by a fibrous membrane. The sweet, bright red arils can be used in salads, smoothies, desserts or any recipe that can use a bright sparkle. Many Iranian and Middle Eastern recipes use pomegranate arils, juice or a molasses-like reduction of the juice for flavor and sweetness. Pomegranates and their juice are a good source of Vitamins C and K and contain antioxidants including ellagitannins and punicalagins. The arils are a source of dietary fiber.
To open a pomegranate, slit the side with a knife and then plunge the fruit into a bowl of water. Gently open the fruit with your fingers and twist to separate the arils from the membrane that surrounds them. The water will prevent the juice from staining the surrounds and will facilitate separation of the arils which sink while bits of membrane and exocarp will float. Remove any floating debris and pour the contents through a colander or sieve to separate the arils. The collected arils can be used “as is” or they can be juiced. Pomegranate juice is the red fluid between the seed and the aril wall. Use a hand press juicer (i.e. a citrus press) rather than a centrifugal or grinding juicer to avoid breaking the white seeds open and imparting a bitter flavor to the juice.
References:
UC Davis Fruit and Nut Research and Information Website for Pomegranates (2013)
http://fruitandnuteducation.ucdavis.edu/education/fruitnutproduction/Pomegranate/
Pomegranate Fruit Facts (1997) - California Rare Fruit Growers
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/pomegranate.html
- Author: Cheryl A Potts
If you were to poll the Master Gardeners who sit at information booths and answer questions from the public regarding problems they might be having in their gardens, my bet would be that the majority of those questions deal with tomatoes. And understandably so, as 93 percent of home gardeners in the U.S. grow tomatoes. I thought, just for fun, I'd look at some other interesting facts regarding this fruit, er, I mean vegetable, I mean, er well, whatever.
The Department of Agriculture states that Americans eat between 22-24 pounds of tomatoes per year, but most of that is in the form of either ketchup or tomato sauce. In recent years, salsa has passed up ketchup. (Ketchup always has run slow.--sorry, couldn't resist) At the grocery market, the tomato is the 4th most popular vegetable, running behind potatoes, lettuce, and onions.
Americans have increased their consumption of the tomato over the past 20 years by 30 percent, mostly in the processed forms of sauces, paste, and salsa. I realize that I have no memory as a kid of eating salsa. When did that get invented? And even more important, what did we put on those chips?
Fresh market tomatoes are raised in all 50 states, the majority grown in Florida. However, California grows 96 percent of the tomatoes that are processed. Worldwide, China grows the most, the U.S. second.
The tomato is believed to have originally come from Peru, its Aztec name being "xitomati", which means "plump thing with a navel". The scientific name is Lycopersicon lycopersicum which means "wolf peach".
No one can agree on how many variety of tomatoes there are. The estimates run between 10,000 and 25,000. My guess as to why there is this discrepancy is because new varieties are constantly popping up. Isn't 25,000 enough? I already have such a hard time every spring deciding what variety to plant.
The heaviest tomato recorded weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 oz., grown by Gordon Graham of Oklahoma in 1986. After weighing, Mr. Graham sliced the tomato and made sandwiches for 21 people.
The largest known tomato plant was a 'Sungold' variety, whose height was recorded in the year 2000 as 65 feet tall. It was grown by a company in the U.K. (I have a 'Sungold', and up to this very minute, thought it was doing very well at 6 feet.)
The tomato is the official fruit and vegetable of Arkansas while the official drink of Ohio is tomato juice.
The largest tomato festival in the U.S. appears to be the one held in Arkansas which continues for a whole week and has over 30,000 visitors and tasters. However, if you really want to have fun, you may want to go to Spain on the last Wednesday in August for La Tomatina where 30,000 participants throw 150,000 tons (not pounds, but tons) of over ripe tomatoes at each other. Guess that is better than throwing over ripe watermelons.
Now to answer that age old question, is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Botanically, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. Therefore it is a fruit or, more precisely, a berry. But by US tariff laws, a tomato is consider a vegetable. The applicable law define produce by its use and not its scientific classification. From a culinary point of view, a tomato is a vegetable.
So, Farmers Market Master Gardeners, this article may not be helpful to you in solving that one difficult tomato question, but you will have a lot to chat about while your partner at the table looks up the answer.
- Author: Esther E Blanco
My friends recently moved to a beautiful new country home, which sits on an acre of land with a creek. While walking in their yard, they pointed to a large tree about 25-30 feet tall and full of what looked like blackberries hanging from the tree. I’d never seen a tree full of blackberries. I looked expecting to see thorns and vines twisting among the branches but they were actually growing from the tree. My friend explained that the wild turkeys come and jump up to eat the berries, so they didn’t think the berries were poisonous. I took a few pictures and started my search…
It turns out that my friends have several mulberry trees in their yard. I’d often heard of fruitless mulberry trees, but I had never seen one with fruit. I discovered there are 150 different varieties of mulberry trees (Morus spp.) and many, many hybrids. The Red mulberry or American mulberry (M. rubra) is native in the eastern United States. The White mulberry (Morus alba) trees were originally imported from Asia during early colonial times because they are used to raise silk worms.
The mulberry tree is deciduous and often grown near the edge of open woodlands and near fresh water, which described the location on their property perfectly. The fruit is edible and is used for pies and jams because of its sweet and slightly tart flavor. The color of the actual fruit, does not determine the variety. The fruit can be white, pink, red and black but the fruit is really not a berry. It’s an aggregate fruit, which means it’s composed of lots of little berries stuck together, each with its own seed. The fruit is long and shaped similar to a blackberry, but hangs from a short, slender fruit stalk. The fruit is supposed to be delicious however; the color from the fruit is used as dyes so can easily stains things that the juices seeps into. That also including the droppings from birds when eat the berry, so the tree has a bad reputation among suburban homeowners.
After looking at the shape of the leaves, I believe that my friends have the Black mulberry (Morus nigra ) species that is native to southwestern Asia. It’s a beautiful full size tree in their large backyard. It’s in a great location. I think they will be gathering lots of delicious black mulberries for many years to come.
Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush…here we go around the mulberry bush so early in the morning…
Sources:
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/mulberry.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morus_nigra
http://www.pfaf.org/user/plant.aspx?latinname=Morus+nigra
http://www.ehow.com/how_5637978_make-mulberry-trees-produce-fruit.html
- Author: Sharon L. Rico
We have two peach trees (Prunus persica) in our backyard. The old tree, original to the property, is a delicious cling (the flesh adheres to the pit). We are not sure what type of peach it is, but it is still producing fruit. Since the harvest is usually small, we eat these as fast as they ripen. Well, okay, we do share a few of them with family and neighbors. The newer tree is a ‘Red Haven’, which is a freestone (the flesh separates from the pit). Last year my husband grafted an ‘Elberta’ peach onto a branch of this tree and it has fruit for the first time. The newer tree is 13 years old and was one of the first fruit trees we planted in 1999. We have always had a bumper crop of fruit on this tree and our friends, family and neighbors know when it is ‘peach picking time’ at our house. The peaches are firm, sweet and delicious, and ripen early in the season. In years past, we have made peach pies, peach jam, peach syrup ice cream topping, peaches and cream dessert bars, (you get the picture). To get these wonderful peaches, both trees are pruned and fertilized once a year, sprayed twice a year with dormant spray and thinned heavily each year. Most peach trees require 600 to 900 hours of winter chill. Annual pruning renews fruiting wood and encourages fruiting throughout the tree rather than at the ends of weak branches that would break. My husband is very particular about thinning. His goal is to have large, beautiful fruit. It is not unusual for him to fill his wheelbarrow half way full of one inch wide peaches when he is thinning. His motto is to thin 8 to 10 inches apart and he sticks to this method. This dedication pays off with magnificent peaches.