Valencia oranges...

Valencias are the last juice crop of the season. I helped a friend glean her small grove, and came away with about eighty pounds of Valencias and a few dozen old-fashioned yellow grapefruit. The juice from the oranges is a vibrant deep yellow, almost pumpkin-colored. It's sweet but has a nice acid kick, too. Truly, the best orange juice I've ever tasted.

Fruits in early spring

Flordaprince peach tree, leafing out. I pruned this tree back heavily in December.

A breba fig from what I'm pretty sure is an 'Alma' fig. There are about a dozen ripening fruit on the tree. It's my only fig in the ground (the rest are in pots). Last season, it's first in the garden, it produced a couple of handfuls of fruit. I prunded it back very hard, to about thirty-two inches, which I'm sure cost me a bunch of early figs, but was necessary because the fig was growing out of bounds. On the fig forum, I've read how many growers cut their figs down to as little as eighteen inches every year -- sacrificing the brebi crop, but keeping the trees very productive in the fall. (This would obviously only work in hot climates like here.)

'Dorsett' apple, breaking dormancy. Anna is still sleeping...

Sambokan lemon blooms. I have five citrus in my yard, and they're blooming in a series, perfuming the whole courtyard.

Blooms on my new 'Sri Kambangum' carambola (from ECHO's fruit nursery). It's in a three-gallon pot; I might move it to a seven-gallon, or put it in the ground. I haven't decided... It's grafted, so it might even produce some fruit this season. It's technically out of its zone here, but I have a Brazilian friend up the street growing several largish ones with only minor frost damage this year. She harvested hundreds of fruits.

Garden happenings...

A warm day today, though that's predicted to change early this week, with temperatures dipping back into the upper thirties. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the garden, trying to get things back into shape after the path and patio work. I noticed that my carambola and limão 'Cravo' had finally sprouted, and brought them outside to soak up the rays.

My friend Bill picked up me up an 'Owari' satsuma grafted onto Flying Dragon rootstock. I have a couple of other trees on Dragon: A 'Hamlin' orange (our 'native' DeLand orange) and a 'Honeybell' tangerine. The Dragon rootstock is dwarfing, keeping trees to below ten feet -- though from what I've read, the final verdict isn't in on their ultimate size. Bill has a grapefruit that's already at least nine feet in three years. In any case, the rootstock inarguable brings the trees into production earlier -- Bill's trees produced abundantly this year. My two trees went in the ground only last year, so I haven't had any fruits.

At Lowes, I picked up a Sanbokan Lemon (Citrus sulcata) in a gallon pot for ten bucks... I think I'll grow it in a container, at least for this season. I swear, that's the last citrus I buy.

Let's see... In the veg beds: I'm really frustrated with my collards this season. I bought some plants at Lowes and I guess they must have been bum: Planted right next to Rappini, and while the Rappini has grown well, the collards are still tiny. The first salad greens of the season (planted the third week of September, so four months ago) are about to go to seed (which I'll collect). I have a bunch of 'Red Sails' just now coming into harvest size. To ensure salad until mid-May, I planted more 'Summer Glory' lettuce mix (Parks) last week, so when the Sails come down, there will be more rabbit food to replace it. Strawberries have finally started to produce well -- both patches yield a big handful a day. 'Purple Cherokee' tomatoes are just about ripe. 'Little Fingers' eggplant is recovering well from the freeze. Carrots need to be pulled, and 'Sea Foam' chard is ready to pick again.

Finally, I got in the mail earlier this week two figs that were recommended to me on the Fig Forum at GardenWeb: 'LSU Purple' and 'Celeste.' I got them at Johnson Nursery. They were smallish, maybe thirty inches (pruned) and the trunks were chopstick thick. No complaints, since they were only ten bucks each. Right now, they're sharing a large (thirty-gallon) pot. That brings to five my fig varieties: 'Alma,' 'Brown Turkey' and 'Kadota.' Because of their susceptibility to nematodes, the only fig in the ground is 'Alma.' If it grows without much problem, I'll transfer the others into the ground, too.

The Orange Diaries

This site is modestly funny, though it smells mildly of a big corporation's sweaty attempt to be cute and folksy.

Still, I sympathize with their cause -- it ENRAGES me that, in my local Publix, it's hard to find frozen OJ concentrate from Florida, or that I have to go out of my way to get local juicing oranges, or that my blueberries in April come from Chile. I realize that it's a complex, economic system: Publix needs to compete with WalMart, so it searches for the least inexpensive possible necessities, like OJ concentrate from Brazil. And because of wage differentials and inexpensive (relatively) energy, Brazil can produce juice more cheaply than Florida, where groves are being turned into subdivisions. But it is enraging that we here, in Florida, do not, on principle, drink orange juice raised here, by farmers whom we know who buy their equipment from workers whom we know. In theory, I believe in free trade and international commerce; but when it comes down to my own personal preferences and instinctive beliefs, it almost always turns out that I prefer to buy local, even when it's not in my own economic best interests.

Papelon con Limon

My Brazilian friend grows limão 'Cravo,' selling them at an amazing price of $2 a dozen. They produce copious amounts of mildly-acidic, vaguely lime-y juice. The flavor is somewhere on the tart end of a lemon-lime-orange. While I have trouble getting more than a tablespoon of juice from a lemon, the slightly larger limão 'Cravo' will easily yield a third to a quarter cup. VERY juicy.

I ran across a mention of this popular Venezuelan drink, and found this recipe. (Papelon is, I gather, the same as piloncillo, available everywhere Mexican food is sold.) Since I have no idea how much a panela weighs, I'm going to work by logic here: I use a cup of sugar to make a bit more than a quart of lemonade, let's work on the assumption that eight ounces of piloncillo will sweeten this drink.

Papelon con Limon: "Papelon con Limon"
Ingredientes;
1 panela de papelón
1 litro de leche
2 limones

Preparacion: Se rompe el papelón a martillazos. Se pone a remojar toda una noche en 1 litro de leche. Al dia siguiente, que ya se ha disuelto, se le agrega el jugo de limón. se sirve frío.

Ingredients:
8 oz of piloncillo
1 quart of milk
Juice of 2 limão 'Cravo,'

Crush the piloncillo, and let it dissolve into a quart of milk overnight. (I'd help the process along the way with a whirl in the blender.) The next day, once the piloncillo has dissolved, add to the mix the lemon juice. Serve cold.

Going to try it tonight!

Tonight: Hmmmm. Hm. Um. Hmmm... Here's what I have to say about it. It is unlike anything I've ever had. Molasses, citrus, and milk. It's not bad. Refreshing in its own way. Very South American. Smooth.

I would add far more lemon juice than advertised in the recipe above: I used two tablespoons in my smallish glass, and felt that citrus could have played an even stronger role. Maybe I'd try it with Sugar in the Raw rather than piloncillo. I like molasses, but the bitter punch of it does not fare well with the acid from the lemons.

I need to try this with rum...

Garden chores...

A kinda humid and warm November day. I spent the morning taking care of my roses, which I've been neglecting the last year or so. Not a good idea. During Noel, I got a bit of blackspot which got much worse than I should have let it. I had some serious defoliation, and I decided to do a major pruning on all my roses -- cutting them back into bounds, removing all the twiggy growth (a tendency in both the Chinas and the Teas), opening up the centers for improved airflow and blooming, and some selective cane pruning to encourage some growth. They were a mess. I feel guilty. I ended up with two huge piles of cuttings. The roses look better, but they'll take a long while to recover. I ended the ordeal with a long, thorough watering and some foliar nutrient spray.

My vegetable garden has now expanded into my old butterfly garden, so I also moved a Russelia rotundifolia and a 'Forsythia Salvia' (Salvia madrensis) out of that bed into pots, in preparation for my new low-water butterfly garden in the front yard. Both of these were still in full bloom, but my garden plans wait for no plant!

Let's see... what else. I moved a 'Hamlin Orange' (on Flying Dragon rootstock). I needed a path to get to the top of my vegetable garden, and the tree was in the way. I was careful, having cut the roots about a month ago, and I don't think it even noticed.

Oh, and I finally brushed dormant (Volck) spray onto my Flordabell peach. It's small enough still to make it easier to brush than spray.