Tag Archives: fruit trees

bare root plants, fruit trees

Bare Root for the Santa Cruz Mountains

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   Every year about this time I get excited about what fruit trees I'm going to recommend for those who want to start a home orchard or add to the edible garden. Will this be the year you get a Cox's Orange Pippin apple or an American Golden Russet? Maybe a oldie but goodie like a Golden Delicious apple will become the treasure of your family but then again there's the Mutsu, that favorite of connoisseurs, that might get the nod.

Here's why these classic apple varieties are my favorites.

Cox's Orange Pippin is an old favorite desert apple: firm but juicy with a sweet, rich flavor that's not tart. This apple has a distinctive aroma that you won't forget. The skin is unusual being orange red to bright red over yellow. Ripening in mid-late August it's a good apple for baking or eating fresh. Cox's Orange Pippin apples are self fruitful.

American Golden Russet apple is one of the great family orchard apples of the 19th century. Crisp, aromatic, slightly acidic with creamy yellow flesh that has great flavor and a legendary sugary juice. Fruit ripens in early October but will hang on the tree until frost. Russets don't need refrigeration after harvest. If kept cool they will keep until March or April. You can also dehydrate them. This tree is vigorous and has good disease resistance. Originating in New York sometime in the 1700's it has remained a favorite ever since.

Everybody is familiar with the Golden Delicious apple. It's popularity is well earned as it's both a good cooking apple as well as a great eating apple. I like them both slightly green and fully ripened. It's a reliable producer and good pollenizer for other apple varieties that are not self fruitful.

Another favorite apple of mine is the Mutsu. Very large, crisp and flavorful they ripen in late September into October. Pick this apple when green or wait until it is partly yellow. This large vigorous tree resists powdery mildew. They require a pollenizer such as Granny Smith, Fuji, Gala or Red Delicious.

No matter what  kind of fruit  you favor, be it apricot, apple, pear, cherry, fig or anything else, now is the time to shop for bare root  fruit trees  while they are still dormant.  Once leaves emerge or flower buds start to swell your tree or shrub's roots have already started growing and they won't settle in as well.  

Bare root plants are carefully dug up at growing grounds with their roots bare, meaning that most of the dirt around the roots has been removed.   One of the largest growers harvests 2 million bare root plants in a 30 day period, usually in December.

One of the primary advantages of bare root plants is that they tend to have an extensive, well developed root system as a result of being allowed to develop normally.  When the trees are handled well, the root system is left intact, and the tree, shrub, vine or berry will have a better chance of rooting well and surviving when planted.   Bare roots don't have to adapt to any differences between container soil and your garden's.

What fruit tree varieties do well here in the mountains? Well, almost everything. We have well over 500 chilling hours per winter. Most of us get 700-900 hours. What does that mean? Many fruit trees, lilacs, and peonies need a certain number of hours during dormancy when the temperature is 45 degrees or less. You can give a plant more cold in the winter and it'll like that just fine.  But fewer hours will hurt your results. Those in Santa Cruz near the coast can grow Fuji apples, for instance, but not Red Delicious. In the mountains, we can grow both.

Next week I'll cover how to plant your new bare root tree, shrub or berry.
 

color in the garden, fruit trees, perennials

August to-do’s

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In case you haven’t been keeping track, summer is winding down. True we will be enjoying great weather for months to come but nature uses daylight hours to mark its calendar. And even though I’m busy visiting reader’s gardens, camping, hiking and painting there are some tasks I need to in my own garden.

Around this time of year, annual and perennials in containers and hanging baskets can become leggy with flowers only at the end of long branches. At the same time, overly rambunctious growers can overwhelm neighboring plants, crowding or even suffocating them for lack of light and air.

Renew them by cutting back about half of the stems 2/3rds of the way to the base. When those stems grow back and begin to bloom in about two weeks, cut back the remaining stems the same way. While you’re at it, cut back aggressive growers as far as necessary to give surrounding plants space for healthy growth. Fertilize with a soluble plant food to keep them blooming through October.

Deadhead flowering annuals and perennials in the ground as often as you possibly can. Annuals like zinnias and cosmos will stop blooming if you allow them to go to seed. The same is true of repeat blooming perennials like dahlia, scabiosa, marguerites and lantana.

These plants know they’re on this earth to reproduce. If they get a chance to set seed, the show’s over- they’ve raised their family. Try to remove fading flowers regularly and you’ll be amply rewarded.

Fertilize shrubs lightly one last time in August or September if you haven’t already done so this month. All shrubs, especially broad-leaved evergreens such as rhododendron, pieris, camellia, hebe, need to calm down, stop growing and harden off to get ready for the winter cold. Some plants have already set next year’s buds.

Roses especially appreciate a bit of fertilizer now, encouraging them to bloom another round in September and October. To keep them blooming make a habit of pinching and pruning off old flowers. Always cut back to an outward facing branchlet with five leaves. There are hormones there that will cause a new rose to grow much sooner than if you cut to one with only three leaves.

Here are more to-do’s for late August for this area:

Prune fruit trees that have already finished fruiting. Wait to prune others until after harvest, although many see summer pruning as a way to thin an overabundant crop.  Summer pruning opens the tree to light, producing bigger, healthier fruit. Overall summer pruning will slow the growth of a tree by removing energy wasting water sprouts, helping keep dwarf trees a manageable size.

Sow root veggies such as beets, carrots. leeks, onions and parsnips directly in the ground and start germinating cool-season veggies- broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, and spinach -so they are ready to plant in mid-September.

Now that you’ve taken care of your chores reward yourself by adding perennials to your garden for color in late summer through fall. Good choices include aster, chrysanthemum, coreopsis, gaillardia, gaura, Japanese anemone, echinacea, rudbeckia, Russian sage, scabiosa, Mexican marigold, verbena ad yarrow.
 
Blooming shrubs  that will flower well into fall are abutilon, blue hibiscus, butterfly bus, cape fuchsia, plumbago, lavatera, princess flower and salvia.

flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, flowers, fragrant plants, fruit trees, garden design, vines

A Private Arboretum in the Santa Cruz Mountains

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Recently I had the honor to tour a remarkable garden in Scotts Valley. This horticulturalist calls himself a hillbilly gardener but he is no such thing. Some of his plants come from as far away as Oklahoma, Texas and Hawaii. What a thrill to see spring growth emerge from the new leaves of his unusual trees, flowering shrubs and perennials.

Our first stop was to admire his large collection of echium candicans or Pride of Madeira. These stately shrubs reach 5-6 ft tall and 6-10 ft wide so they make quite a show when the huge flower clusters are in full bloom. Being deer resistant and drought tolerant they are perfect for our mountain environment. The color of the spikes varied from pink to lilac, sapphire blue and purple. This gardener is resourceful. He got many of his seedlings along Hwy 17 where they had reseeded after being used as brush to stabilize the slopes after the ’89 earthquake. The bees were really happy visiting the hundreds of blossoms on the beautiful spring day that I was there.

Tucked under wild cherry trees collected in Texas, are second generation iris of dark purple and pure yellow. Originally from his grandmother’s garden in Virginia, these iris are descendants from a light blue variety and a pale yellowish-beige douglas iris.

This extraordinary gardener also has a huge wild rose from Missouri covered now with fragrant white flowers, a wild olive from Texas and a sand plum from Oklahoma.  There is a yucca about 4 ft tall that he and his brother started as cuttings when they were teenagers in Port Arthur, Texas. He is also the proud father of a couple of bald cypress complete with "knees". This tree of southern swamps and other low nutrient areas grows woody projections above the ground or water level to act as a structural support and stabilizer allowing them to resist very strong winds. Even hurricanes rarely overturn them.

A beautiful Canary Island palm, planted from a seedling in 1996 that he had nurtured in a gallon can, is now over 9 ft tall.  Akebia vines grow up oak trees, passiflora and white wisteria vines up redwoods, a yellow banksia rose rambles up into a madrone and madevillea laxa is happy growing up an oak, too. A willow-leafed hakea salicifolia, indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland, graces his entry with its tiny, white fragrant flowers.

Other trees this gardener loves include Causarina, native also to Australia, sugar pine, incense cedar, Western red cedar, deodar cedar, staghorn sumac and a maytens tree.  His mother in Pennsylvania taught him to plant his first garden at age 4 and he cherishes his Eastern white pines, pinus stroblis, and giant sequoias, three of which he grew from seed.

And I can’t forget his collection of salvias. The red flowers spike of salvia confertiflora bloom year round. The beautiful salvia mexicana will soon to be covered with rich, blue flowers. He also grows salvia chiapensis and a salvia-like plant native to Hawaii called salvia lepechinia. This deliciously scented plant will be covered soon with reddish lavender lipstick-like flowers adored by hummingbirds like all the salvias.

A new greenhouse where he has a small collection of orchids will soon house new seedlings that are sprouting in a germination station under lights. Of the many Hawaiian seeds he has collected are maile, a flowering plant that is probably the oldest and most popular material used in leis by early Hawaiians, milo- a chocolate and malt powder popular in many parts of the world, gossypium tomentosum, coral vines, hibiscus and the koa tree.

There were hundreds more cool plants I learned about and got to admire that day. I’ll be visiting this garden again and again for the next round of wonders. it’s a marvel.