Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Start seeds of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other cool-season crops now. Transplant them to the garden next month and they will be producing for you this fall.

• Penstemon are bushy, evergreen perennials that attract hummingbirds with their red, pink, lavender or purple trumpet-shaped flowers all summer and fall.

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming well throughout the summer. Watch for pests and treat immediately to prevent infestations.

• Fountains create the sound of moving water that is restful and cooling on the patio or in the garden.

• Feed annual blooming plants and hanging baskets every two weeks for prolific bloom. Keep dead flowers pinched off.

The Fruits of Summer

Growing fruit in your own orchard is one of the delights of summer. Since you cannot buy fruit that is tree-ripened, the only way you can enjoy the full sweetness of summer fruits is by growing your own.

Strawberries begin the season, bearing fruits as early as May and producing their largest crops in June. Everbearers continue the harvest through the summer with sweet, tasty berries for fresh use or processing.

Raspberries produce bountiful crops in the home garden. June bearers produce a heavy crop of berries from June through early July. Everbearing raspberries produce two crops, one in June and another in the fall. Harvest daily or every other day for perfectly ripe fruit.

Cherries are the next to arrive in June. There are two types of cherries: sweet cherries and sour or pie cherries. Use them for baking, preserving or freezing when you can’t eat any more. They are both easy to can for winter use.

Plums begin fruiting in June and continue through September. You can choose black, red or golden yellow fruit with sweet or tart flavor. Prunes bear late in the summer with their sweet fruit that is so good for drying.

Peaches bear fruit in late July or August, depending on the variety, with some trees fruiting in September. As with plums, production will vary from year to year depending on the spring weather. But when a good crop comes in, it makes it all worthwhile.

Pluots are a relatively new fruit. They are a cross between plums and apricots with a firm texture and delicious flavor. Most varieties ripen in September. Some people are suspicious of pluots thinking that this strange fruit must be genetically engineered, but this is not the case. It is a hybrid that took several generations of cross breeding before the pluot we know today finally emerged. Enjoy their tasty flavor in fruit salads.

Blackberries ripen in August and provide a continuous harvest throughout the month. They are very easy to preserve by freezing.

Grapes ripen toward the end of August and on into September. There are dozens of varieties to tantalize your taste buds.

Apples and pears begin bearing fruit in August. Gravenstein is the first apple to fruit and Bartlett is the first of the pears. By carefully choosing varieties of apples and pears, you can have fresh fruit on through November.

These fruits are the most successful in the Willits area. Apricots are seldom successful and figs need a special hot spot to bear well. You can also try persimmons, which will be ready to harvest in November.

Don’t let your property be without some of these delicious home-grown fruits.

This is a great year for summer fruit in Willits, and the peaches are delicious! Mild spring weather allowed trees to pollenate successfully and bring in bumper crops. If you missed out on the harvest, you might consider planting a peach tree in your orchard.

There are hundreds of different peach varieties, but basically there are two types, the freestones and the clingstones. In freestone types, the flesh separates readily from the pit. In the clingstone type, the flesh clings tightly to the pit. Freestone types are usually preferred for eating fresh or for freezing, while clingstone types are used primarily for canning. Fruit may be either yellow or white-fleshed.

Nothing compares to the taste of tree-ripe peaches. The main challenges to growing good peaches in our area are late spring frosts and a disease known as “peach leaf curl.” Selecting varieties that are both late-blooming and resistant to peach leaf curl will result in the best crops.

Frost, Q-1-8 and Indian Free are excellent choices. Frost is a delicious yellow freestone while Q-1-8 and Indian Free are both white peaches with rich flavor. Other peach varieties which can be grown in our area are Redhaven, an old-time favorite, Donut, a unique white peach with a sunken center (shaped like a doughnut), Snow Beauty, a sweet white taste-test winner, and Rio Oso Gem, a favorite late yellow freestone.

Most peach cultivars do not require cross pollination and a single peach tree can be expected to bear crops in the home orchard. However, two or three different trees will extend the season and provide fruit over a couple of months.

Standard trees grow 15 to 25 feet tall if unpruned, but can be kept to 10 to 12 feet with consistent pruning, especially summer pruning. The best standard rootstock for our area is Lovell, which has a vigorous root system that is tolerant of wet soil or heavy soil. St. Julian is a good dwarfing rootstock that dwarfs trees to 80% of standard, and has good anchorage and excellent vigor. Trees on St. Julian tolerate wet soil as well as drought conditions. Citation rootstock dwarfs peaches to 8-14 ft. Trees will be very tolerant of wet soil but not drought tolerant. Citation rootstock induces heavy bearing at a young age.

Peach trees require full sunlight. If possible, select a site with a raised elevation or on a slope, so that cold air can drain away from the tree on a cold night during bloom. Trees need well drained soil as roots will not tolerate soils where water remains on or near the surface for more than one hour after a heavy rain.

Peaches do not bear a crop every year in our climate, but when they do a single tree can produce 200 pounds of luscious, juicy fruit.

• Pansies and snapdragons can be planted now to replace summer annuals. They will give you color this fall, winter and next spring.

• Trim foliage on grape vines to allow more sun to reach the fruit and ripen the grapes.

• If your bearded iris blooms were sparse this year or the plants are more than four years old, now is the time to divide and replant them. Mix some bone meal into the soil, and plant the rhizomes just beneath the soil surface.

• Keep apples picked up from under the trees to help control the spread of coddling moths which make wormy apples.

• Cover newly planted vegetable starts to protect them from birds. Spray cabbage and broccoli plants with BT to control cabbage worms which make holes in the leaves.

When to Harvest Fruit Trees

The ripening of fruits is a complex subject. How do you determine when the grapes are ripe? Will blueberries get sweeter after you pick them?

It is important to know whether the fruits or vegetables that you are about to pick will ripen further after you pick them. There are three categories: fruits that don’t ripen after they are picked; fruits that ripen in appearance but not in sweetness; and fruits that become sweeter after picking.

Cherries will not ripen after harvest. Harvest sweet cherries when they reach the right size, color and taste and when they come off the tree readily. Lift the cherry clusters from the tree carefully to avoid damaging the fruit spurs, or cut the stems with pruning shears. They are most often harvested with stems attached, because they keep better that way. Cherries don’t keep well even with the best treatment, and bruised or cut ones go downhill fast.

Plums, pluots and plumcots should be harvested when they are still firm, but fully flavored. Prunes that are to be dried, should be left on the tree until they are fully ripe and easily knocked off the tree. Lay a sheet under the tree to gather them up easily.

Soft berries, like blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, will not ripen after picking. Either will grapes. You can trim back the foliage on grapevines to allow sunlight to reach the clusters of grapes so they are fully sweet when you pick them.

Blueberries will get softer after picking, but will not get any sweeter. Most of the summer fruits fall into the same category. Apricots, figs, nectarines and peaches will change color and appear to ripen, but will not get sweeter after they are picked. They develop the best flavor when allowed to fully ripen on the tree.

Fruits that do get sweeter after you pick them include apples, pears and kiwis. You don’t want to pick them too green, but if they are partially ripe, they will continue to ripen after harvest. Store them in a cool, dark place, not too damp or too dry, but do not refrigerate until closer to ripe. Pears should be picked while still fairly hard and green. They ripen from the inside out, so if you try to let them get nicely yellow (or red) on the tree, they will be mushy inside.

Persimmons ripen in the fall. The astringent types, like Hachiya, can be left on the tree until soft-ripe, but are usually harvested when still firm but bright orange and then allowed to become very soft and ripe at room temperature. The non-astringent types, like Fuyu, are harvested when they develop their full orange color and are eaten when firm and crisp like an apple.

Optimum ripeness will vary with individual preferences. Handle your fruits gently and enjoy the delicious flavors of home grown fruit.