Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Fragrant daphne is an early-blooming shrub that will delight you with its strongly scented blooms each spring. Plant it in well-drained soil.

• Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce and other cool season crops should be planted this month for delicious spring harvests.

• Mouth-watering strawberries should be planted now for delicious berries this summer. Plant them in a sunny, well-drained bed.

• Plant sweet peas and larkspur for bouquets of delightful blooms.

• Prune Hydrangeas now by removing old flower heads down to the first new leaves. Don’t prune stems which have no old flowers, and they will bloom first this summer.

The Diverse Family of Plums

Plums come to us from both Europe and Asia, bringing with them their characteristic traits and flavors.

Best known to us are the Japanese plums with their round, juicy fruits. Santa Rosa is the most popular plum in California with a purple skin and tangy, flavorful amber flesh. An interesting variation is Weeping Santa Rosa Plum which is a beautiful 8-10 ft. tree with long slender limbs that bow gracefully to the ground, covered with delicious fruit.

Laroda is a dark purple skinned plum with juicy, richly-flavored red and amber flesh. While Nubiana is a large, purplish-black plum with sweet flavor and very little tartness. Burbank is a well-known, red and yellow fruit that is sweet, juicy and uniquely flavored.

The European plums include the prunes. They are all very sweet and richly flavored. French Prune is California’s commercial prune, and Italian is larger and later ripening. They have purple-blue skin and amber flesh and can be eaten fresh or dried.

Green Gage Plum is a small to medium sized green plum with very sweet, richly-flavored flesh. It is a long-time favorite for dessert, cooking and canning. Emerald Beaut is a greenish-yellow plum that becomes exceptionally sweet as it ripens.

Plant breeder Luther Burbank was the first to cross plums and apricots, thought to be impossible at the time. His goal was to produce an apricot-like fruit which would bear consistently in our wet north coast climate where apricots fail to set fruit most years. Floyd Zaiger developed some new hybrids in the 1980s which he called Pluots and Apriums. Pluots, which are 75% plum parentage and 25% apricot, do well here while Apriums, which are 75% apricot and 25% plum are difficult to grow here. He went on to develop peach/plum hybrids and nectarine/plum hybrids.

Flavor King is a wonderful tasting pluot with a sweet, spicy flavor. It is very large and resembles a huge, heart-shaped Santa Rosa. One of the most highly flavored pluots ever developed, it is a reliable producer in this area. Flavor Queen is yellowish-green with a candy-sweet flavor. Flavor Supreme has a mottled skin with richly flavored, firm red flesh.

Spice Zee Nectaplum is a cross between a white-fleshed nectarine and a plum. The skin turns pale pink when ripe and it has outstanding nectarine/plum flavor. Tri-Lite Peach/Plum has a delicious flavor with both the sweet white peach flavor and a tangy plum aftertaste.

For a variety of delicious flavors, be sure you have a good selection of plums, prunes and pluots in your orchard. Fruit trees of all kinds are available to plant now, though the end of “bare- root season” will be here soon.

• 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.