Possibly the Very Best Citrus

Not only am I a gardener, but my dad is a gardener, and my granddad is a gardener.

This past summer my dad and I helped out in my grandad’s garden. Here we are, three generations of gardeners. My grandparents live in Kansas, needless to say…they cannot grow citrus.

They do have a lot of Texas crepe myrtles growing there, but semi-tropical they are not.

(ok, there is no such thing as a Texas crepe myrtle, they are just crepe myrtles that my Dad brought from Texas many years ago.)

 

 

My Dad lives in NE Harris County and started his orchard at the same time I started mine at my old house, about 7 years ago. He probably has between 20 and 30 trees now, mostly citrus, but also apples, pears, and peaches plus muscadines and blackberries.

He’s been taking citrus to Kansas for Christmas for a few years now. This year, my mom and him have also been boxing it up and shipping it there. My grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, and 2nd cousins are loving these treats from Texas.

But, I digress. 

 

What I really wanted to tell you about are Kishu Mandarins. If you are going to grow one citrus tree, this is it! The fruit is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!!

The tree itself stays relatively small, around 8 feet tall. My Dad’s 5 year old tree has produced 615 mandarins this year, and it’s not finished yet!

These small, SEEDLESS, fruit are sweet and very easy to peel.

Kids love them and will eat them like candy…I eat them like candy!

I will usually pop half of one in my mouth at a time.

You may have to be patient with the tree. It took about 4 years before this one’s production took off. Dad thinks it had about 400 mandarins last year.

Harvest is from November through January. Follow typical guidelines for citrus care.

Most of Dad’s and my fruit trees have come from the Urban Harvest Annual Fruit Tree Sale. This year’s sale in on January 17th and they will be selling the Kishu Mandarin. Check out their website for more details.

The Houston Chronicle has published several good articles in the past week about local fruit tree sales and growing fruit in small spaces.

If you have a patio or any amount of yard, you can and should grow citrus. Good luck and happy eating!

Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center

My husband and I have been talking about taking a trip to Austin for awhile now. Both of us briefly went to college there, before we knew each other, and we haven’t spent any significant amount of time there since. I strategically planned our trip for the weekend of the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center fall plant sale in October. I have given the front yard flowerbeds a complete overhaul and my intention is to plant primarily natives in the new and improved beds. The only downside to my plan was that he is not a gardener, so my time to spend wandering around and taking pictures was limited.

This was my first trip to the Wildflower Center. The entire center covers almost 300 acres, but the display gardens are all pretty close to the main entrance. There are also trails representing different ecosystems, but I didn’t have a chance to explore those.

Here are some shots of the gardens from the top of the tower

I went directly to the plant sale after we arrived at the Wildflower Center. I already had a list of plants that I was looking for. After I scored my loot, I took a leisurely stroll through some of the gardens. I was on the look out for appealing shady scenes. After all, my small front yard is almost entirely shaded by three 30 year old live oaks.

Here are some of my inspiration photos.

This is our native red turk’s cap, blooming in the shade of an oak tree.

The fall blooming asters were electrifying the shade in every part of the gardens.

In the above photo, there is more of the red turk’s cap and something new that caught my attention…

Inland Sea Oats. After seeing these, I had to take another trip back through the plant sale to pick up some of these for the new front yard beds.

This is what I came home with:

For the front gardens:
Malpighia glabra, Barbados Cherry
Salvia Regla, Red Mountain Sage
Chasmanthium latifolium, Inland Sea Oats
Conoclinum coelestinum, Blue Mist Flower
Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, Fall Aster
Callirhoe involucrata, Winecup
Salvia arizonica, Arizona Sage
Chile Pequin

And for other parts of my garden:
Monarda Lindheimeri, Lindheimer’s Bee Balm
Monarda fistulosa, Wild Bergamot (I haven’t had much luck with Monarda since I moved back to Texas, so maybe these natives will succeed)
Sphaeralcea incana, Gray Globemallow
Passiflora incarnata, Maypop
Passiflora foetida, Scarlet Fruit Passionflower
Flame acanthus
Mexican Red Hat
Salvia gregii, Red Autumn Sage
Erythrina herbacea, Coralbean

Even though these are all Texas natives, Texas is a big state, which means these plants aren’t guaranteed to do well in Houston. So, this is my own little SW Houston experiment. Some might be too invasive, some may not be quite right for Houston, but that’s why gardening is so much fun! I can’t wait until next summer to see how these plants will handle the whims of Houston weather.

Update from my garden

Thankfully, we finally have a break from the 100 degree days. I’m not sure how much longer our plants could have taken that. Still no rain in my neck of the woods. It has been hit or miss all summer. My parents, on the northeast side of town, have gotten about twice as much as we have on the southwest, although that’s not saying much since I’ve only gotten about 3” this year.

Over the last couple of weekends I have given all of my backyard beds a boost with a mixture of diluted liquid seaweed, molasses, and fish emulsion. The seaweed is supposed to help them with the drought. There’s a long list of benefits of using these organic supplements in the garden and this is the year our plants need all the help they can get.

I’ve noticed two of my citrus trees, the ones in full sun, have yellowing leaves and some of the fruit has yellow on the side that is exposed to the sun. I think they are getting sunburned (but if you have another theory, please let me know). I’ve read that when the fruit gets sunburned it will eventually ruin the fruit. My mandarin is still on the small side, so I went ahead and picked the burned ones. That will let the tree put more energy into its root system anyway, which is not a bad thing.

The summer heat has been unreal, even for those of us who have lived here most of our lives. My husband and I decided we couldn’t take it anymore, so we looked at a high temperature map and found the coolest places in the country we could escape to, our choices were Seattle, Portland, OR and Portland, ME. We lucked into a good deal on plane tickets to Portland, OR and off we went. We were there while Irene was striking the east coast. We were worried for friends and family there, but we were grateful that we chose the west coast instead of the east coast for our vacation.

Portland is called the City of Roses and is home to the International Rose Test Garden and Japanese Garden in a 40 acre city park called Washington Park as well as the Portland Chinese Garden in Chinatown. I had a jacket on most of the time we were there, it was awesome. To see more pictures from my trip go to my online photo album.

The local plant sales will be getting into full swing later this month and will continue into October. The Houston Garden Club’s Bulb & Plant Mart, master gardeners plant sales, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center plant sale to name a few. Check out my event calendar for more details.

March Madness end in sight

I’ve been slacking on my blogging duties in favor of actual gardening. Crazy, I know!

Well, 10 yards of dirt, 4 yards of mulch, 2 yards of compost, and 50 plants later, my big spring gardening madness is almost complete.
The massive amount of new beds that I put in this year easily swallowed up my backlog of plants still in their little black pots.

From previous plant sales I planted buttonbush, strawberry bush Euonymus americanus, Blue Emu Eremophila, Chinese Ground Orchid Bletilla striata, Miss Lingard Phlox, Purple Smoke Baptista, Musical Notes Clerodendrum, Fried Egg Tree Gordonia axilarus, Pyramid Bush Melochia tomentosa, Jatropha integerrima, Pavonia peruviensis, hinkley columbine, red cestrum, night blooming white cestrum, and variegated abutilon.

I went to March Mart on Friday (another awesome vacation day spent at a plant sale). My purchases included the following: white variegated brugmansia, magenta firespike, Yellow Bird of Paradise Caesalpinia gilliesii, lemon verbena, almond verbena, sensitive fern, Red Buckeye Aesculus pavia, Two winged silverbell Halesia diptera var. magniflora, Winecup Callirhoe involucrata, butterfly weed, Brunfelsia americana, Pavonia lasiopetala, calibrachoa, & Scutellaria “Purple Fountain’ and ‘Red Fountain’.

I am mainly listing these for my own records, but hopefully you will see these on upcoming Garden Blogger Bloom Day posts.

Here are some wide shots of the gardens right now:

I still have a few things to take care of, like cleaning up that big mess of a compost pile.

 

Finishing that last flowerbed that popped up out of nowhere.

And I have a few more plants to plant, including 3 citrus and a fig tree that really need to be in the ground now. Then it’s on to 2011 Garden Plan #5 – Stop buying plants that will not be planted right away. Although, there is the upcoming HMNS Butterfly Center Plant Sale…

And, just a reminder, check out my event calendar for local gardening events.

Report from the 2011 Urban Harvest Fruit Tree Sale

The Urban Harvest fruit tree sale has become a bit of a tradition for my Dad and I. Last year’s freezing cold Urban Harvest sale was the only one we’ve missed in the past 4 or 5 years, and that was by design. It was way too cold to stand in line for an hour to buy fruit trees.
Instead, we waited about a month and went to the master gardeners sale in Pasadena. That was a great sale too, there we were able to buy some awesome tomato and pepper plants as well as fruit trees. But, this year we are back to the tradition. We showed up at the UH football stadium at 7:30am for the sale that started at 9am. The early birds at the front of the line got there at 7am.


This was the first year the sale was at University of Houston, and it was a great venue. Urban Harvest published a map of the sale on the website, which allowed us to combine our shopping lists and map out our route ahead of time. For Dad, an Acres Home pear to go with his Tennousi, a Red Baron Peach, and Emerald and Windsor blueberries. My list was long this year, Ice Cream Banana, Brightwell, Tifblue, Gulf Coast, and Jewel blueberries, Meiwa Seedless Kumquat, N33 Navel Orange, and a 3-1 plum. Here was our plan of attack (click any of the images to enlarge):

I waffled back and forth about buying a jujube, but finally decided against it. I read about it sending suckers out, sometimes 30’ away from the tree. They say to plant it somewhere you can mow around, but I don’t have anywhere in my yard that still has that much grass. Please leave a comment here if you have any jujube advice for me, I think it would be fun to grow.
The line continued to get longer as we eagerly awaited the opening of the sale.
A few other pre-sale pictures:

Tree Questions Answered Here

Picture of Dr. Bob Randall taking a picture of the crowd

Once the gate opened, we executed our plan perfectly, we were in the line to pay and out the door by 9:30. We headed to our cars to load up our purchases when I noticed that some people had not yet been allowed in the gate! I couldn’t believe it, there were about 30 people still waiting to get in.
Here are some pictures I took of the sale after our cars were loaded and the line to get in the gate was non-existent.

Awesome volunteers wore the yellow flags

the check-out line

Oh yeah, we've got trees!

My Dad and I are both in training for the Houston Half-Marathon in a few weeks and Saturday mornings are usually our long runs. So, we left our cars in the UH parking lot and went for an 8 mile run. I think it was around 11:30 when we returned, out of curiosity we walked over to the sale to see how many trees were left. My bet is that this is the first year that there was still a good selection of trees that late in the morning. This new venue provided more room for trees and people and was, I’m sure, the biggest sale ever.
If you missed this sale, check my event calendar for more fruit tree sales in the upcoming month.
Other Fruit Tree Related Posts:

• Fruit Tree Series #1 The Basics
• Fruit Tree Series #2 Pre-Sale Talk
• Fruit Tree Series #3 Bare Root vs Container and High Density Orchards