Soil sulfur, Gro Power, fertilizer

Happy Spring! Things have been so busy, but this week I made some time to give the trees a bit of love. The citrus all got a bit of soil sulfur as I think alkaline soil/water are the source of some issues for the citrus. I also applied Gro Power Plus to all of the citrus trees before scratching it in. The ornamental flowers got some Osmocote long acting fertilizer. 

We've had some of the best chard from the garden in the last month or so. And the peach tree is blooming up a storm. It loves all of the rain we've had this year in Southern California.

Iron plus slight acidifier to mandarins

 We've had a lot of rain lately by San Diego standards, and there's a bit more to come next week. The 2 smallest mandarins are not looking happy, continuing to have the yellowed leaves with dark spots. My Mom had a good look at one and suggested iron chelate. So, I gave them each some iron chelate and a little bit of Gro-Power Plus, which has humic acid, so might continue to gently acidify the soil. 

Fertilizer and Iron to Citrus

The citrus trees look okay but not fabulous. I asked my mom to look at them. She has lots of experience growing citrus, although that was in Arizona, not California, so we're not sure how transferable her knowledge is. She suggested that I try giving some iron chelate to the trees. So I put some around each citrus today. I also gave all of the fruit trees some Gro Power plus with humic acid. Let's see how they like this. 

Planted winter vegetable seeds

 The community garden offered up some new "Raised garden bed mix" from San Pasqual Valley Soils. We took advantage of that and put plenty in our box as over time the soil sinks. Whenever we add new soil or amendments, we then lift up the drip irrigation to put the tubes back in order. Once this was done, it was time to plant some seeds for winter crops. We planted carrots, beets, Swiss chard, Romanesco broccoli, and kohlrabi. 

Citrus update, Fertilizing, Squash, Pumpkins and Milkweed

    My husband reworked the valves and commandeered one exclusively for the fruit trees, which has been great for the citrus. Now we can water them more deeply and less frequently. Since I started hand watering and then we transitioned to the new valve, the mandarin that had been struggling with brown spots on the leaves has not produced new leaves with that. In fact, it had a little new healthy growth. But then the new leaves are now curling on themselves, which I believe is from an insect. I've seen some white fly, but not necessarily on the curling leaves. The citrus saga continues. 

    Speaking of citrus, this time of year we're still eating our Valencia oranges which we enjoy plain or in smoothies. I love that tree, especially when peach season ends and there's not a lot of fruit in the stores that excite me. Although, props to some of the grocery store pears recently. There's been some good ones.

    This weekend I fertilized all of the fruit trees with an organic fruit tree fertilizer. The citrus trees also got a small dose of Citrus Grower's Blend.

    We've had a lot of small pumpkins and squash from the community garden. For 5 years, we've planted and replanted the descendants of some mini pumpkins my daughter got in school. Over the years, they've changed in appearance and had varying harvest sizes. Last year for the first time, we got a few white ones. This year's crop had one white one, and they all lost their mini pumpkin shape! I suspect the shape issue may be cross pollinating with the seeds I'd saved and planted from a kabocha squash, which we're now into the second generation of. The first generation of those looked like kabocha and overgrown zucchini. This year's didn't look or taste at all like kabocha and mostly reverted to plump overgrown zucchini-ish squash. I know, of course, that I could have squash and pumpkins that bred true if I used seed packets, but I do enjoy seeing what shows up.

    Here are some of this year's pumpkins

    We've had lots of squash like this, most of which tastes zucchini-ish

    There's the age-old dilemma of what do do with a bunch of summer squash. I made an eggless frittata-type thing that was pretty good. My husband's favorite (other than zucchini bread) is when I roast it with garlic.

    A friend of mine is really into monarch butterflies and, thus, milkweed. She gave me some seeds she'd saved, which I planted. I was surprised that most of them germinated. 

    I've just transplanted them to give each sprout a bit more room. I'm hoping the critters don't eat them now that they've graduated from my window to the great outdoors. 

    If it survives the critters, someday it might look like this, complete with caterpillar. See the caterpillar?

    Here's a yellow garden spider that set up shop in my community garden box. It's big! I'm glad to have it though, to eat the bugs.

Citrus challenges

 Do you recall my little Algerian Mandarin that I've been trying to spur to grow with fish emulsion? That hasn't worked. It has more leaves that get dark spots on them. Then the leaf yellows and eventually falls off. There are also some deadwood areas on the tree. (My other citrus get some deadwood in the summer as well.) Feeling the soil, I think it is too dry. 

First, for context, this picture shows the mature Valencia Orange on the left, near the tiny, newer Algerian Mandarin that's struggling on the right.

Looking more closely, it has some greener leaves and some yellowed leaves.

See the spots on the yellowed leaves?

Along with these pictures, I brought a leaf to the nursery. After speaking with a few employees, the proposed issues are underwatering and micronutrient deficiency.

Regarding the watering, unfortunately I don't have a separate irrigation valve to devote to the longer, deep watering better suited to trees. We may figure out a way to make that happen, but for now that's not the case. This tree is pretty far from the nearest hose bib and across a driveway. Getting a hose there brings the hose past a pot of succulents and results in arms of the succulent being knocked off. And our hose storage is an old plastic pot where the hose gets wound up by hand. While the tree does get supplemental watering by hand in the summer, since it is such a hassle to get the hose to it the watering is done with a watering can and isn't a significant amount. Watering by hand has been a job my kids do on the weekends. They do it very quickly, so I know not much water is getting to the trees, although it is enough to help some little pots we have. We have the trees on drip irrigation that runs on the same valve as the nearby landscape plants. A few weeks ago, we added some emitters to each tree (going from 3 to 4 or 5), but this valve runs briefly due to the other plants on it.

To change the watering for now, I've taken over the citrus watering myself. We bought a hand crank hose reel so it is easier to put the hose away. Also, I used a shovel to widen the wells and give them better berms, hoping to be able to fill the wells with a meaningful amount of water. 

Regarding the micronutrients, I fertilized three ways today. 

    1) I used about half a bag of chicken manure in the well and to build the berm for each tree.

    2) I dosed each tree with an organic citrus tree fertilizer.

    3) I added Citrus Grower's Blend to the well area of each tree. The point of this product is micronutrients.

I'll water deeply weekly for a bit, then reassess. Next time I'm targeting nutrients, I'll consider if I should add iron and/or humic acid

Fish Emulsion to Citrus and Apple, Summer Garden

 A few more times this spring, twice in March and twice in June, I've applied fish emulsion to the citrus and apple trees. I wonder if it is helping my smallest mandarin a bit, but it is hard to tell if it is just normal spring growth. 

In the meantime, I'm harvesting delicious grape and cherry tomatoes that are mostly volunteers from the compost I spread near the trees or in pots. I planted some Celebrity tomatoes and Annie Oakley II okra starts in pots and at the community garden in June. 

The aphids and bagrada bugs have put a halt to the amazing swiss chard from this spring and really slowed down the kale. This seems to be a pretty normal cycle each year, so I'm just moving on.

At the garden, I planted seeds saved from kabocha squash and also planted whole mini pumpkins that are the descendants of the ones my daughters got at school 4.5 years ago. Like last year, I'm getting some bizarre squash from those that I didn't actually plant in addition to the mini pumpkins and kabocha I desired. At this point, there are some pumpkins although they look rounder. There's one that looks exactly like a golden acorn. And there's the omnipresent zucchini/random summer squash thing that's chubbier than a zucchini and more oval. Time will tell on the squash project, although it is fun to watch them and guess what's coming. For the record, some years I do grow squash from actual seed packets. I just didn't do it this year or last. 

Anyway, Happy Summer!