Pergola-tory Finale

I sold my house. I'm moving on. Some plants are hanging out at the neighbors house still from the clean up I did for prospective buyers last month. Some plants are just hanging out and starting to wake up from the winter. The only thing is that I don't yet have my up-leg, so their fate is in a bit of limbo right now. Again, we wait.

In the meantime, I harvested 100% of my yield from 2018; a single sugar apple 'Super Atis' that hung on with my through the cold and wind and rain until today when I popped it off the top of the single trunked plant. It's a bit firm but large and ripe. I'll wait a few days to eat it up.

I wish I could say it'll be bitter sweet to leave Pergola-tory. I guess my first Passiflora was grown here. My first hybrid created here. I built the pergola after the store-bought version rusted to nothing. I planted the bamboo for privacy. I laid down the stone walk behind the house where my dad and I built the greenhouse. I got a few Salacca zalacca plants after my trip to Indonesia and I got hooked on Annona, Eugenia, Plinia, Myrciaria, Garcinia, and Pouteria.

They'll all come with me to the next place...once I figure out what and where that is.

Holiday Update - Jabo Growth

My multi-grafted jaboticaba trees are doing great. I've rotated one of them into my greenhouse for a bit to get some of the latter grafted scions to push so that I could be sure that they took on the rootstock. It seems to have worked. I got P. grandifolia and P. aureana to show their leaves and now the first of my two multi-grafts is chilling outside like it was springtime.

On my primary P. cauliflora "Sabará" tree, I now have:

• P. grandiflora (Giant)
• P. aureana (White)
• P. peruviana, syn. trunciflora (Cafe)
• P. coronata (Crowned)
• P. coronata "Restinga" (Crowned)
• P. sp. "Grimal"
• P. spirito-santensis
• P. phitrantha "Branca-Vinho" (fmr "Paulista açú") (Costada)

Besides these grafts, I have a few plants that are holding in there just fine through the colder months. Escalarte is getting bigger in the greenhouse, so that and some Red scions will probably go on to my multigrafts next spring. I'll probably do a very small graft from "Roxa Polpa" if it can survive the winter. I have had a hard time with the small plants, and this is my smallest. I've lots too many to unknown causes this last year. I think I'll stick to sticks (aka scions) or well-established plants in the future.

• P. cauliflora x aureana (Red or "Precoce") 2x
• M. vexator (Blue)
• P. sp. "Escalarte" (Scarlet)
• P. sp. "Grimal"
• P. cauliflora "Roxa Polpa"

Holiday Update - Last Annona Standing

I had too many Annona plants, and they were mostly stagnant in their small planters. I picked the heathiest plants and kept those on the fence (literally), which I up-potted a sugar apple "Super Atis" (Annona squamosa) and a Phat Pak Chong "PPC" (Annona cherimola x squamosa) into the perforated 20 gallon trash cans. The former has a large human heart sized fruit about 8 feet off the ground that is slowly getting a blush. It was was cherimoya tasted last year, and it will be one sugar apple this year. The lot on the fence are:

• Annona reticulata "Tobago Pink"
• Annona cherimola x squamosa (Atemoya) "Randhir"
• Annona cherimola x squamosa (Atemoya) "African Pride"
• Annona scleroderma (Cawesh or Poshte)
• Annona sp. (muricata x glabra) (Golden Sugar Apple or Pineapple Annona)
• Annona rollinia deliciosa (Biriba)

Holiday Update - Yuzu and Poo

I haven't been keeping up with some of the small changes in the garden in the second part of this year. Here's catch up post one.

I bought a semi-dwarf yuzu tree (Citrus x junos (ichangensis x reticulata var. austera)) from a local nursery. It's only a couple of feet tall and sitting in a 20 gal perforated trash can which has become my standard for I-want-this-to-grow-healthy-roots. It had a few tiny immature fruit and some flowers on it when I bought it. It grew a little bit in the summer months, and held on to a few of the fruit. Recently three of them were worth picking, so I have those ready for a cocktail. Coincidentally, some tiger swallow tail butterflies had been showing interest and there were a few eggs laid. The yellow jackets picked off some of the tiniest caterpillars but at least one survived to grow large enough for its bird dropping mimicry to work. I later found the dried chrysalis busted open, so I missed the metamorphosis, but wait, there were more. There were and are many more! There are about five of them living on my white sapote (Casimiroa edulis). Apparently that's a similar enough host plant on which they can feed. They are growing slowly, and I think there are a couple of parasitic tiny wasps controlling a couple. It's interesting to watch them hang out with the caterpillars 1-to-1. I'm not totally sure what's going on there, and I haven't researched it any. We'll wait to see if I get more butterflies or wasps.

Super Scionic

The jaboticabas are looking good this time of year. I think we had one week where the high temperatures hit 80°F, but that weeks weeks before summer was even officially here. Since then it has been in the high 60's and low 70's and overcast until noon. The Plinia like it though, and it seems like the grafts that I first made on my original rootstock are all taking off now. A few like Grimal, spirito-satensis, phitrantha (possible Esalq), and Coronata var. Restinga are pushing serious leaves, which are stunning little branches. Trunciflora is lagging but I think it's starting to go. Paulista and edulis are the only two that I'm not sure about yet. Maybe they'll take, maybe not. I have gradiflora and aureana coming soon, so I'll graft those scions on to really make it a proper cocktail. Now that I know I can do it with high efficacy that only seems to be dependent on the species/variety, I'm excited more than nervous.

I recently lost all the leaves and maybe the whole aureana plant that I had. The thing never seemed to grow. Red and Blue are growing slowly again. I also picked up three small plants ( "Otto Andersen, Paulista açú", Dwarf Red  "Precoce", and Escalarte, and some seedlings  "Rosa de Pescoço" and "Polpa Roxa". If all of these grow large enough, the'll eventually make their way onto the cocktail tree. I have a second root stock that has the refrigerated scions on it. I'll use that as a backup for everything once I'm convince the original grafts are fully healed and the scions are branching.

May Gray and Cool Scions

It's Memorial Day. I returned from an out of town trip half exhausted and half missing my garden. The latter won, and I decided to take the Jaboticaba scions that I received in mid-February out of the fridge. To my pleasure they looked externally as good as fresh. A few slices with my knife showed them to look the same on the inside. Plinia edulis might have been a bit off, but it was still moist and greenish. So, I took the remaining scions and grafted them to a Sabara that has been doing just fine since it arrived recently. This is a bit of an experiment. No one seemed quite sure if this tactic would work.

On a very related note, my tree grafted back in Feb is really pushing. At least one of each variety is showing life and pushing new leaves (expect perhaps P. edulis). I don't know what normal grafting success rates are especially in cool and overcast conditions, but I think the tightness with which I wrapped the white electrical tape may be important. Some reading noted that pressure is critical to cell differentiation and fluid/nutrient transmission. This along with stripping the stock leaves really seems to be the ticket...unless it's always this easy of course. We'll see what the forums say when I show off the cocktail tree once it's more fleshed out.

And back to the refrigerated tree...I can't wait to read what the forum people say to that if it works out positively. Wait and read.

April Fools Atemoya

It's April Fools day, and I was poking around in the yard, and I decided instead of an Easter egg I would have an atemoya. It's the only one to made it through the winter, on a plant that kept all its leaves and looks pretty good compared to all the other Annona sticks. There's not much more to say except that it makes me happy to harvest it. Hopefully this next season will set and keep more than one.