Tuesday, July 3, 2012

May gray and June gloom make me blue


Normal summers for our area start off cool and cloudy. We've learned that our peaches need sunshine to get sweet, and without it, they are just blah. So, if you're thinking of planting a peach in coastal Southern California, get a very late ripener with extremely low chill hours such as August Pride, Southern Rose, or Red Baron.

The good news is our boysenberries (Thornless) and blueberries (Sunshine Blue) didn't seem to mind the lack of sunshine. Both have done extremely well this year. We froze 12 quarts of berries in addition to making multiple cobblers, smoothies, jam, and all the fresh eating we wanted.

After working out some kinks with the water system, our summer garden is planted and we look forward to tomato season.



May harvest tally:
38 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
51 eggs

June harvest tally:
43 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
53 eggs

2012 total so far:
175 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
364 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

2 comments:

Nathan Strange said...

Wonderful! Can you tell me how many Sunshine Blue plants you have? And do you have a cross-pollinator, or did you get that much production without one?

And how many thornless boysenberries do you have planted?

I'm considering both those plants for my yard and would love your input.

Thanks!

Tamlynn said...

Hi! We just have 2 blueberry bushes and they are still very young. Sunshine blue is self-pollinizing and low chill, so it should be perfect for warm climates. We have 5 boysenberry plants that we bought as bare roots. Their bed is about 3'x16'. Most of our fruit plants are from baylaurelnursery.com.