Pomegranate

One of my pomegranate plants has been laden with about a dozen fruit this year, its first year of fruiting, and the fruits have started to get that nice, red color. Then the rain came and I worried about the fruit splitting. Pomegranates and figs both split their fruit when they get too much water timed with ripening fruit. The figs split, and the chickens didn't mind eating those. A couple of the less-red pomegranates split, so I picked them and tasted them. The variety is called Sharp Velvet, and these two fruits are definitely under ripe, yet edible. I don't mind tartness in certain fruit. I am hoping the other fruits get to ripen more before more rain comes, just so I can find out what kind of sweetness this pomegranate can produce.

I think these are the most beautiful fruits around. The garnet sacs surrounding the seeds are jewel-like.

Seedling Peaches

The large peach tree in the back yard has been in decline since before we moved here. I made a few years of mistakes in thinning and pruning the tree, causing it to lose a few limbs in the process. This year I thinned the fruit extensively and was able to get a good crop. We had a late rain in July, it rained all day and night, and the weight of the rain on a couple of branches was too much and there was more breakage. The tree still has several good, strong limbs though.
The peaches are delicious and I want to propagate the tree via grafting and have been growing rootstock for that purpose. I tried some bud grafting early this year. My grafting knife was brand new and extremely sharp. Fiddling with those tiny buds and trying to slice the exact shield shape off the rootstock ended up with me having two bloody thumbs and grafts that didn't take. I've decided to try cleft grafting in the next go 'round.
Meanwhile three of the peach seedling trees put on fruit this year. I've tried the fruit from each of them. One of them is completely sweet. One was a little bitter (I think the fruit might have been slightly under ripe) and one only had three fruits, two of which the birds devoured and the third fruit I picked when it had only just softened, and it was pretty tasty.
From the seedlings I'll have good peaches until I can teach myself to get a successful graft going from the old peach tree onto a seedling tree.

Seedling peach. Sweet fruit.

Weather variations

Generally by the middle of May our area has warm and sunny weather settled in. This year we've had a cold-ish early and mid spring. The garden has responded a little slower than in previous years. The strawberries are only just beginning to be sweet off the plant, cherries are slowly turning red, nanking cherry is just starting to ripen the fruit. Trees are leafed out and peaches are fattening on the trees, as are apricots. The grape vines have tiny clusters on them, and flowers are flowering. Gophers are having their way with anything they like, and the trapping has been modest thus far.

We'd had a few days into the 80s F, which were rather pleasant in the shade (and the mosquitoes found it lovely in the evening). Then we got a good wind blowing in from the south west (the direction which brings the rain). We had a little thunder, some lightning and the three waves of hail. Small hail was the first pass, then medium (pea sized), then a bit larger size. All this came along with a big rain event and I checked out my water harvesting areas – downspout to apple tree, road to basin/berm) and found it took a bit longer for the water to soak in than with big-ish rain events.

Hail in May

After the storm passed I noted some damaged leaves on various plants, but most things seemed okay.

Harvest

Aside from rhubarb there hasn't been much new to harvest from the garden. The usual herbs and chard are still around, and the weather has been cool for spring, so the strawberries have taken their time getting sweet. The few red ones were rather tart. Today I went and filled my basket with berries and washed, trimmed, and sliced them. Sprinkled with a little cane sugar they'll make their own light syrup and I'll put them into pint jars and freeze them. The batch of berries contains some sweet and some not so sweet, so by the time they sit in the sugar juice for a while they'll be pleasantly sweet. I did this with several quart jars last year and when I thawed the berries they had good texture, color, and flavor. I ate them just as they were. I also made a strawberry mousse for a dessert (which was much too rich for me to eat, but  my dinner companions enjoyed it).

Strawberries

The big white peach tree got a heavy thinning this past weekend (I still have one section to go) and the crop looks very promising. Another harvest on the horizon is raspberries, which I just ate off the plants last year, this year I think there will be a larger harvest to eat.

Nanking Cherry Harvest

Almost half a pound of nanking cherries in today's harvest. These fruits are about the size of a garbanzo bean that has been soaked. They are a little tart and have a pit, but not so large as to make it undesirable to eat the fruit. The pit comes away easily from the flesh. This is the second spring for these plants, so I'm impressed at the amount of fruit on such young shrubs.

In future years, and larger harvests, I imagine I'd make preserves out of these, but this year they'll just get eaten up.

Strawberries

The strawberries are starting to ripen. I picked this group this morning. Everyday brings more sweetness to them. I've yet to taste from today's harvest but I'll eat them even if they are a little tart. It is the first fruit from the garden.

Basket of produce

Today we picked some conadria figs, lemon cucumbers, a tomato, and yellow peaches.
Also pictured are some red torpedo onions and some other onions that have been curing in a warm, shady spot outside for several weeks.