How Do You Move a Garden?

May, 2016
The past couple of months and weeks has been strange and uneasy for me. I had been purging and packing our offices for the office move. If that is not unsettling enough, I had also started the same purging and packing on our own San Diego home. But my most ambivalent feeling might be regarding my garden. Over the years, we have grown our San Diego garden in the style of the lush tropical garden we grew up with. The San Diego weather has allowed us to grow tropical fruits like bananas, mangoes, Sapote Ciku, longan as well as figs, persimmons, and citrus like pomelos and kumquats. In anticipation of our move and sale of the house, we had started clearing out and tidying our San Diego garden. Not everyone appreciate the "Jungle Look" we favored. 

The plan is after we tidy up the garden, we can plant a more acceptable palate of plants to prospective buyers.

First to go was the banana grove......

Then the Passion Fruit vine .......

Then our succulent garden up front........

Most of the Potted citrus were moved already to Temecula. This a picture from a few years back when they were smaller. Meyer Lemons, Mandarin oranges, Calamansi and Kaffir Lime trees.

Not to mention the namesake of this blog-Kumquat. The two Fukushu Kumquat that we planted in the planter have become massive TREES!! See the two taller citrus trees at the background in the photo above. Then look below as to how large they have become.!! While we have faint notion of taking one of the Kumquat tree with us...sigh, I am not optimistic.

It is important for me to bring a plant legacy from our San Diego garden. Luckily, we are able to taking some banana tree pups, curry leaf plantlets, potted jade plants and succulent cuttings. I tried taking cuttings, air layering the Pomelo, Kumquat, Sapote, Mango and Persimmon without any success...

It is heart breaking but we would leave behind our beloved persimmon tree. It is too big to transplant. We will miss our Autumn beauty. One last season of delicious fruits from the tree. 

Our Manila Mango Tree is staying. It is also too big to transplant. The Frost threatened weather of Temecula is not conducive to Mango tree, without additional protection.

The Sapote Ciku is also staying behind. It is frost sensitive. This is sad as it finally is old enough to bear fruit.

I am still in "negotiation" with my husband on our Pomelo tree. We had bought the tree from a Vietnamese grower. It has a lovely floral flavor with a bitter tinge. It is grown in a planter box so hopefully we might be able to take it with us. Our dogs, Ellie and Fraiser love to play under the canopy of the trees,

I might still move the mother Curry Leaf plant although it might not survive the move. My reasoning is, it is unlikely that the new occupants will appreciate this specialty herb.

The trio of plants we are leaving behind....Banana, Persimmon and curry leaf tree.