My garden in the Fall 2012

More snapshots  - this time from the Fall 2012, of my San Diego garden. 5 years ago!!!

My life has been a non-stop whirlwind of activities and events since the school year began. Hence, the lapse in blog postings......I thought I start by showing what has been happening in my garden.

My original pandanus plant from Well Sweep Farm in New Jersey!! See the baby pandanus plants at its base. I remember the owner of the nursery telling how subceptible the pandanus was to the cold.They had at one resorted to buying back plants from their customers to restart/ strengthen their stock of pandanus. I had this pandanus plant for over 10 years, taking it inside during the winter and letting it enjoy sunny warm days outside.This plant and its babies would survive until 2014 when it succumbed to an irrigation accident. We had gone away for a trip and my irrigation had failed..... Unfortunately, it was a scorching summer. No amount of watering could revive my beloved pandan.

Black Jack Fig has been a staple of my San Diego garden for many years. To me, it is one of the most delicious of the figs.

Dragon fruit flowering! This did not happen too often!

 Dragon Fruit

Turmeric is flower

Figs

Year of the Dragon - Fruit!

For the last 3 years, my Pitaya /Dragon Fruit plant Hylocereus undatus had teased me with beautiful blossoms but never rewarding me with any fruit. It seems it was just waiting for Year of the Dragon to start fruiting! I was pleasantly surprised to see that the blossom did not just fall off but two dragon fruits had formed on the plant. One of them has develop a beautiful pinky red color and the other has just a blush of color. I am not sure if they are of the same plant. It am excited to taste the fruit finally!!

September - flower 

 This blossom will turn into the blush colored Pitaya

One of the blossom turned yellow and will not grow to be a Pitaya

 The remaining blossom has developed into a pinky red Pitaya

Just a touch of blush on this Pitaya

Fruits in an neglected orchard

I cannot believe it is already August 2012. My real life outside Blog world has been beyond busy leaving me with very little time to blog. We have been travelling since the end of June through the end of July attending Lacrosse College Recruiting Showcases with my son. We crisscrossed the east and west coasts of the US, returning home to San Diego for a couple of days in between with barely enough time to wash dirty laundry and repack for the next trip. Having two gardens and hour apart, I resigned myself to the fact that there would be many casualties of neglect.


Finally, yesterday evening I ventured into my Chula Vista garden. It was overgrown with weeds as it had received multiple watering a day due to some glitch in the irrigation controller. We came home from the airport at midnight to find the irrigation on, then running again at 3 am when we went to bed  and at 8 am in morning!! What will my water bill be this month?? Irrigation is now turned off for the rest of the week to allow the ground to dry off.


The good new is the fruit trees are doing fine. I will let the pictures speak for themselves while I dine on some delicious Mission Figs :)

Black Mission Figs

Flowering despite neglect.........

I realize that I have not posted anything for awhile but I just wanted to share some pictures of the beautiful Dragon Fruit Flower in my garden this morning. I had vaguely noticed that the Dragon Fruit ( Pitaya) plant was sprouting some buds recently. This morning, I took a quick stroll through my neglected garden and was rewarded with this breathtaking display. The plant had actually fallen down during a windstorm recently, and I had yet to upright it. Despite the neglect, it has numerous buds on it. So far, despite flowers previous seasons, it has yet to form the Dragon Fruit. Hopefully, this year will be the Year!

August in the garden

It never fails to amaze what I discover in my garden. All summer long I had be on the lookout for fruits forming on my fruit trees. The dragon fruit forming ( or so I thought) was exciting and now.... an embarrassment. Dear friends and family, in my excitement on seeing the `fruit', I totally missed the biological process of fruit formation!! What I took to be the dragon fruit was actually the formation of the flower bud. No wonder, it was elongating and not plumping out! Needless to say, my dear husband had a good laugh and did not let my faux pas go un-reminded each time he is in the garden.


Upset that my "fruit" was not plumping out!

Ops- looks like they are flower buds



Definitely - flower buds and not the fruit



Spent flower and hopefully fertilized so that I have fruit!

After a few days of my disgust and worrying that maybe I planted a regular cactus and not a Dragon fruit cactus, it dawned on me that it was starting to look like a flower. Look how how gorgeous were those flowers. Like large Christmas cactus flowers. I quickly took the pictures before dashing off on our long drive to Berkeley to settle in daughter L. Now, I worry that those flowers might not have been pollinated and I will not get any dragon fruit....Had I been home, being the Asian gardener I am, I would have assisted in pollinating the flowers, paintbrush and all. Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Around the time that I had the eureka moment about the dragon fruit, I found another pleasant surprise. A bunch of bananas forming on the banana plant! This was so amazing and unexpected, as I swear not more than 3 days before the discovery, I made a concerted effort to look at the banana clump to look for banana flowers. It has been a few years since we had any banana as we had been trimming out the clump. Hopefully the bananas will ripen before the weather cools down. Looking forward to eating "Ice-Cream" banana.

The other plant that had me worried was the passion fruit vine "Frederick". It did not form fruit all of last year although it flowered. We were beginning to wonder if it was actually self fertile as advised. This year fruits formed. Early in the summer I had broken open a fruit and it was empty. Again, worried that it was the wrong plant or not pollinated. This week the fruits started turning purple. Now, they have started falling off the vines as they ripen. The fruits are small so I am thinking it needed more water than I was giving it and maybe more fertilizer. Nevertheless, I am enjoying delicious refreshing passionfruit.

All is good in the garden. Look at picture updates of the other fruit trees and vegetable garden.


Mango and Strawberry Guava




Gorgeous crimson flowers and healthy fruits


Cousins! - Beet and Swiss Chards




Onions, shallots and onion flower heads



Sprouting potatoes for the fall crop