"I Found My Thrill....On Blueberry Hill..."

It's Blueberry Season!

We now have our original four blueberry bushes and three more Cindy got from her friend Janet when she moved.  All of the bushes have been flowering and producing berries for months, and now the berries are ripening.

Some varieties of blueberry require more "chill hours" than our San Diego climate has, but there are several varieties that do very well here.

Good thing we love blueberries.

Location, Location, Location

Last week we noticed a pair of House Finches inspecting the beam over our front porch.  They flew on and off of it for several days, first at one end of the beam, then at the other.

We were rather hoping they wouldn't decide to build a nest there, but they ultimately did build one at the far end of the beam.

On The Nest

 We've had birds nest on that beam before, and to some extent it's a good choice for them; it's easily accessible, it's protected from the elements, it's concealed from the view of predators and the plastic spikes we've installed on top of the beam provide some real stability for the nest.  So for those reasons it's a good choice of location.

However, we put the spikes up there to discourage birds from nesting there several years ago after  Mourning Doves had nested there several times and proved themselves to be terrible bird parents.  They build flimsy nests  consisting of a few twigs thrown together on the beam and one time one of the parent doves turned around and swept its fledgling right off the beam onto the porch below.  We scooped that one up and made an emergency run to Project Wildlife, the wildlife rehabilitation center, because it looked to us like the chick had a broken leg.  So we put up the plastic spikes to discourage nesting.

That effort has been moderately successful; the Mourning Doves have stayed away, but we have had House Finches nest there occasionally since we put up the spikes.  They are much better bird parents and build substantial nests, carefully weaving the nesting materials around the plastic spikes to give it stability.  The problem is that they tend to be shy of humans and Mama bird will fly off the nest whenever we go in or out the front door.  They will also stay away from the nest if we decide to sit on our front porch in the evening.  Since we don't want to be responsible for the eggs not hatching, we tend to avoid using the front door or sitting on the porch.  They have an incubation period of 13 to 14 days and then about another week of feeding the chicks when they hatch.

It's fun to watch the chicks develop into fledglings and begin to try their wings, but it's a pain in the tush to avoid the front door for that long.  We'll do it, because we don't want to be bad neighbors, but we really hope they'll find a different location in the future.

Loquats

We were looking at a tree in the neighbors' back yard the other day and wondering what the fruit hanging all over it was.

Loquats

Turned out it's a Loquat tree.  And Loquats are producing fruit right now--lots of fruit.  A friend who  has more Loquats than she can use gave Cindy some, so she needed to find a way to use them.

Here's the recipe Cindy came up with for Loquat Fried Rice:

Loquat Fried Rice
4 servings

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp. low-sodium soy sauce or low-sodium tamarin
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/4 tsp. white pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 clove minced garlic
 ------

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas
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3 cups cold, pre-cooked brown or white rice
2 cups diced loquats
3/4 cup roasted, unsalted cashews
2 green onions, sliced

Directions:

1.  In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger powder, white pepper, olive oil and garlic.  Set aside or refrigerate until ready to use.
2.  Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium high heat.  Add onion to the skillet and cook, stirring often, until onions have become translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes.  Stir in corn and peas.  Stirring constantly, cook until vegetables are tender, about 3 minutes.  Stir in rice, loquats, cashews, green onions and soy sauce mixture.  Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through.  Serve immediately.

Tomato Report

This year's effort at tomato grafting was not as successful as we had wanted it to be; Cindy was hoping for a 30% success rate, but only one out of the 10 grafted plants survived for more than a few days.  See:  Not Quite as Successful As We Hoped.

However, 10% is better than 0%, so we'll take it.

Better yet, the surviving tomato plant, a Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock, is thriving.  In fact, it's doing so well that it's almost twice as tall as the ungrafted Rose de Berne plant next to it.

Grafted Tomato on Left, Ungrafted on Right

Not only is the plant taller, but the blossoms and the leaves are much larger on the grafted plant as well.

Grafted

Ungrafted

The leaves in the top photo are from the grafted Rose de Berne, the ungrafted Rose de Berne leaves are in the bottom photo.  The plants are side-by-side in the bed and I took the photos from the same spot.

Grafted Plant's Blossoms

The blossoms on the grafted plant are also much larger.  They're very pretty and they've also been attracting a bumblebee performing "buzz pollination".  I had never heard of this, but Cindy had recently read an article about bees and realized that the bumblebee she saw on the tomato blossom was loosening the pollen by buzzing over the flower's anther.  The bee rapidly contracts her flight muscles to create the buzz, then collects the loose pollen and transmits some of it to the next flower she visits.  BumblebeeConservation.org has a video of bumblebees doing this.

Tomatoes and blueberries both can benefit from buzz pollination, although because tomatoes have both male and female parts in the flower, they can also be pollinated by shaking the tomato cage, which will mix the pollen.  

We're happy to have the bumblebees, though, and looking forward to tomatoes later.

Pea Pickin' Peas

Although they've been outdone by the green beans, the Sugar Snap and Oregon Giant peas have also produced a pretty good crop this year.

Peas

They were succulent and tender, but now they're done for the year.

Sorcerer's Apprentice?

A couple of months ago, we noticed that a volunteer green bean plant was sprouting in the raised bed.  (See: Nobody Told Them ).

Sprouting

It's easy to lose track of green bean pods on the vine; one day it's a little pod too small to pick, and the next day it's three feet long and too tough to eat.  That's what it seems like, anyway.  And sometimes one of them gets missed and stays on the vine until it dries up and the seeds fall on the ground and sprout when the rains come, even though they're not supposed to want to germinate until the weather gets warmer.

Mature Plant

 So now the vine is fully mature and producing green beans.  Lots and lots of green beans.  Every day, more beans.

One of Many

We're still working on all the green beans Cindy picked and froze last summer, and probably some from the summer before that.  The plant is not only showing no signs of slowing down its production, but seems to be going into overdrive.

Lots and Lots of Beans

It's a good thing we like green beans.

Not Quite As Successful As We Hoped

Unfortunately, that's the verdict on this year's effort at grafting heirloom tomato plants to tomato root stock.

Cindy started the seeds several weeks ago, transporting them from the small greenhouse out behind the garage to inside the garage at night.  When the plants were big enough, she began the process of grafting them.

Setting Up For the Operation

First she matches up tomato and root plant with stems that are approximately the same width, then slices off the top of one tomato and one root plant; she keeps the tomato top and discards the top of the root plant.  She also cuts off most of the leaves of the tomato top so that the plant will put most of its energy into healing the graft instead of producing more leaves.

Then she makes the grafting cuts with a razor blade in both stems and clips both halves together.

Trimming the Tops

Grafted Plants

The plants go into a dark space overnight with a plastic bin over the top of the tray to keep the humidity up and the plants moist.

Humid Environment

Inspected By Miss Mia

After that they go into dim light in the garage for a couple of days and continue to grow.

At least that was the plan.

After a couple of days, all but one of the plants had keeled over and it was clear they had not survived.

Lone Survivor

And the winner is.... Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock.

Fortunately, Cindy still has quite a few ungrafted tomato plants, so it doesn't all depend on this one plant and we should still have plenty of tomatoes this summer.