Meet the lemon that took the gardening world by storm—if you plant only one citrus this year, make it this tree
The tree: The variegated pink Eureka lemon is usually sold in a 5-gallon container when it’s 2 to 3 years old.
In the ground, it grows 12 to 15 feet tall. Keep it small enough for a pot by pruning the foliage and roots every four to five years.
The foliage: Apple green leaves have creamy white to pale yellow edges.
Where to grow: Display in a site that gets at least 4 hours of sun a day (8 is better), and is protected from wind and frost.
Which zones: It grows well outdoors in Sunset climate zones 8, 9, 12–24, H1, H2; indoors elsewhere. Find your zone in the Sunset Plant Finder
The pale yellow fruit is streaked with green before fully matured.
The fruit: Green streaked with gold when young, it matures to pale yellow. Pink flesh produces clear juice. Expect a few lemons early on; more when the plant is four to five years old.
How to plant: Choose a pot at least 16 inches in diameter. Fill the bottom inch with fast-draining potting mix, set in the rootball, fill around it with more soil, then water.
‘Gold Nugget’ mandarin.
‘Gold Nugget’ mandarin: Seedless and super-sweet, these easy-to-peel mandarins ripen on the tree from early spring through summer.
Australian finger lime: Its jalapeño-shaped fruit can reach 5 inches long. Inside, “beads” filled with tart juice burst when you bite into them.
Organic Meyer lemon: The favored sweet-tart fruit is now available on an organically grown tree. It starts bearing fruit early on and can produce all year.
The aim of any organic gardener is to create a healthy garden by making the soil fertile and by increasing biodiversity.
The most important task is to prevent an occurrence of pests and diseases in the first place rather than having to react to them. In fact, once a pest or disease establishes itself on your crops there is often very little you can do to control it effectively. Protecting your plants from pests and diseases begins long before the crops are sown or planted in your garden.
What keeps your plants healthy?
Soil fertility –
A healthy soil produces healthy plants. The care of your soil is the most important duty of every gardener. It is the most effective method of preventing a pest or disease outbreak. The ideal soil is a loose, moist humus rich soil full of worm and other soil life with a balanced nutrient content, including all the trace elements. It may take a good few years to achieve this, but even the poorest soil can be made very fertile using organic methods.
A garden with good biodiversity is a lot less prone to sudden attacks of pests and diseases as there is a balance of pests and predators. To increase the biodiversity in your garden is probably one of the most rewarding pleasures in gardening as you have the opportunity to create habitats and homes for many living creatures that have been pushed to the edge either through the destruction of their habitats or chemical poisoning.
Beneficial habitats include: – Pond – Log or branch pile – Dry stone wall or stone pile – Native hedgerow and include fruiting shrubs – Native trees – Clump of nettles in the corner of your garden – Wildflower patch
Apart from creating specialist habitats you can also increase the biodiversity within your vegetable patch through:
– Crop rotations – where pests and diseases are eliminated by prolonged periods without their hosts.
– Polycultures by growing different crops next to each other (inter-cropping) or undersowing with a green manure crop (under-cropping).
– Variety mixtures- by growing different varieties of the same vegetable in a plot. This technique has been very successful with potatoes and lettuce and there is a lot of scope for further experiments.
Hygiene in and around the vegetable garden is very important for pest and disease control. This includes weed control and the removal of damaged or diseased leaves or plants from the garden. If your vegetable garden is messy it is much easier for pests and diseases to spread much faster. Your wildlife areas should be positioned a fair distance away from your plot as the beneficial creatures usually travel further and faster than the pests.
You should always start with good and clean seeds. They should always be stored in a cool, dry place and not for too many years. I usually keep seeds for only two years and then buy new ones. New seeds are a lot more vigorous.
The same applies to transplants. It is very rare that all transplants in a tray are of the same quality and you should only plant the best. There is no point of starting a plant hospital.
Right plant, right place
Plants that are not suited to your climate and soil conditions will never thrive and therefore will be the first ones to be attacked by pests and diseases. In Ireland you can’t grow good cucumbers or tomatoes outside. Some may survive and you may even get a few ripe tomatoes on it if you grow them on a south-facing wall in a sheltered garden somewhere in the south or east of the country. However, the same plant may produce a hundred fruits if grown in a polytunnel.
If you find that every year your parsnips get canker and your potatoes blight you should consider using a variety that is resistant or tolerant to the relevant pest or disease. Examples: Potato: Bionica, Sarpo Mira, Orla and Setanta are very resistant to blight Pea: Hurst Greenshaft is very resistant to mildew Parsnip: Javelin F1 have some resistance to canker.
Timing of sowing
You can sometimes avoid outbreaks of pests and diseases by adjusting your sowing or planting dates. The best example is to sow your carrots in late May or early June. This avoids the first generation of carrot rootfly in May. Another example is to sow your peas only in mid April to avoid foot rot disease.
Breaking the cycle
You could have brassicas (cabbage family) growing in your garden all year round. This makes it very easy for all pests and diseases to survive and re-infect new crops. I always clear my cabbage patch in mid January and only plant the first brassicas again in early May. I’ll never get nice spring cabbage but at least I hope to get fewer problems.
Adjusting the spacing
If plants are spaced too closely they are a lot more susceptible to fungal diseases such as grey mould or mildew. If you want to lessen any potential problem you can always space your crops a little bit further apart. This increases the airflow through the crop and reduces the incidence of fungal diseases that thrive in more humid conditions.
Proper sowing and planting
Good care should be taken when sowing seeds and planting vegetables. The better they start off the more likely they will do well.
Managing pests and disease
Whilst many pest and disease problems can be prevented, there are various occasions where pest or disease numbers increase to such high numbers that they can cause serious damage to your crops. It is crucial to properly identify the culprits. It happens often that an innocent bystander who happens to be at the scene is accused of the act. It may have been the one who has just eaten the culprit.
A couple of years ago, on our yearly trip to Israel to visit family, we met a local farmer who came to do some maintenance work on my mother-in-law’s fruit trees.
I started following the guy like a lost puppy, and what do you know? He took me in
And I get why… Grafting is a tricky business. There are so many benefits to grafting, and people had been grafting fruit trees for years, but there are so few people who know how to do it and so many things that can go wrong, it’s like making cheese, you have to practice and practice and practice until you get it right.
This is why it’s so valuable to learn it first hand from someone that has a ton of experience.
So today is your lucky day! Our last visit to Israel was right in grafting season and we got to tag along to a day of grafting and fruit trees maintenance and I am sharing it all here with you!
But let’s start at the beginning…
What is Grafting?
To graft means to join two living trees from the same family into one by uniting a shoot or a bud with a standing tree.
What are the Benefits of Grafting?
In my post 4 Techniques of Grafting Fruit Trees , I give a couple of examples of situations when you’ll want to graft another tree on your existing tree, those might help you understand the benefits below much better so make sure you check them out.
There are so many benefits for grafting… Obviously, the main benefit that comes to mind is having two (or more) different kinds of fruits on one tree, like, an orange and a lemon, or two (or more) different verities of fruit on the same tree, like, green apple and red apple.
Since you still have just one tree it means you still have to take care of just one tree. You don’t need additional space, you don’t need to water more, you don’t need to fertilize another tree or prune another tree, yet at the end of the day, you’ll get two different kinds of fruits.
Grafting also saves you waiting time. When you plant a new tree, it will take it a few years to start producing a nice amount of fruit for you. When you graft on an existing tree you’ll have fruit ready for picking in just a couple short seasons.
Grafting can also save a sick or broken tree. You will see this in the tutorial below… What we did is used the trunk and roots of a tree that was not producing anymore to support a new tree.
Another benefit for grafting is fighting insects and diseases. If your tree is suffering but you know of another verity that is doing much better in your area, you can graft the new verity on your tree to help it produce better.
Also, some trees have a female and a male tree and you have to plant both in order for them to pollinate each other and produce fruit, this is called cross-pollination. Pears, plums, and pecans are among the trees in this group. So in this case, you can graft a female on a male or a male on a female and you will have one tree that can pollinate itself. Magic, huh?
Which Tree on Which Tree?
This is where experience comes in… Basically, you have to remember that the trees you join have to be from the same family for them to successfully “communicate”.
For example, trees within the prune family such as peaches nectarines, and plums can be grafted together. Those can also be joined with an almond tree since it is from the same family.
Verities of olives can be grafted on to one another. Verities of apples or apples and crabapples can be grafted together.
You will have to make sure you check each combination before you graft.
The best way, though, is to ask someone with experience. If you have grafted before and you know of a successful combination, please list it in the comments below, hopefully, it will save someone a whole lot of work.
When to Graft?
You can’t just graft anytime of the year.
It has to be done at the end of winter just before spring. It has to be done before the tree starts to bud when the branches are still completely bare.
You want to do this on a sunny day but not a hot day. We want plenty of light but not a lot of heat.
Here in the South, it will probably be best to graft somewhere in the end of February or the beginning of March. Pay attention to when your fruit trees usually start to bud and pay close attention to the weather.
Ok, so this is the basics, now, let’s get out to the field and see how it’s done…
The first tree we grafted was my mother-in-law’s olive tree. A couple of years ago, it was split in the center because of a load of snow and since then it stopped producing.
Here is another look of the trunk. It was split almost all the way to the bottom.
So in this case, grafting was done in order to save the tree. Instead of pulling the tree out or just cutting it down and wasting the space, we took advantage of the already established root system and grafted a new olive verity on this existing tree.
The first step was clean-up. We needed to cut the tree past the point where it split and prepare it for grafting.
Raik worked with a small chainsaw to cut off a little bit at a time…
All the way down past the split…
We didn’t want to cut more than what we had to.
This tree had another big branch that came from the trunk. We could have left it and have the tree producing two kinds of olives, but since my mother-in-law didn’t like the olives this tree produced, we shortened this branch as well and prepared it for grafting.
Ok, that’s it. Now we are ready to start.
Raik has his own olive grove that he is caring for for years, so he brought with him a few young branches from one of his trees.
It is VERY important that you graft branches from a tree that you know or from someone that you absolutely trust. You want to make sure you graft a healthy tree so you don’t damage your own tree and that you graft from a tree that you know has a great production of healthy and delicious fruit.
It will be a shame to do all this work and find out in a couple of seasons that you grafted from a tree that does not produce well.
This is the one we will work on first…
See the tiny bud between the branch and the leaf? We want to make sure we don’t damage it because this is where the new tree is going to grow from.
To be Continue……..
Learn how to grow onions in your garden. They are delicious in salads, soups and many other dishes you can enjoy with your family.
Onions are a very easy crop and one of the most useful vegetables to grow. Onions store well, make great use of space, and are used in most dishes in the kitchen. Let’s see how to grow onions for salads and cooking.
Do you use onions a lot? Our family uses LOTS of onions! I wish we could grow enough for all our needs, but we’d need a lot more garden space. So we only grow green onions and use them in salads and as garnish to soups.
So how many onions should you plat? If you eat a lot of sauce based dishes such as pasta dishes, stews and curries, you’d probably get through 2 or 3 onions per week, so plant about 150 onions. But if you are using up lots of them in chutney, relish, soups and ketchup you’ll need a lot more. For a good number to use in your kitchen, grow 200 overwintering (storage) onions, 300 white onions and 200 red onions.
How To Prepare the Soil for Growing Onions
Preparing the soil for onions is quite straight forward. Onions are really easy to grow and don’t require much. Make sure the soil has good drainage and the onions spot is in full sin. Incorporate some garden compost, and a week or so before planting, dress the soil with a dusting of Fish, Blood and Bone fertilizer.
How To Grow Onions
You can grow onions from seed or from sets (immature bulbs). Each method has its different advantages. Onion seeds offer a wider selection of varieties, are cheaper, and possibly store better. Onion sets are much easier to grow, offer more resistance to diseases and have a better success rate.
If you are new to growing onions you may choose to sow by sets, but if you would like to give onions seeds a go here is a quick guideline.
How to grow onions from seeds
To grow onions from seed, start around 2 months before the last frost, usually in March. Sow onion seeds in small pots or trays: scatter seeds thinly and cover lightly with a general purpose compost. Keep indoors until the seeds have germinated. Move them to a cool greenhouse or cold frame before hardening them off. Plant outside when they are pencil size in mid May.
Try to keep the young seedlings under 15 degrees before they move outside, and space out in the same way as onion sets (see below).
How to grow onions from sets
Growing onions from sets is much easier, although buying the onion sets can be a lot more expensive.
Plant sets either in March or April: poke a small hole for the onion bulb to sit in (my husband uses his finger to make the hole), place the bulb fat end down and cover lightly with soil. Space the bulbs 4 to 6 inches from each other in rows with spaces 8-12 inches apart. Bear in mind that the smaller the gap between rows, the smaller the onion will be.
We like to plant several sets at a week interval, so we can have green onions for our salads. We plant the onion sets around the edge of our raised beds in our veggie garden.
Do keep an eye on newly planted sets, as birds do find pulling out the bulbs great entertainment, and a bored bird could turn out the whole bed. If you have any cheeky birds, it may be worth netting them until they have rooted in.
How to care for your growing onions
Bolting onions can be a problem, particularly if they are planted too close together, or even if the weather warms up quickly. The solution is quick and easy: simply cut off the flowers before they form.
Throughout the growing season, simply keep weed free and water in dry spells.
To extend the onion season you can also plant overwintering onions, also known as Japanese onions. We LOVE doing this: it gives us a nice fresh crop of onions very early in the spring. Overwintering onions will need to be planted in September or October and will be ready a month or two before the true summer crop.
Onion Pests And Diseases
Onion fly is probably the most troublesome problem, but if you grow from sets, you should avoid these grubs. If you do get any problems, you could cover the bulbs until they develop a little more, and by hoeing regularly you’ll expose the grubs for the birds to snack on.
The following problems are more rare, but you could experience them.
Onion eelworm can distort the developing bulb, but a good crop rotation should control this. If the problem is bad grow brassicas or lettuce on the bed for a number of years.
White rot is evident by a moldy growth near the neck of stored onions, it turns them soft and eventually rotten. Often this rotting can be caused by forcing onions leaves over in an attempt to induce maturing, so avoid doing this and let the leaves bend over naturally before harvest.
There are other bacterial and fungal diseases that can attack stored onions, simply discard rotten onions to protect other bulbs.
Neck rot is a disease that kills the plant in the ground. When affected, the onion will turn yellow before dying. There is not a lot you can do about this: just remove the affected plants and keep to a good crop rotation plan. Do not allow any allium group plant on the same part of the garden for at least two years.
When to harvest onions
Harvesting onions can be done just weeks after planting, if you want to use the fresh, green onions (also known as scallions) in your salads. If you intend to harvest green onions, plant the bulbs closer (2 to 4 inches as opposed to 4 to 6 inches) and harvest every other onion to use in spring salads, and leave the rest.
If you want to harvest full grown onions, do it in mid to late summer. You’ll know it’s time when the leaves will start to turn brown and bend over.
How to harvest onions
Harvesting onions is really easy. Simply lift the onions from the ground, shake the dirt off, and leave them outside on a drying rack or even on the ground.
If it rains then cover the onions as it is the air that you need to dry them out effectively. You can then either remove the leaves and store in a net bag or leave the leaves on to braid and hang.
Some gardeners will tell you to bend the leaves over to help them to mature, but this can cause damage to the neck. And don’t be tempted to dry your onions in the greenhouse, if it is warm the onions will start to cook and they will not store.
The potato leafhopper, Empoasca fabae , is a pest that is easy to overlook until the damage – called “hopperburn” – “burns” you. Due to it’s feeding habits, it can cause damage that is out of proportion to it’s density. Most problems in vegetables show up in snap beans or potatoes, but it is capable of successful reproduction on over 200 plants species in 25 different families, including alfalfa, potatoes, beans, peanuts, and woody ornamentals. Potato leafhopper is a transient pest of apples, grapes, celery, rhubarb, and clover to name a few. Densities are typically highest in alfalfa.
The potato leafhopper overwinters to the south of us. Migrant source populations develop in the Gulf States in early spring, where they overwinter on legume host plants, but may also be found on a variety of native, evergreen plants. It has been tentatively demonstrated that the potato leafhopper feeds on loblolly pine, and the leafhopper’s overwintering area spans the entire southern pine region and may extend into coastal areas where evergreen hosts are available.
Most overwintering females are mated and in reproductive diapause (their reproduction is delayed). These migrants arrive in Pennsylvania during the spring and early summer and they move northward, recolonizing its entire range from its overwintering source. The summer range spans most of the temperate latitudes east of 100° longitude. Some authors have suggested a “pied-piper” hypothesis for the broad patterns of northward expansion of many pest species, where agricultural activities have provided temporarily suitable habitats for many highly mobile species that are geographically far from suitable overwintering locations. The possibility of some return flow to the south, along with some adult diapause, is currently an open research question.
The sex ratios of our populations shift during the season. The long-distance migrants are predominantly female. A sex ratio of 25 females to 1 male was recorded entering an alfalfa field in May in Pennsylvania. All females were gravid and able to initiate a new generation. The sex ratio changed to approximately 3:1 on second harvest and 1:1 on third harvest. The sex ratio of eggs is 1:1 and adult populations maintain stable 1:1 sex ratios by midseason and thereafter.
Potato leafhopper develops 3 to 4 generations during its residence in its summer range. One important factor that regulates populations is alfalfa harvest. Harvest destroys eggs and nymphs, and sends adults flying. Recolonization of alfalfa regrowth and vegetable crops occurs by invasion of adults from those populations adjacent to alfalfa fields or neighboring alfalfa fields on adjacent farms.
Eggs are deposited within the plant. Most are in the upper more succulent tissue. On alfalfa, eggs are laid in the top 17 cm or upper one fourth of the plant. In potatoes, eggs are laid more frequently in the terminal leaflets and on leaves between apical and basal leaves. Egg-laying activity is maximum during the dark hours. Very little egg-laying occurs below 18.3° C. Females lay about 2 to 4 eggs per day, and somewhere between 30 and 200 eggs per female over a female’s lifetime. In the lab, a female lives about 100 to 120 days.
Egg-hatch occurs in 9 1/2 to 11 days at 75° F. After hatching, nymphs undergo five instars. The newly emerged nymph is nearly colorless with red spots that quickly fade. A yellow color soon appears, changing to pale green in the third instar. The time of development varies greatly with temperature, but average duration of each of the 1st through 5th instars respectively are: 2.6, 2.3, 2.3, 2.5, and 4.7 days. Mating occurs within 48 h of adult emergence with females beginning to lay eggs in three days. The average reproductive life was 30-35 days for females and 33 days for males.
Leafhopper feeding results in symptoms called “hopperburn”. The adults use the lacerate-and-flush style of probing in and around vascular tissue. Potato leafhoppers move its stylets steadly through cells, secreting full salivary sheaths only rarely. This lacerate-and-flush feeding style results in disorganization of vascular bundles, enlargement and proliferation of cells, collapse of phloem fibers, and eventual collapse of phloem sieve elements. It seems likely that both introduction of saliva from the leafhopper and mechanical wounding by stylet movememt is necessary to cause the injury, which is a saliva-enhanced wound response associated with vascular blockage. The net result blockage of phloem transport. Gross symptoms of hopperburn probably result from this phloem blockage and subsequent accumulation of photoassimilates in leaves. This interacts with other stresses, such as drought.
Hopperburn shows up as a browning and necrosis along the margins of potatoes. Damage varies with cultivar. In beans, it can cause a curling of the leaves, stunting, reduced root systems, and reduced yields and quality. Greatest damage comes from feeding on young plants. In alfalfa, it causes a distinctive V-shaped yellow wedge, typically first in the terminal leaflets. However, hopperburn symptoms result from the plant’s response to the feeding. Therefore, responding to the damage by spraying is not the best option. It does help, because new leaves will be free of injury. But the best management is to scout for leafhoppers. It is easy to do with a sweep net, or by closely examining the undersides of leaves. Both adults and nymphs will include a characteristic “sideways” walking pattern as part of their movement. Adults also have a characteristic deep lime-green color. Scouting and spraying when thresholds are exceeded is the best management. In some states, the early season influx is monitored simply by regional reporting of the scouting data from alfalfa.
Container gardening is a method of growing fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers in pots, hanging baskets, planters, and other containers. Container gardens are a great way for gardeners who don’t have lots of space to grow their own food!
To create a container garden, you will need:
- Potting soil
- Seeds and/or plant starts
- Water and a watering can or hose.
- A natural fertilizer (compost tea or fish emulsion)
Step 1: Survey for Sun and Shade
Look around your home for the best place to put your container garden. Which areas get the most sun? Which areas are shaded? Put your containers in the spot with the most sun! Vegetable plants need lots of sunshine to grow and produce food. For example:
- Tomatoes, peppers & eggplant need full sun. Leafy greens & root vegetables can live with a little shade.
- Patios, balconies, porches, and windowsills can all be good places for your garden.
- If you have a fence or railing, you can use it like a trellis for peas or beans.
Step 2: Find Your Containers.
For most vegetable plants, you will need five-gallon containers, or larger. The containers must have holes in the bottom so that water can drain out. Otherwise the soil can become waterlogged and plant roots won’t be able to get the air they need to survive!
Step 3: Pick out Your Soil
Soil in a container garden needs to be good at holding water and nutrients. Potting soil is usually made with this in mind. Do not use soil from the ground, because it will not hold water or nutrients very well. You can buy potting soil at any garden store, but make sure the soil package says that it can be used in a vegetable garden. We recommend using organic potting soil, because it holds nutrients better and does not have chemicals.
Step 4: Selecting the Right Plants
Choose varieties of plants that are well-suited for growing in containers. Plants in containers will have less space and less soil than they would if they were planted in the ground. For example: Smaller (dwarf) plant varieties grow better in containers than larger varieties (i.e. cherry tomatoes grow better in a container than large slicing tomatoes).
Step 5: Water Often!
Plants growing in containers need a lot more watering than plants growing in a backyard garden. This is because water drains out through the holes in bottom. You can put a tray underneath your containers to catch the water that drains out. The plant will then absorb the water later.
- During the summer, you will probably need to water your containers every day, especially if they are in full sun.
- Water in the early morning or evening. When the sun is less strong, the plants will be able to absorb more water, and you will lose less water to evaporation.
Step 6: Make the Most Out of a Small Space
- Grow Vertically! Use trellises, stakes, or a nearby fence to help your plants grow UP instead of across. This works with VINING PLANTS like squash, peas, beans, and tomatoes!
- Companion Planting: Instead of planting one type of vegetable in each container, mix and match different vegetables! Most vegetables have other plants that they grow well with. These are called ‘companion plants’.
Step 7: Fertilizing and Soil Care
Well-fed plants are happy plants! Plants in a container garden need to be fertilized often, because nutrients in the soil wash out of the container’s holes every time you water. We recommend that you fertilize your containers at least once a month! This will make a big difference in the amount of food that your garden produces.
Fish emulsion and compost tea are good organic (non-chemical) fertilizers. They are safe for food, people and pets to be around:
- Fish emulsion is a nutrient-rich natural fertilizer. You can buy it at any garden supply store. You will need to dilute it with water, then pour it on the soil around your plants. The bottle will tell you the proper mixture. It is actually made from fish parts—so it can be a little stinky!
- Compost tea: Compost tea is a natural liquid fertilizer made from finished compost and water. Put a few cups of finished compost in a bucket of water and let it sit for 5-10 days, or until the water turns the color of weak coffee. Use the finished mixture to water your containers!
- Worm composting is also great way to make your own fertilizer! Check out our blog in upcoming weeks for more information on worm composting.
Step 8: Preparing for Winter
You can use the same containers and soil for many years.
- Every winter, cover the soil with a layer of mulch to protect it from weeds and rain. Fallen leaves make a great mulch!
- Put the containers under cover if possible, to protect them from the rain.
- Add fresh compost to the containers in the spring.