Random Shots

[Mikey]

About three weeks ago I purchased a 'Frederick' fruiting passion vine.  Information indicated that it would fruit better if I hand pollinated the flowers.  So every couple of days I go out and do my bee-thing with an artist's brush.


Today I noticed this below fruit and another 8-10 smaller ones that have set fruit.  Now I need to read up on determining when the fruit is ripe....  I've never eaten passion vine fruit....... I hope I like it......


Air Plant


Guess who's having a stuffed pepper tonight? 


Small, but colorful.  Looks good enough to eat......


Hiding beneath a banana leaf is this fragrant Clerodendrum bungei.   


We had a small crop of avocados this year but it appears we will have a good crop next year.

[EagleEye]

Great photos Mikey
That is one big pepper. Suppose you have more right? Never tire of seeing your flowers / garden.

Steve

[LeeAnne151]

Jealous! I love avocados and they are so expensive here most of the time.

Clerodendrons do smell good don't they? I've never had a passion fruit but the flowers are cool.

[Kittyzee]

Gosh Mikey, I hope you like passion vine fruit too--since you're the Daddy!    

Great shots of the veges and avocados--how DO you eat all of them anyway, they don't store well do they?  I find the California gardens here so interesting since a lot of the plants I'll never be able to grow.  What I wouldn't do for a lemon or a lime tree though....

[ponderer]

Really cool . Mikey. Oh !  for an avocado tree  I have sprouted them from a pit , but they have to stay indoors 3/4  of the year.

Thanks for posting those . Hoping for more

[Mikey]

Steve: Yes that was a monster of a bell pepper.  Notice I said, "was"    I steamed it and then stuffed it with a mixture of brown rice, wild rice, chicken, onion and cheddar cheese and had it for dinner.  The other bell peppers are not that big....yet....  I'm not certain what I did right to get this one so big but I don't normally grow them that large.

LuAnn: The avocados stay on the tree and I pick them as I need them.  They are sort of similar to citrus in that they store reasonably well on the tree for about a two-three month period when they are ripe enough to pick.  Avocados eventually will fall off on their own and even then they are still very hard.  However, with a crop this large I will be giving some away to friends and neighbors. This tree is a 'Gwen' and my neighbor across the street has what I believe is a Fuerte.  What's cool is that our trees produce avocados at different times of the year and thus I keep her supplied during her down time and she keeps me supplied during my down time....  No downers here    Living in Ohio you have things you can grow that I can't grow because I don't get the required winter chill..... so I think it all evens out....  You have real people and we have plastic people.  You probably have fireflies whereas I've never seen a firefly....other than in Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride...     What I would give just to see Fall colors.....  We're actually talking about taking a Fall trip to New England just to see the trees....

[Kittyzee]

The fireflies are starting to come on really thick at night.  I have a little leaf linden in the yard that is in full bloom (I'll try to get a shot of this tree, it's stunning) and is loaded with the sweetest smelling flowers that you can actually make tea from.  But at night, the fireflies are all over it and it looks like it sparkles like diamonds!  There is no way for me to get a pic of that with a camera  :'(

And over the bean and corn fields at night the sight is spectacular as they come up with their "lights flashing"!  Kind of like their own Fourth of July! 

[LeeAnne151]

Mikey, those are the only fireflies I've ever seen too.

I have a lemon tree in my greenhouse and it has tiny lemons and open blooms on it right now.  A whole bunch of spider mites too.   

[Sunbeam56]

If you want citrus for the flowers, and not the fruit, you can grow a Calomondin in a pot.
Actually, a lot of the people I knew in Bryan, Texas, where it gets cold enough to kill citrus, had rather large citrus in pots. They have dwarf varieties.
 

There was this great old lady across the road from my Dad. She raised Herefords. She had a tangerine tree in her backyard that she build a stick and plastic greenhouse for every year. A single light bulb in the construction was enough to keep it from freezing.

[Mikey]

We certainly do try to push the growing zone envelope don't we. 

I had read of someone here in SoCal who needed to give his small tree a winter chill to make it produce fruit.  During the winter he made a cardboard tube that he placed around the trunk of the tree and he put ice in it every day so it would get a good winter chill.....  After reading about his success I decided to see if I could get my "warm weather variety" of lilac to flower better.  I didn't put a cardboard tube around it because the plant was too bushy, so one winter I just put ice cubes piled up against the base of the plant.  I was hoping that getting the soil chilled would be good enough...  Our ice-cube dispenser was quite busy that winter    However, the following spring the lilac put on its usual mediocre display and I put it out of its misery and sent it on to plant heaven..... 

[Cedric]

Avocados yummy! I love that clerodendrum I am sure the butterflies do too. That green paprika (bell chilly) looks good enough to eat just like that, hmm hmm.

Your garden seems so rewarding. I love that. I decided to copy you when I saw your courgette first time, I need some edibles so I put in some papaya, see what happens.
I must try the paint brush trick with the Passiflora vitifolia I have, I need seeds but so far no fruit, just lots and lots of flowers. Strange because there are lots of pollinating insects around as well.

[Mikey]

Cedric: Perhaps the variety of Passiflora you have is not self-pollinating. 

I was unfamiliar with the word "courgette" and had to look it up.  Sounded pretty fancy to me.  For other readers, unwilling to admit they didn't understand the meaning , my on-line dictionary says it's primarily a British word for zucchini.  I like my "courgette" cut into thick slivers, dipped in batter and deep fried    and then dipped in a nice ranch style dressing.....  Healthy?>NO  Tasty?>YES! 

[Kittyzee]

Mikey, here are the pics (finally!  ) of the linden tree in my yard.  If anything should happen to this tree, my grief would be extreme, it is like a special friend to me.  It smells divine, and when stepping under the canopy of it the temperature seems to drop by 10 degrees: not really I suppose but it feels like it.  It houses many nesting birds and the insects are all over the blossoms that make a very good tea.  When walking up to it, it sounds like it's humming with all of the bees and bugs.  And the fireflies are lighting it up at night in a spectacular display! 

[Mikey]

Have you made any Linden Tea this year? 

[Kittyzee]

No Mikey, sad to say, I haven't.  I didn't get to the blossums before all the insects did     The scent is wonderful from this tree:  not overpowering even as large as it is.  Mildly sweetly fragrant 

[tammie]

I have one avacado on my tree this year. One. That's pathetic!
Tammie

[Mikey]

Did you get lots of rain during the flowering/pollinating time?