Field Trip to Master Gardener’s Orchard! November 13, 2021 @ 10 am

Master Gardener Aaron Ostrom has kindly invited us to visit his  rather large urban, hillside garden of ornamentals and edibles, including Almond, Aprium, Apple, Atemoya, Avocado, Banana, Barbados Cherry, Blackberry, Cape Gooseberry, Capulin Cherry, Carob, Chaya, Che, Cherimoya, Chocolate Pudding Fruit, Citrus of every sort, Coffee, Elderberry, Fig, Goji, Guamuchil, Guava, Ice Cream Bean, Jaboticaba, Java Plum, Jujube, Lemonade Berry, Lingaro, Longan, Loquat, Lychee, Macadamia, Mango, Natal Plum, Nectaplum, Papaya, Passion Fruit, Peach, Peanut Butter Fruit, Pear, Pepino Dulce, Persimmon, Phalsa Berry, Pindo Palm, Pineapple, Pomegranate, Raisin Tree, Raspberry, Sichuan Pepper, Sugar Cane, Surinam Cherry, Walnut, Wampee, White Sapote, etc.  What a Rare Fruit wonderland!  Aaron has lived all over the world and his plantings truly reflect that.

He does note that the garden is not accessible for those who have difficulty climbing stairs and slopes but our Program Chair Deborah Hartnett will be Zooming the trip to those of us stuck at home.

Aaron’s address and Zoom links will arrive in your newsletter ASAP.

 

Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

Coffee! Saturday May 8th at 10 am

Speaker: Lewis Perkins

Coffee is the first sine qua non for many people’s day. What will global warming/climate change do to our elixir? The Economist April 24, 2021 edition reveals a rediscovered Coffea Stenophylla, from the lowland hills of Sierra Leone (also Guinea & Ivory Coast) and written in the 1834 papers of Scottish botanist George Don, which tolerates a higher temperature range of 24-26 C.

Lewis and Tera actually have had coffee made from 3.5 pounds of wet beans grown from a Kona and Java plant in the shade of a reed fence in Santa Monica. Groundwork Coffee Company was kind enough to use an antique sample roaster to make them enough for one pot of light and medium roast brew. Lewis notes that there is a lot of manual labor to remove the cascara by hand and teeth! He also says that good coffee is underpriced by a lot!

Less work and quite tasty is eating the ripe red anti-oxidant fruit before the birds get them. Even if you don’t like brewed coffee, you would likely like the berries.

If you love coffee, this is your chance to learn how to grow your own!

Members should have received their Zoom links by now.

Photos by Pablo Merchán Montes and Rodrigo Flores on Unsplash

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