Hey, what’s happening?!

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Tomato Mania!

Once again our new Program Chair, Master Gardener Deborah Hartman, will be making the Tomato Mania end-of-season inventory available to us for free!  This year, however, we will be getting in right at the beginning since she is only picking up the plants today.  As soon as she knows what varieties she has, I will post them.  In the meantime, make plans to get down to Inglewood ASAP.  Deborah’s address and contact info will be coming to you in a chapter email (I know, another one.  We have to figure out a more efficient way to do this.  Anyone have ideas?)  As you probably know, Tomato Mania grows many extremely exotic varieties, thereby qualifying their output as “rare fruits”.  Don’t miss out!

 

Photo by Richard Barnard on Unsplash

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Ramiro’s Dragon Fruit Evaluation Chart

To help with your decision-making process, here is the chart Ramiro put up during his talk yesterday.  Eyal commented that Haley’s Comet is very tasty but smaller and more sensitive to heat/cold.  (You can click on the chart below to make it bigger and easier to read.)

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Group Buy of Dragon Fruit Cuttings/Plants

In the wake of Ramiro Lobo’s wonderful presentation on Dragon Fruit yesterday, I reached out to his friend Eyal Givon (who was also on the Zoom and has a Dragon Fruit farm in Moorpark). I talked to Eyal about our buying cuttings of Ramiro’s favorite varieties from him.  This is what he wrote me:

“We mostly grow American Beauty, Physical Graffiti, Delight and Halley’s Comet. We have lower quantities of Voodoo Child, Sugar Dragon, San Ignacio, Valdivia Roja, El Grullo and Laverne Red.

Our best performer is American Beauty.  In terms of fruit size,  Laverne Red is our record keeper with American Beauty a close second.

Most cuttings are only $5. Red flower varieties are $10. Some very unique/very slow growers are more. We have also rooted plants for sale. $15 in one gallon pots.

Slow growers would be varieties like Frankie’s Red, Colombian, etc. Red flower varieties are Asunta 1 – 5, Ax, Kathie Van Arum, Connie Mayer, Bruni, and maybe a few more.  The availability on these varieties is between low to zero, so I can’t promise anything. Also, availability does change, especially on the more rare varieties since people do come here and buy them.”

 

The chapter is willing to put together a group buy but we need to get some sense of how  many people want how many cuttings or plants.  If there is limited interest, I will just collect money from you when I have the cuttings in hand.  If there is a LOT of interest, I will probably set up a format such as we used for the Plant Sale, where you can pay for what you want on PayPal and I can then forward the PayPal receipts to Eyal before heading out there.  Please let me know ASAP at crfgwla@gmail.com

 

 

 

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The Great Rhubarb Experiment: Progress Report

Since we got a question about this, I thought I should let interested readers know how we are doing.  At least four of us have been successfully growing various combinations of the seeds from Australia and England.  One other experimenter had no luck with germination and yet another hasn’t started her seeds yet.  Of course, so far we haven’t been through an entire calendar year, so we still have no idea if these plants will be perennial for us.  But I can say that the Tina’s Noble seeds from French Harvest in Australia has made absolutely beautiful plants, as you can see.  These — sown last July and put out into the garden in September — are easily up to  my waist.

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Dragon Fruit! April 10th @ 10 a.m.

Speaker: Ramiro Lobo

Ramiro Lobo is the University of California’s Small Farms & Agricultural Economics Advisor with areas of expertise ranging alphabetically from Ag Commodities through Subtropical Fruit and on to Urban Agriculture, not to overlook a detour through (and this is a moutful)  the Protection of  Food From Contamination By Pathogenic Microorganisms, Parasites, and Naturally Occurring Toxins.

He has published many many  many papers on such topics as “Sample Costs to Establish an Orchard and Produce Guavas in San Diego County”. “Encouraging Adoption of IPM by Small Scale Farmers,” and “The Sensory Quality and Postharvest Performance of Southern Highbush Blueberry Cultivars Grown in Southern California”. I think it is safe to call him UC Agriculture’s own Renaissance Man.

For our April 10th meeting, however, he is going to talk to us about Dragon Fruit. Or Pitahaya. Or maybe Pitaya, which it turns out is a different genus altogether.  If we are very good, he will tell us about the field research he’s been conducting. And teach us about pruning, propagation, pollination, and when it’s the right time to harvest your fruit for optimum quality.

I know many of us (including me)) have tried and failed to grow dragon fruit successfully in West Los Angeles.  This is our  chance to figure out what we’ve been doing wrong!

Members will receive all Zoom information in the forthcoming newsletter.

 

 

photo by Polina Kuzovkova on Unsplash

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Chocolate – Cacao – Brewed Cocoa! Eric Durtschi tells all on Saturday, March 13th @ 10 am

The son of a candy maker, Dr. Eric Durtschi of Durci had an intense passion for all things chocolate from an early age and started developing dessert recipes with chocolate at 8 years old. He decided to pursue a profession in health and wellness, and as a chiropractor, he was frequently asked to offer diet and healthy living advice. During his research, he learned that cocoa (or cacao) was an amazing superfood in its unadulterated state. He began development of the world’s first brewed cocoa in 2007. His mission is simply to help chocolate lovers rediscover how wonderful chocolate can be.

Eric will be giving a brief introduction to chocolate, going over the history and origins of chocolate up through the current artisan chocolate world.

Members  will receive all Zoom links shortly.

 

 

Photo by Ly Le Minh on Unsplash

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Video of Grafting Demos now available

I have never seen such enthusiasm for our Grafting Demos and the Experts who performed them!  Many of you want to watch them over and over again.  If you let me know you would like the video, I will “share” it with you from our Google Drive.  Because of chapter privacy policies, this is for members only.  Thanks.

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Scion Wood is now all gone

As discussed at our grafting demo meeting Saturday morning, we received a ton of wonderful scion wood from Kathy Connell of Orange  County who also brought up wood from the North San Diego Chapter’s exchange.

The Scion Exchange is now over, however, and all wood has been distributed. Unless you specifically and privately organized an Exchange with another member, we are now done until at least tropical fruit grafting season.

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