Garden chat & photos for torts and people ♫ ♫

Yvonne G

Old Timer
TFO Admin
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
93,390
Location (City and/or State)
Clovis, CA
I have a navel orange tree next to what used to be my pond, but which is now a big empty hole in the earth. I've been neglecting the tree and not watering as much as it needed, so, while the volume of fruit is ok, the size of the oranges is quite small. I ate one yesterday and it tastes pretty good, just small for it's kind.

Ever since the tree bloomed last spring there was a sucker branch coming off the root portion of the tree that I ignored. Later in its life it developed fruit, and that fruit appeared to be grapefruit. While my oranges were quite small for their variety, the sucker grapefruit are huge!

orange a.jpg

I'm not a grapefruit fan, but I thought I'd give it a taste:

orange b.jpg

LOL!!! I guess it would be ok if one enjoyed eating rind! The rind is an inch and a quarter thick! The fruit part doesn't look very appetizing. There are still four more on that limb!
 

Big Charlie

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2015
Messages
2,801
Location (City and/or State)
California
I have a navel orange tree next to what used to be my pond, but which is now a big empty hole in the earth. I've been neglecting the tree and not watering as much as it needed, so, while the volume of fruit is ok, the size of the oranges is quite small. I ate one yesterday and it tastes pretty good, just small for it's kind.

Ever since the tree bloomed last spring there was a sucker branch coming off the root portion of the tree that I ignored. Later in its life it developed fruit, and that fruit appeared to be grapefruit. While my oranges were quite small for their variety, the sucker grapefruit are huge!

View attachment 337362

I'm not a grapefruit fan, but I thought I'd give it a taste:

View attachment 337363

LOL!!! I guess it would be ok if one enjoyed eating rind! The rind is an inch and a quarter thick! The fruit part doesn't look very appetizing. There are still four more on that limb!
I love white grapefruit. They are really hard to find. Every year we have to find someone with an orchard to buy from as they don't have them in the stores and hardly ever at the fruit stands. Then we have to buy a case so we are eating them like crazy to get through them before they go bad. That doesn't look too appetizing.

We used to have a nectarine tree. We let it get too big, then the fruit was so heavy, it broke the main branch. After that, all we got was the root stock fruit, which was horrible.

Our orange tree is a dwarf. We are lucky to get 10 oranges a year off it. They are excellent.
 

Oxalis

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Joined
Jan 5, 2013
Messages
3,040
Location (City and/or State)
Michigan
I have a navel orange tree next to what used to be my pond, but which is now a big empty hole in the earth. I've been neglecting the tree and not watering as much as it needed, so, while the volume of fruit is ok, the size of the oranges is quite small. I ate one yesterday and it tastes pretty good, just small for it's kind.

Ever since the tree bloomed last spring there was a sucker branch coming off the root portion of the tree that I ignored. Later in its life it developed fruit, and that fruit appeared to be grapefruit. While my oranges were quite small for their variety, the sucker grapefruit are huge!

View attachment 337362

I'm not a grapefruit fan, but I thought I'd give it a taste:

View attachment 337363

LOL!!! I guess it would be ok if one enjoyed eating rind! The rind is an inch and a quarter thick! The fruit part doesn't look very appetizing. There are still four more on that limb!
I love white grapefruit. They are really hard to find. Every year we have to find someone with an orchard to buy from as they don't have them in the stores and hardly ever at the fruit stands. Then we have to buy a case so we are eating them like crazy to get through them before they go bad. That doesn't look too appetizing.

We used to have a nectarine tree. We let it get too big, then the fruit was so heavy, it broke the main branch. After that, all we got was the root stock fruit, which was horrible.

Our orange tree is a dwarf. We are lucky to get 10 oranges a year off it. They are excellent.
My immediate thought was that the orange tree was grafted on. I had no idea what a white grapefruit was; thanks for sharing! :cool:
 

Big Charlie

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2015
Messages
2,801
Location (City and/or State)
California
My immediate thought was that the orange tree was grafted on. I had no idea what a white grapefruit was; thanks for sharing! :cool:
I think white and yellow grapefruit were the original varieties. Pink and red grapefruit were created later, in an attempt to make them sweeter. In my opinion, they ruined the flavor by doing this. I can put sugar on my white or yellow grapefruit to make it delicious. If you can find it, Oro Blanco is a cross between a white grapefruit and a pomelo.
 

Oxalis

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Joined
Jan 5, 2013
Messages
3,040
Location (City and/or State)
Michigan
For all the gardening nerds on Tortoise Forum, I'm determined to keep this thread alive!! 🌱

This has already been a crazy spring for our house. I think my husband and I planted more than 100 native plants this past weekend. There's a small garden near our kitchen window, so I thought this would be a nice place to put a butterfly and hummingbird garden. It's bit of a goofy area where a tree is slowly rotting but there was already some cement in place to hold my bird bath. I'm not sure why the previous owners painted the tree, but I have tried to remove some of it. Before this weekend, hubby tore out all the sod that was laden with the aggressive creeping charlie. We threw down some seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery and then covered those up with wood shavings.

IMG_20220521_153250346.jpg

IMG_20220521_153259839.jpg

Here's a list of the plants I put in this past weekend. I got at least 2 of everything, except the milkweed and the cardinal flower. The hummingbirds that visited the garden at my old house loved the cardinal flower, so I bought 4 of those. I'm excited to see a new species of milkweed that I haven't planted before. There's also a dill plant that I had added earlier in case I ran out of time get more plants in. I tried to pick plants that didn't grow taller than 3 or 4 feet. There are plenty of other taller wildflowers that are perfect for butterflies; so we purchased some of these for another garden in our yard. No guarantee which, if any, bloom this year, but if anything does, I'll try to get some pictures.

  • Smooth pussytoes (Antennaria parlinii)
  • Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata)
  • Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
  • Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
  • Blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)
  • Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)
  • Golden alexanders (Zizia aurea)
 

jeff kushner

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
2,688
Location (City and/or State)
North of Annapolis
.....after seeing Marks beautiful Rhodo pics, I recalled that mine were also in full bloom over the weekend too but by the time I had gotten home, the rain we got had pummeled them to the ground in a horrible site of brown & purple decaying flower flesh and sadness on the bushes.....


Hmmm, Tulip poplar....never knew what they were.....now I do. BAM, there's my new thing for the day and it's only 5AM!


lol
 

Warren

Well-Known Member
Tortoise Club
5 Year Member
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
1,722
Location (City and/or State)
Balto. MD
Here are a couple of flowers that are blooming in my yard. Three different Clematis and my ever blooming Azalea bush.
 

Attachments

  • 20220525_153415.jpg
    20220525_153415.jpg
    2 MB · Views: 4
  • 20220526_091906.jpg
    20220526_091906.jpg
    1.1 MB · Views: 4

Jacqui

Wanna be raiser of Lemon Drop tortoises
Moderator
10 Year Member!
Joined
Aug 28, 2007
Messages
39,941
Location (City and/or State)
A Land Far Away...
Here are a couple of flowers that are blooming in my yard. Three different Clematis and my ever blooming Azalea bush.
I have a few clematis. I need to take some pictures, if the rain and wind ever stop
 

jeff kushner

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
2,688
Location (City and/or State)
North of Annapolis
That is a gorgeous Rose Jacqui.........

Okay, this is a bad thing Jeffrey used to do......

I admit to being a "romantic" so when I used to date before I got married, I used to steal roses to give to my dates. One poor woman grew beautiful roses....I hit her wall of roses up all the time! Yes, my wife at the time got plenty of stolen roses...

Okay, but at least I didn't steal cemetery flowers....thought about it a couple times but I don't want to see dead people, especially if they don't know they are dead!


Basically, I'm suggesting that if you find some of your flowers missing.....don't get too angry, it might just be some dumb boy trying to impress his girl.
 

Oxalis

Well-Known Member
10 Year Member!
Joined
Jan 5, 2013
Messages
3,040
Location (City and/or State)
Michigan
Here are some of our plants in bloom now. The blue-eyed grass I put in my butterfly and hummingbird garden is the first to bloom.

blue-eyed grass.jpg

Some of hubby's native flowers are doing well: columbine, iris, spiderwort, and wood poppy. The wood poppy had powdery mildew on the leaves when we bought it. With so many other plants that we put in the ground that day, we didn't even realize it had powdery mildew until we returned to the greenhouse to buy more! The plants still seem to be doing well, which makes me happy since chipmunks apparently feed on their seeds (and I love our chipmunks).

columbine.jpg

iris.jpg

spiderwort.jpg

wood_poppy.jpg

The irises and oriental poppies that the previous owners planted have come up again. We still haven't done anything with this little area of our yard. 😅

poppy_and_iris.jpg
 

Maro2Bear

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
May 29, 2014
Messages
14,712
Location (City and/or State)
Glenn Dale, Maryland, USA
Here are some of our plants in bloom now. The blue-eyed grass I put in my butterfly and hummingbird garden is the first to bloom.

View attachment 345746

Some of hubby's native flowers are doing well: columbine, iris, spiderwort, and wood poppy. The wood poppy had powdery mildew on the leaves when we bought it. With so many other plants that we put in the ground that day, we didn't even realize it had powdery mildew until we returned to the greenhouse to buy more! The plants still seem to be doing well, which makes me happy since chipmunks apparently feed on their seeds (and I love our chipmunks).

View attachment 345747

View attachment 345748

View attachment 345750

View attachment 345751

The irises and oriental poppies that the previous owners planted have come up again. We still haven't done anything with this little area of our yard. 😅

View attachment 345749
All very nice!
 

New Posts

Top