I have been tracking how fruit trees have been performing at our Orchard in North Las Vegas for fruit quality and how good they would be dual purpose; ornamental and fruit production. Here are my choices for an edible fruit tree landscape. Almonds in bloom Almond. Garden Prince or All-in-One. Both are smaller trees than a standard almond and self fruitful, you dont need a pollinator tree. Garden Prince has a slight edge because its flowers have a purple tinge rather than all white. The nuts are fabulous in size and taste. Try using them as green almonds in salads. Peach. Red Baron. On a five point scale (there are only a handful of trees that EVER make five points at our Orchard) this is a solid 4,0. What puts this tree “over the top” are its flowers. They are are a gorgeous almost neon red/orange. Red Baron peach Nectarine. Arctic Star. I don’t care to grow apricots that much in the Orchard because of the potential scarring of the fruit by the Western Flower Thrips but this fruit scores a 5.0! OMG. It is hands above the other nectarines in the Orchard. We spray with Spinosad (an organic pesticide) to keep the flower thrips at bay and the Mario Batali chefs come out to pick it for sorbet. Try this with fresh mint sometime. Brix will hit over 20. Thin so fruits are four inches apart. Wonderful pomegranate not quite ripe Pomegranate. Wonderful. Wonderful has beautiful fruit color and aril (seed) color and it is a lovely plant if pruned into a single or multiple stem tree, not a shrub. There are other pomegranates to consider for the quality of the fruit but if you wait till Halloween to pick the fruit or later you will not be disappointed. Put the fruit in the fridge an extra week or two. Try it and let me know how you like it. Make sure you thin the fruit so that only one fruit arises from a single location. This will give you cannonball sized fruits on older wood. Jujube ‘Contorted’ Jujube. Contorted. Remember this is for ornamental value as well as fruit. So when the leaves drop in the winter the branches have this beautiful contorted form and the fruit is great as well. Remember, Jujube will sucker ten to fifteen feet away or closer to the mother plant. Anywhere there is water it will sucker. There are not lots of these suckers so take a sharp shovel and sever the suckers from the mother plant in the fall and replant them or use them for decoration. ‘Pink Lady’ apple Apple. Pink Lady on M111. Another 5.0! Martha Stewart said of this fruit from our Orchard grown in the Mojave Desert “It is the best apple I have ever had!” This tree will stay pretty small if you keep it under control by winter pruning. We have kept it at 6 1/2 feet for 17 years. The fruit exposed to sunlight will turn red by early to mid November with Brix levels hitting 20! Thin to one fruit per cluster. If extremely heavy set, then thin by removing some fruit too close together so spurs have no fruit. ‘Sensaton Red Bartlett’ pear Pear. Sensation Red Bartlett. The color of the fruit in the fall when it is ripening are a great red color and the flavor is phenomenal. When you grow European pears in the desert expect they will not be perfectly smooth skinned. That is what distinguishes a desert European pear from the tame pears of the Northwest and other locales. Thin to one fruit per fruit cluster. Asian Pear. Chojiro. If you spend some time thinning Asian pears there is no reason you cant get the same size and flavor you could if it were growing in Japan. Thin to one to two fruit per branch very early for some very sizable Asian pear fruits. ‘Fuyu’ persimmon Plum. Weeping Santa Rosa. We actually removed the weeping Santa Rosa plums from the orchard a few years ago because the weeping branches were getting in the way of harvest BUT the weeping form is beautiful and Santa Rosa plum is a very reliable and delicious soft plum for the desert. Persimmon. Fuyu. Fuyu persimmon is nonastringent so you can eat them when they are still very firm and orange in color OR you can leave them on longer and let them turn bright red, like Christmas ornaments, after leaf drop. A large fig at the orchard Fig. Yellow, Kadota; Dark, Black Mission. Figs make a beautiful landscape tree and can be cut back in the winter to just about any size you want. Save the wood for grilling and smoking. It is great used with chicken.

Q. Before I plant my apricot tree this spring, I would like to know how much space I should allocate for it. Does a Blenheim apricot lend itself to close pruning?  Gold Kist apricot on Nemaguard rootstock kept at 6 1/2 feet for the past 17 years with very little pruning each year A. The size of an apricot tree depends on the variety and what roots it is growing on. An apricot on its own roots can be quite large, over 20 feet tall and quite a bit more. When a variety is grafted onto a rootstock there is usually some dwarfing that goes along with that. Although in the case of apricots the rootstock is not usually chosen for its dwarfing characteristics. The amount of space you allocate for your apricot depends on how you manage it. We keep all of our apricots at the orchard at 6 ½ feet in about 7 feet wide all of their lives. This size control is mostly done by pruning. You can do this with any apricot but some stay naturally small more than others. An excellent selection is Gold Kist apricot grafted on Nemaguard rootstock.  This apricot on this rootstock stays naturally small and provides very high quality fruit.

Q. We had a cattle ranch in Glade Park, Colorado, at a 7,000 foot elevation and had a terrific stand of rhubarb that was estimated to be 50+ years old.  We sold the ranch in 2010 and transplanted some starts eventually to Mesquite, Nevada. We have seven starts now and none has produced any usable product.  Some of the starts grew a leaf about the size of a Frisbee but grew no higher than ground level.  The rest of the starts grew a single stock of about 4″ high.  Now, the starts looked dormant. Is there anything we should do other than fertilize and water? Compost pile at the orchard using horse manure A. We also tried to grow rhubarb at our orchard. We did not have much success. Admittedly, we did not do a very good or thorough job in managing the plants so I was not ready to throw in the towel. The common agreement among gardeners and horticulturists is that rhubarb is out of it’s appropriate climate in the hot desert. This is very true. The common explanation is that the plant doesn’t have enough chill hours or our just too hot climate. Compost added to plots in the second year before tilling it in Just because this is the common agreement does not mean that it is necessarily true. We have grown things at the orchard which are not supposed to grow here. There are some management techniques that we can try to see if we can get it to grow here. There is no guarantee that if we can get it to grow in the hot desert and in our soils or what the quality of the product might be if it is successful. So the first thing to do is soil improvement. This would mean lots of additional compost added to the soil along with the right fertilizers. So make sure that any compost you use is the highest quality you can find.  This means make it yourself. If you can’t make it yourself, then purchase one that comes in bags that has a good reputation. Don’t be afraid to add lots of it, over 50% of the blend in the backfill using a native Mojave Desert soil.  Mixed with your garden soil add a high phosphate starter fertilizer. I would also add a good quality iron chelate. This should get your garden soil up to speed. Garden soils amended from desert soils can take a couple of years of growing to get up to prime. Hoophouse with 30% shade. It does not look like enough shade but it is about right for flowering/fruiting vegetables The next thing I would do is try to put it in an area that is not excessively windy and does not have a lot of reflected light or heat. The north or east side of the building would be ideal. I would try it first without any shade over it. If the leaves are scorching during the heat of the summer and the plant seems stunted I would put some shade cloth over the plant. Do not use more than 30 or 40% shade when purchasing a shade cloth. With leafy crops such as leafy vegetables or rhubarb could go higher but certainly never go into the 60 or 70 percent shade level.

Q. Is there a link on your blog that I am missing with all your fruit tree recommendations? How long will it be before a bareroot fruit tree produces fruit? Should I still be planting fruit trees in January if I am buying something at a local nursery? My blog with the search engine you can use to find things A. On my blog at Xtremehorticulture of the Desert there is a search engine at the top of the page. It says, “Search This Blog” with a long box under it. To the right of the box it says “Search”. Enter the words “fruit tree recommendations” in the box of the search engine and click “Search”. That should bring up my recommended fruit tree list. If you can find the variety of fruit tree you want at a local nursery then please buy it. Our local businesses can use your help. However if you cannot find a variety of fruit that you feel will give you the quality of fruit that you want then you might consider buying a bareroot selection. Arrival of bareroot fruit trees to the orchard in January from Dave Wilson Nursery The reasons the Orchard is involved in selling fruit trees are two reasons. First, local nurseries did not have an extensive supply of fruit trees we recommended. Secondly, none handled any bareroot trees. Bareroot plants grow more quickly when planted, will overtake a container plant in growth or production and are less expensive. On the downside for the nursery, there are more plant deaths by homeowners because they do not handle or plant bareroot plants correctly which leads to unhappy customers. Plus nurseries have better profit margins on container plants than bareroot materials. Bareroot trees come into production at about the same time as container plants because the bareroot plants “catch up” to container plants quickly and have less overall shock if handled correctly. When a tree comes into fruiting or production depends on the type of fruit tree. Peaches and nectarines come into production about the earliest. Trees that produce fruit on spurs, like apricots, plums, apples and pears, are usually a year or more later. You can plant in January here, no problem.

Q. My pomegranate fruit is splitting (early October), should I pick them now or wait until November? This pomegranate has great color and is splitting. Time to get it off the tree before it splits more and birds and bugs get into it. A. As far as your pomegranate goes, anytime they begin to split and as close to their harvest time it is a good idea to get them of the tree. A number of birds, insects and diseases will take advantage of the pomegranate fruit once it is split. Depending on the variety, harvesting can occur from September through November.

Q. My 18 year old Modesto ash tree has been dropping green leaves for maybe 2 months now.  Unlike my other 2 Modesto ash trees that had entire branches die last summer and the dead leaves wouldn’t even blow off. Any ideas? Limb dieback for unknown reasons in Modesto ash A. There could be a number of reasons for early leaf drop off but if your tree seems healthy and has been growing well then I would ignore it. Just make sure that it is getting deeply watered if it is in a rock landscape. Fertilize it once in January or February; there is no need to fertilize it more than that. Probably the biggest problem is putting ash trees in rock landscapes. Modesto ash has problems of its own here in our valley so you may experience limb dieback at some point in its life. I do not recommend it for our valley anymore because of this. Large ash tree in a lawn. You must overwater the lawn so that large trees like these get enough water. Also remember that as ash trees get larger they require more water. The amount of water required is not a simple doubling of the amount as the tree doubles in size. For trees, the amount of water the required is much more complicated than a lawn.

            The deadline for ordering bare root fruit trees for a January or February delivery date will be in about two weeks. They will be ordered from my recommended fruit tree list. This list can be obtained by emailing me at [email protected] or here on my blog. RLLM

Here is a version that you can read, print or download. RLLM Open publication – Free publishing – More demonstration

Wisconsin: No Right to Produce or Eat Food NONAIS.org Tuesday, September 27, 2011 In scary legal news a Wisconsin judge had gone completely loopy declaring that citizens have no right to produce or eat the foods of their own choice. In response to a request from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the judge issued a clarification of his decision last week regarding his assessment of the constitutionality of food rights. The judge expanded on his original statement that such constitutional issues are “wholly without merit.” He explained that the FTCLDF arguments were “extremely underdeveloped.” As an example, he said the plaintiffs’ use of the Roe v Wade abortion rights case as a precedent does “not explain why a woman’s right to have an abortion translates to a right to consume unpasteurized milk…This court is unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right to consume the food of one’s choice without first being presented with significantly more developed arguments on both sides of the issue.” Gee, I thought they both had to do with the right to decide what to do with your own body. As if to show how pissed he was at being questioned, he said his decision translates further that “no, Plaintiffs to not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd; “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;” And in a kind of exclamation point, he added this to his list of no-nos: “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…” You have to wonder if maybe even the regulators are getting a tad uncomfortable with the rulings coming from the nation’s judiciary on food rights. Many of these individuals, biased as they are against raw milk, dabble in farming to some extent, or grew up on farms. This judge has gone way beyond what many of them have come to assume–that everyone has the right to own a cow and consume its milk Even in places that ban raw milk sales, there’s nearly always a provision in state law that anyone who owns a cow has the right to consume its milk. It seems Judge Fiedler is saying it’s not a “fundamental right,” but rather a right granted us by the state.
–The Complete Patient The original judgement can be seen here. To quote from the main points: 1) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd; 2) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow; 3) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer; 4) no, the Zinniker Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the State’s police power; 5) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume foods of their choice A FOOD CHAIN RADIO RELEASE FROM METROFARM.COM Across the nation armed government SWAT teams arrest private citizens for buying and selling fresh whole foods from each other. This leads us to ask… Will feeding ourselves be the crime of the century? This Saturday at 9am Pacific, the Food Chain Radio show with Michael Olson hosts Mali McGee from the Milk Mama Goat Farm for a conversation about private food clubs. Topics include how private citizens are organizing to feed each other; why government is raiding these private food systems with armed SWAT teams; and how Mali’s milch goats inspired one county to recognize the right of people to grow and eat their own food. Listen on your radio, computer or IPOD: Food Chain Radio

The UNCE Orchard is taking orders for fruit trees to be delivered in January. These will be bare root fruit trees selected from our list of recommended fruit trees for our valley. Please email me at [email protected] for more information. Fruit trees will include peaches, plums, apples, pears, almonds, pluots, and others. We will only be ordering from our list of recommended trees due to ordering restrictions that varieties must be ordered in multiples of fives. All trees will be shipped from Dave Wilson Nursery.