Home Gardening

Welcome to my backyard plant blog. I hope to document here the various gardening (mis-)happenings as we grow a bunch of flowers, fruits, succulents and everything else under the sun in our yard. Hope this inspires you to gardening too and gives me a place to archive what happens. Read on...

06/07 -- 2021 Mid Year update

What an absolute bummer of a couple of years. Cooped up at home and then losing some close (family) folks to this hate virus, life has not been very kind. Not to mention kids have been home till atleast for the last month when the older one could go to school.

I am not really complaining, for this is the story across the world and some of them are sadder, worse than mine. I hope we all find peace in our own ways over the coming times.

We have found that in gardening, We have focused our energies on gardening and working on our home backyard. One of my aims over the next couple of years is to be able to grow all our vegetables in our backyard and reduce our dependency on external vendors.

Having said that, currently my entire focus is on fruit trees. Kids are growing up and there is an inner motivation in me to get them acclimatized to fruits. I also find this fascinating -- the sheer variety available astounds me. My knowledge of this is very rudimentary but i hope to supplement it in the future. Looking into grafting and air layering techniques to also grow more varieties.

Peach tree of the yard

Pictures of the yellow peach tree planted ~3-4 years ago. I bought the tree when I was not very much into gardening and consequently dont know the variety or the scientific name.

I bought it as a bareroot and you can see from the pictures that it is pretty tall now. I am fighting some kind of blackspot on the leaves. Googling suggests it might be bacterial and there is no cure but I am hoping it is not the one. Waiting for off season to spray copper. I removed the diseased branches and that explains the look.

There are peaches on it. Waiting to see if they get bigger.

Delicious Apple

Our yellow delicious apple tree. maybe this is going to be the lucky year. We havent had any apples yet but you know, hope springs eternal.

This was also the first guinea pig for my grafting technique. The wife got a bunch of scions and I tried grafting them. One of them sprouted but the leaves dried out. Going to try gala apple next.

Citrus Trees of the yard

I suspect this will be an ever growing list but this is what is in the yard today.

The first picture is of Mineola Tangelo. Got it from Costco ~2months back and put it in the ground. Our last Mandarin experiment failed for unknown reasons (most likely since there was no sloping ground and there was waterloggin). I didnt check it needs a pollinator but picked up a Mandarin by chance. Hoping one of the other citrus in the yard help pollinate this.

The next one is a Loquat tree in our front yard. This is one tree that we dont take care of at all and it has produced abundant fruits second year in a row. Kids just love it. This is probably going to be my second choice for air layering.

Third pic: Meyer Lemon. It was there when we bought the home. We got a bunch of lemons last year but not really as much as we expected. Not having much luck this year.

Fourth pic: Mandarin orange that I got with the Mineola. This one we put in a pot. To its left is another Lemon or Lime tree. A homeless person had encroached near a friend's property and left this behind when he left. We picked it but we are not sure what tree it is. The flowers look different than Meyer's we have.

(Update 6/23)

We added a Cara Cara orange to our yard. With this we have three varieties in our home (four if you include the lemons). So, hoping that Tangelo gets pollinated with one of the others. The Cara Cara needs to go into the ground but the weather has been very hot. So waiting till next week

Tropical Fruits of the yard

Mango, Guava, Longan

Backyard Vegetable garden(s)

I built 5 garden beds out of Douglas fir a few years back. This is probably the first time we are trying to grow variety of vegetables in each of them.

Garden Bed 1 is home to Early Girl Tomato, Serrano Chilli and couple of other tomatoes. It also has a grow bag that we put a Taro in. We use the hill method for latter and it is growing as you can see.

I had to encircle the Early Girl in a cage to help save the tomatoes from squirrels. This is a bush variety so it is not a great producer but it does have enough. Waiting to ripen on the vine.

The Serrano chilli is really something. we left it in a pot for close to a year and we didnt water. I took it out and put it in the garden bed hoping it will come back and it did. The roots were intact so maybe that helped.

Garden Bed 2 is home to another tomato, another pepper, cucumber and ..watermelon. The cucumber is fairly recent but it actually has taken off.

The watermelon is a rapid grower too. I put stakes around. Difference between watermelon and other squashes is that the watermelon doesnt tie to the stake on its own. But it does like growing vertically. Hoping to get melons soon.

Garden Bed 3 is the most crowded with three kinds of tomatoes (San Marzano, Big Beef and Sunspot), Okra, Chilli, Green Amaranth, garlic and Sweet basil.

Garden bed 4 is full of Corn. Garden bed 5 is all strawberry

Flowers of the yard

Succulents of the yard

Dec 19, 2020:

End of the year update. Cant wait for this year to turnover quickly enough.

We had our whole backyard redone, removing a 30+year old wooden patio, a fruitless mulberry and replacing it with pavers. This was long overdue and having done it, we feel even more sure that this was right decision. There is plenty more space in the yard for kids to run and it needed less maintenance that last year, when the leaves had all fallen down (add to it, got soaked in rain and had a forest of mushrooms growing underneath).

We finished the remodel but we havent fully planted everything we wanted to. Some of this just due to laziness, others because we wanted to get through winter, esp the tropicals.

Our guava plant from below has grown well and I am going to move it to soil next year. Have a site selected and all. The various jackfruits and mangoes are also doing well -- they are all in the playroom during the winter and I hope to plant them all in spring. The rambutans unfortunately didnt make it even after sprouting so that is probably a challenge for next year.

Amongst the flowers, the hibiscus is doing well. It actually had a bunch of flowers and BigD was excited to go and see them flowering. We also got a couple of Hydrangeas that I am hoping are just dormant for winter. I trimmed down the Peony and it will hopefully sprout in spring. Have no idea what is going with the Lilac

We planted a bunch of saffron buds that V got from somewhere. They have all flowered and we see stalks but no flower yet. Lets see.

I hope to build a greenhouse in the next few days as work is off. Going to make it out of PVC pipes ...lets see.

Will post pictures here before end of the year!

(08/30) The three trees in our backyard and sideyard. The Italian Prune and Satsuma Plum were probably planted in 2016 when the home was put up for sale. Both of them have been bearing fruits since 2019. we have been a trifle unlucky with the Plums -- apparently the birds have stolen them clean from the tree but hopefully we prevent that in 2021. I also pruned it earlier this month -- it was growing haphazardly.

The Fuyu Persimmon tree is the biggest one in our backyard providing a feast for us as well as the squirrels and bird :). The other plants seen below are stuff we are still growing and used the shade of the tree.

(08/30) Peach (in the back) and Golden delicious apple towards the front. Bought them from Costco nearly two years ago . The Peach actually bore fruits for the first time this year. The Apple had more foliage this year, hopefully we see fruits next year.

The vine you see on the side is the Passion Fruit Vine from our neighbor's home. It doesnt bear a fruit but has a bunch of flowers (the orange shells open into those). Serves as a good haven for attracting bees that (I hope) will help with pollination.

(08/30) Serrano Pepper Plant. Bought it from Home Depot about three years back in a pot. Since then I have pruned it twice and moved it to the ground once before moving it to a pot earlier last month. I have gotten a rich harvest of peppers from this plant. You can see some of the white flowers if you look closely.

(08/30) Peruvian White Guava. One of my favorites and one that I have great hopes on. I bought it as a seedling online from a nursery in Florida. It arrived as a baby plant and in the course of 4months, it has grown this much. I will have to move it inside during the first winter but plan is to acclimatize it from next year. My older one is looking forward to this one growing and flowering.

(08/30) My other favorite, Wonderful Pomegranate. I got it from Costco about three years back. it had actually only few leaves left and it was on sale -- the lady at the counter actually told me that they discounted it because they wanted to be rid of it. Three years on, it is doing well and actually bore two Pomegranates this time. Takes minimal care and the bees flocking to the passion flower help. One of my pet theories is that epsom salt really helps this plant. It is entering dormancy soon and I am hoping for bumper harvest next year.

(08/30) Pink Lemonade Blueberry. Recent addition. Lets see how it goes

(08/30) Meyer Lemon. I put that support down to just direct the branches. It hasnt borne any yellow lemons over the past three years leading us to believe it is a lime tree. You can see some of the 'green limes' from this time too. However, it does have yellow lemons as of today. I will upload a recent picture (what a difference a month makes)

Added 09/29 -- yellow lemons on the tree. Hopefully the start of many.

The mango plants of the yard. I extracted multiple seeds from Costco Mangoes (Kent) and had them sprout in a tissue paper. After about 14 days, took them out and they had sprouted. Planted almost all of them (about 6-8) and these two seem to have been the ones to take root. These will need some special care in Winter given they are not cold hardy but I am hopeful of making a small greenhouse for these. Lets see how it goes.

Pictures show how the seedlings looked back on 08/30 and how they look today (09/29). the one in the grow bag seems to have accelerated while the other is more steady

(Future) Jackfruits of the yard. The first picture shows how they were about a month back (end of August). It has been a month and they have grown (see the second and third pic). These were again sprouted from seeds and will need cold protection. I am hoping to get jackfruits in ~5years. It is a big hit with the kids.

Banana Tree in the front yard. Started off with just the stem and has two leaves now.

Flowers of the yard