Main Street Trees

New Edition of Edible East Bay features Farm Favorites

Main Street Trees — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:07:24 +0000

This is a nice article about growing food in the east bay. We have a little more frost than they do but the writer is inspiring and suggests joining the CRFG club for a lot of fruity fun.

http://www.ediblecommunities.com/eastbay/winter12/tangential-journey.htm

Pomegranates ready to be juiced

Main Street Trees — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:23:46 +0000

I love this time of year. I look forward to eating pomegranate arils and making dark red juice to store for months to come. There are some good tricks for juicing without making a red splatter mess. One is to pick them after they have started to crack open. If left on the tree long after that it will start to dry out or worse so get it picked. Pulling apart the fruit under water in a big bowl or pot is a great method because all the great fleshy seeds sink to the bottom and all the parts we don’t eat, like the peel and spongy pulp, float so that makes them easy to separate. Eat them like this or rub them into a colander so the juice goes into a bowl. Then the seeds can be squeezed in cheesecloth to get the last bit of juice off of them. I put the juice into jars to store in the frige or freezer for later. What a treat. It takes a lot of time but to me it is worth it. Poms are very easy to grow, have great flowers in the spring, awesome fruit, yellow fall leaf color and no pests around here and have low water needs. It is more of a shrub or bush than a tree and it can be kept small. Some people train it to be a tree by always cutting off the extra trunks and get less fruit that way.

Valley Oaks ready for new vineyard home

Main Street Trees — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 13:56:51 +0000

This is a picture of 5 of a row of 9 large Quercus lobata, Valley Oaks, lined up and ready to be planted nearby. We are proud to offer large sized native oaks grown in Napa Valley from acorns collected in Napa Valley. We are collecting acorns now for the next crop of Valley Oaks for a neighborhood near you.

Feijoa = Pineapple Guava

Main Street Trees — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:07:18 +0000

Feijoa, also known as Pineapple Guava and Guavasteen, are one of my favorite fruits. It is great that here in Napa we can grow this guava without protecting it from winter frosts like we have to do with the other guavas. The petals are edible and the fruit is just now starting to drop. It is ripe and is collected from the ground as soon as you can. The texture of the flesh is like a pear but the taste is a cross of a pineapple, a banana and a strawberry. The skin can be eaten or not. It has been an important commercial crop in Australia and New Zealand for 100 years but is hardly known in the states. It is origianally from Central and South America. I love Feijoa.

Click here to hear pronunciation of Feijoa.

Big Trees leaving for their real home

Main Street Trees — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:13:06 +0000

These 20 foot tall oak trees are leaving the farm they grew up at from an acorn for their forever home. They are carefully laid down on a long trailer, tied down and covered for a trip on the roads. Once the tree is near it’s hole the fabric container is cut off and the tree is placed into the ground. Watering is very important until the tree is firmly grown in and a drip system is usually preferred. These evergreen trees will provide shade and privacy as soon as they are in the ground and more each year as they grow.

Cork Oak – a Lovely Tree

Main Street Trees — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:56:23 +0000

Cork Oak trees are medium sized evergreen trees that are the source of cork for wine corks and all the other cork products like bulletin boards and flooring. The bark is thick and interesting. It will grow easily. We have trees from a few feet tall to 20 feet tall.

Fig Trees – Grow easily – Prune to keep smaller

Main Street Trees — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:56:11 +0000

This is a good year for figs. Everyone I talked to about them said their trees did well this year too. Some varieties produce figs twice a year. Figs can be green or purple and the inside can be white to deep dark red-purple. Figs make fruit when the tree is still quite young and fig trees have few problems. Train a tree with lower branches so you can prune and pick fruit easier reducing the need to work on a ladder. Extra fruits can be dried to enjoy later on and many people like to barbeque them. I like to add them fresh or dried to salads. It is hard to buy fresh figs in a store because they are so soft and can over-ripen too fast and they can be kept large or small to fit your space.

Australian Finger Limes are just ripening.

Main Street Trees — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:13:54 +0000

Finger Limes are getting to be popular. Stop by the farm if you want to try them. People call them “lime caviar” because inside the green/black/pink skin are hundreds of crisp tiny sour vesicles of juicy goodness. The flowers are pink/white and tiny and the leaves are much smaller than other citrus trees have.

It is naturally found in Australia and is very popular with chefs who like it as an attractive garnish for hors d’oeuvres, seafoods esp sushi or added to a salad or a salad dressing for a tangy pop when you bite them.

They are an understory tree or bush and so hot full sun may be too much for them. They need protection from frost so we cover them on the cold nights or they can be placed in a frost free section of your yard with some sun or near the house to benefit from the warmth at night. This is a fun fruit to try.

Coast Live Oak or CLO is a beatiful evergreeen tree

Main Street Trees — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:59:27 +0000

The Coast live Oak, Quercus agrifolia is the easy to grow native evergreen tree for much of California. It has dark glossy leaves and can have various different shapes. These are 5 foot diameter containers. We grew these from choice acorns started 12 years ago and this is the time of year to collect more acorns for next year’s new little seedlings. Also known as Quercus agrifolia, these CLOs grow in most parts of the SF bay area and are fairly fast growing. They do very well here in Napa.

Pomegranates are easy to grow

Main Street Trees — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:01:19 +0000

Here in Napa we have enough heat to really ripen pomegranates. The flavor is tangy and the color of the arils ranges from clear to very dark red. I prefer the darker color and a balance between sweetness and tartness. I like to use the trick of removing the arils in a bowl of water to speed things up and keep the juice from getting where is it not desired. Pomegranates are just becoming ripe and are well worth all the work to squeeze out the juice to use or store in the freezer in a canning jar to enjoy at another time of the year. The tree does not require a lot of water once it is established and there are no pests to the tree or fruit in this part of the world. The origin of the pom is the Middle East so plenty of heat and lots of sun is required to fully ripen the fruit but not much water. Plant soon to enjoy juicy fruit arils to add to salads, to eat out of hand or to make a dark red drink. I have tasted many varieties and our nursery carries the darkest colors with the best sweet/tart balance because these are the ones that win the taste tests.