While its been an unusually warm winter here in San Diego with nary a drop of rain, its still a good time of year to get potted trees into the ground. We've collected quiet a few over the course of this last year and this weekend I decided it was time. We've got some pretty clay-fish soil on the homestead so to help make my job a bit easier, I prefer to use a chipping hammer to help me dig the holes. Current best practices suggest that instead of digging a circler hole for your tree, dig a square hole with jagged edges. The thought being, trees that have been in pots and nice beautiful soil will continue to circle around a circular hole while a straight, jagged hole will encourage them to dig into the native soil.
First up was the trio of banana trees. I don't know the variety of the first two, but the smallest is an African Rhinehorn that really needed to get into the ground. We planted the Rhinehorn into a gopher box as the gophers around here are damn near biblical proportion (only slight hyperbole). Bananas like a lot of organic material, so once planted, I made sure to top dress with compost from our goats and covered with mulch.
Next up was my Panache fig. I'm a big fan of figs and this is probably my absolute favorite fig in the world. Wonderful producer, sweet without being overly so taste, and absolutely stunning when dehydrated! My wife and I are the Co-Chairs of the San Diego Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers and this was the very first tree we purchased from that organization during the 2015 Festival of Fruit. Before I put this one into the ground, I pruned off three large shoots coming off the main truck. Figs are crazy easy to propagate so I put the three pieces into separate pots and we'll see how they do.
Into the ground next was next was a Ganesh Pomegranate. I can't wait for this one to mature and start producing the estimated 22 pounds of fruit per year. I love me some pomegranate and once you figure out how to open/eat them there is nothing standing between you and taking over the world!
From the collection of one of our long time California Rare Fruit Growers, Leo Manual, comes our Todos Santos Mango tree. To say I'm excited to watch this one grow and start fruiting is an understatement. Leo calls it one of the best mags he's ever tasted and we are thrilled to have one in our collection.
Now that we've got our young trees in the ground our next big chore will be to double dose our existing fruit trees with dormant spray and horticulture oil once all the leaves (finally) fall off.