The taste of tree-ripened nutrient-dense fruit is one of the great joys in my life. I love a flavorful apple at the peak of ripeness, the sweetness of a juicy custard-textured persimmon, a glass of vibrant orange juice. Picking ripe wild blackberries was a late summer ritual in western Oregon where I grew up. Now I have a new ritual; every year I plant fruit trees. Here on the Central Coast of California we are blessed with a climate that allows us to grow apples and avocados, citrus and plums, apricots and persimmons, pears and berries. We have just enough chill hours in the winter to grow apples and pears, but not the freezing weather that would kill citrus and avocados (although the 26 degree nights last winter did take their toll by severely trimming back our most frost sensitive lime and avocado trees). Fruit trees and citrus are an excellent indicator of topsoil and subsoil deficiencies. Since we are growing in sandy, low CEC soil here at Rancho Reinheimer, I have become a connoisseur of mineral deficiency descriptions and photos, searching for the “silver bullet” that will cause my trees to look like those in the nearby commercial orchards. It is this futile search for the “silver bullet” that originally led me to the use of soil testing and mineral balancing, but that’s a different story... growabundant/nutrient-deficiencies/
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:53:28 +0000