This year's peach harvest from the Desert Gold tree in the backyard was our best one yet. The peaches were small, but really sweet and flavorful. After eating one, my son asked if he could have them all. (I made him share a couple with me and Dakota.)

More importantly, I managed to harvest almost all the ripe peaches before the were gobbled up by those darn squirrels. (By the way, allow me to recommend the Those Darn Squirrels! books to parents of toddlers. They are really funny, smart and nicely illustrated.) I purchased some garden netting to protect my fruit from those fuzzy-tailed jerks, but didn't get a chance to put it up before the peaches ripened.

Anyway, speaking of small peaches, does anyone know why that might be? Should I be watering more or less? Pruning or fertilizing more aggressively? Do I just need to wait until the tree is older and bigger, or is this the normal fruit size for this variety?

Even if the Desert Gold has small fruit naturally, I still highly recommend it for inland Southern California gardens. This tree has been the most productive of all the trees in my backyard orchard. Its neighbor, a Pink Lady Apple, has failed to make a single fruit in the last five years!

For my birthday last fall, Dakota gave me this nice olive tree. We finally planted it in the backyard last month. Originally, I was thinking I'd put it in the front yard in front of our bedroom window, but Dakota pointed out that the fruit might attract (loudly chirping) birds. Instead, it's on the slope just below the cactus planters and above the Pink Lady Apple and the peach tree.

I pruned it back pretty well when we planted it and tried to water it deeply. We're having a pretty dry rainy season, so I think I'll need to do some more deep watering soon to help it get established. Or, La Nina could get it together and send us some rain!

The tree is an olive variety called Arbequina, which is supposed to be good for both oil and eating. It's also self-fertile and fairly hardy, which makes it a good tree for a home orchard. Originally from Spain, the Arbequina apparently does well in Southern California.

From what I gather online, it might take a few years to get an olive harvest, although the tree had fruit on it when Dakota gave it to me. How fun would it be to press our own olive oil? I wonder how one does that. I guess I'll have to do a little research. Either way, I really love the look olive trees with their silvery-green leaves. So, if we get fruit I'll consider that a bonus.

I have exactly seven figs growing on my little fig tree this year. They looking pretty good and my tree is having its happiest and healthiest year yet. So, I'm hoping to taste some fresh figs in another month or so.

I'm considering tying some shiny ribbon to the tree or using some other anti-bird technique to protect those seven fruits. But I don't think ribbon is going to keep squirrels away, and I suspect they're the biggest threat to my figgy dreams. Any suggestion?

We're big coffee drinkers in our family, and, lately, Dakota has been interested in collecting various interesting coffee-making apparatus. So, for Fathers' Day, my son and I got Dakota the ultimate coffee connoisseur's gift: his very own coffee tree.

We picked up a nice-looking 1-gallon coffee tree at Mimosa Nursery in East LA. I read about this nursery several years ago on another Los Angeles gardening blog, and have always wanted to go there. Mimosa is the place to get interesting and exotic fruit trees in Los Angeles.

After a multi-freeway journey, my son and I arrived at Mimosa and were immediately helped by the very friendly owner. (I think he was the owner.) He even showed us over to a bigger coffee tree and gave us some of the red berries to take home and dry. We didn't stay long, but the large lot was covered with all kinds of interesting fruit trees--Jujube, Jack Fruit, Guava--and I definitely plan to go back soon and get something else soon.

The plan for this little coffee tree is to plant it into a larger pot for a while before putting it in the ground somewhere sunny. From what I can tell, a full grown coffee tree can produce a couple of pounds of beans a year. So, we'll be producing some very trendy small-batch, artisanal coffee here on our little urban farm. You can't get more gourmet than that!

Check out this lovely apple. I picked it last weekend from the Anna Apple tree I received from a Tree People fruit tree giveaway and planted last winter. Dakota and I shared it, and it was pretty tasty. I think I left it one the tree a bit too long, though, because it wasn't as crisp as I hoped it would be. Still, this is my first homegrown apple.

I guess the Anna Apple was a great choice for my yard. At the fruit tree giveaway last winter, I specifically asked for a variety with a low number of chill hours. Chill hours are the number of hours below 45 degrees Fahrenheit that a tree must experience in order to bear fruit. The Anna has a low chill hour requirement and is supposed to be very well suited for the dry Southern California climate. That proved to be true, since it bore fruit the very first year. Next year, I think there's a good chance we'll get several apples, not just one.

I also have a Pink Lady Apple, which hasn't been at all successful. It's been in the yard for a couple of years and never even made a baby apple. I have no idea why. I water it frequently, fertilize occasionally and try to keep it nicely pruned. The area where it's planted will now get a lot more sun, though, because we recently got new neighbors and they trimmed the jungle of a backyard next door. I'm hoping the extra sunshine will help the Pink Lady produce fruit next year.

Last year around this time, I wrote about my future orchard. I'm happy to report that, after a year, I've made some small progress towards my dream of picking fresh fruit from the back yard. Some of my older trees have made some progress towards fruitfulness, and I've added a couple of new trees to the mix. Best of all, all my fruit trees survived the summer. I think my fruit tree murdering streak is finally over.

The Panamint Nectarine I planted last February still looks like a stick most of the year, but it recently produced some gorgeous light pink flowers. I have my doubts that it will make any fruit this season, but I'm hopeful it'll branch out a bit and perhaps produce some nectarines in 2011. Fruit trees are all about patience, I've learned.



My old-timer navel orange produced quite a few little green babies last month. But now is the critical time when the fruit will either set and grow or harden and fall off. I am trying my best to tend to this tree so the fruit can mature, but citrus can be fickle. I also feel like the naval orange got confused by some warm winter days and fruited at a weird time of year. So, I'm not sure if I'll really get any oranges from this guy or not. Time will tell.



On the bright side, the year-old Desert Gold Peach is covered in baby fruit! I am so excited by the prospect of harvesting tree-ripened peaches that I can hardly wait for summer. So far, the fruit have continued to grow bigger and I really really hope they hang in there and make it to maturity. Unlike the nectarine, which was bare root, this guy was a potted tree. Maybe that's why it's fruiting after only a year in the ground.



My Pink Lady Apple is currently in bloom, but still shows no sign of fruit. I gave it a good pruning in early January, hoping that would help, but it hasn't made much of a difference. There are still buds forming, though, so perhaps it'll make some baby apples in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what schedule apple trees should be on. The weather has been so variable lately that none of my trees seem to be following a normal schedule.



I picked up another apple in late January at a Tree People giveaway in my neighborhood. The variety, Anna Apple, is supposed to do well in warmer climates with fewer chill hours. I planted this bare root tree just before we got all the big rains, and it's thriving already.



In fact, I was stunned to discover a baby apple on it this weekend. This tree has only been in the ground for two months and it's already fruiting! We'll see if this guy makes it to maturity, but either way I think the fact that it's fruiting at all bodes well for future crops. (Perhaps my Anna tree should have a little chat with the Pink Lady and show her how it's done.)



In other orchard news, I planted a bare-root peach tree, courtesy of Tree People, at the same time as the Anna Apple. It's still a stick. The fig tree is looking good, though, as is the lemon tree down by the chicken coop.

I'm hopeful that, after a summer of careful watering, plus a good stretch of winter rains, this will be the year when my backyard orchard dreams start to come true. If nothing else, I really hope I get to pick a couple of sweet, juicy peaches in a couple of months. Wish me luck!