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THIS WEEK’S FRUIT
Tarocco Blood Orange
Frog Hollow Farm, Brentwood, CA
A beautiful orange to deep red flesh is revealed when you slice open a Tarocco. The flesh of the blood orange is firmer and more dense than an orange and its flavor is a little more tart.
Pink Lady Apple
Cuyama Farm, New Cuyama, CA
A cross between the Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, the Pink Lady is a
crisp and juicy apple with a tart finish. Pink skins and a creamy white colored
flesh that resists browning make this an excellent apple for salads and slicing.
Fuji Apples
Cuyama Farm, New Cuyama, CA
Fujis are a cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet, an heirloom apple dating back to Thomas Jefferson.
Cara Cara Oranges
Cousins Organic, Orange Grove, CA
A medium sized red fleshed seedless navel orange. Cara caras are a low acid orange that makes the flesh sweeter and more complex than most navels.
Tango Mandarins
Abounding Harvest Mountain Farm, Los Gatos, CA
The Tango is a newer variety mandarin created from budwood of Murcott mandarins which are prized for sweet and tangy flavor, deep orange color and easy to peel rind. The Tango holds all of the delightful characteristics of the Murcott but is virtually seedless.
Hass Avocados
Eco-Farms, Temecula, CA
Creamy in texture, nutty in flavor, with a small to medium seed. The Hass skin is easy to peel and darkens from green to purplish-black as it ripens.
A NOTE FROM FARMER AL
Dear CSA Members,
This week, the first week of February, we will plant trees, just under 1600 of them. These are all replants; replacement trees needed for several reasons.
1. Old age. 760 peach trees are replacements for the 2 blocks of old trees, planted 30 years ago in 1985 that we removed last Fall.
2. Gopher Damage. There are 300 Cherry tree replants. Gophers love them!
3. Sunburn Damage. 200+ trees were so severely sunburned they needed to be pulled out. Peaches and Nectarines seem to be especially susceptible to this never ending problem. The bark burns, then cracks, leaving the trees’ skin open to invasion from boring insects such as the flat headed borer. This worm eats the cambium layer just below the bark, eventually girdling the branch, thus killing it.
4. Fire blight. The dreaded scourge of every apple and pear grower in North America. Pears are the most susceptible. Last Spring, 2014, was probably the worst Fire blight year in history for California pear growers. Here at Frog Hollow, it took out 700 trees, mostly our Golden Russet Bosc, but also a good many Taylor’s Gold as well. Thankfully, the Warren Pear is “untouchable”, being totally resistant to Fire blight.
We were only able to get about 300 pear trees from our nursery. Hopefully, the additional 400 trees will be available to plant next year. The planting begins Monday. We’ve done our ground preparation already, with each replant spot getting about 15 lbs of compost last Fall. This year’s replants will be our first major test of our hypothesis that the replant syndrome is a ‘biological’ problem, not a mineral one. Our biological approach will be a combination of compost, vermicompost, humus, and compost tea laced with mycorrhizae. A wizard’s brew of fungi, bacteria and protozoa! Stay tuned for the results; we should know if it’s working by mid-summer.
