Our ultra early blooming Florida Prince peach is LOADED with fruit already, but most of it isn’t quite ripe yet. Any day now, we will be inundated with small, sweet, delicious peaches.

Our Babcock peach is still blooming, but a few of the early flowers on it set fruit. Very few. It requires more chill than the Florida Prince peach. If I get two dozen peaches from it this year, I will count myself lucky.

These tiny Asian pears are on my dwarf grafted tree, the Shinseiki branch.

The 21st Century branch is just now blooming, but that variety requires more winter chill than it got. I’m not expecting as good a fruit set as on the Shinseiki branch. Hope I’m spelling that right.

The older Shinseiki Asian pear in the back yard blooms later than the grafted dwarf one in front. It looks like it has set at least two dozen pears, maybe more. Kind of soon to tell since they don’t all actually grow into pears. So far, I don’t see any fruit set on the 21st Century Asian Pear in back. Or is it 20th Century?

I tried removing leaves in the winter from my apple trees to see if that would make them set fruit despite the lack of chill. My dwarf Granny Smith bloomed like crazy, but so far I don’t see any apples. These nascent apples are on the dwarf Fuji. Too soon to tell if they will develop into actual apples.

My poor Santa Rosa plum wants a lot of chill hours, and didn’t get them. So far, I see only two plums on that big tree. 😦

This is only the second time my low chill requirement Red Flame grapes have bothered to bloom. I have two bunches of buds, this nice big cluster and a smaller one. Let’s hope I actually get grapes this year. I didn’t the other time it bloomed.

The Panamint nectarine didn’t get enough chilling. I will be lucky to get two dozen nectarines from this tree. So far, I have seen no fruit on the Snow Queen nectarine, and not a lot of blossoms either.

The dwarf Valencia orange is loaded with brand new oranges, probably more than the tree can support. If it doesn’t drop fruit, I will have to thin it. Right now, there are three dozen oranges, but the tree is too tiny to support that many. The more mature and much larger dwarf Navel orange is loaded with fruit, and is big enough to mature them all.

I have a few Eureka lemons on a very dwarf tree in a pot.

The Bearrs lime is loaded with tiny new limes.

The Meyer lemon has several lemons left from last year, and is busy setting new fruit.

The avocado set lots of tiny fruit, most of which fall off. It is too soon to tell how many will mature, but I am hopeful.

Among our newest trees are this tiny Pomegranate. Too soon for it to bloom. The tops of my two Fuyu persimmon trees (not shown) died off and then sprouted from below the graft line, i.e., they are now American persimmons. I will dig them out and try again, this time with a potted persimmon instead of a bare root persimmon. I keep hoping.

This is the drought-tolerant portion of our front yard. The Korea grass requires very little water, and neither do the flowers. They are lucky if I water them once a month.

We have had a good artichoke harvest, but it is nearly over.

This is my front yard vegetable bed by the sidewalk. You are looking at the garlic end, with one elephant garlic and 27 “regular” garlics grown from bulbs/cloves from the grocery store. Sage is at the lower right.

This is the onion end, with about 80 onions. There is a lot of kale in there too, and carrots.

I am growing Sweet White Texas and Texas Red onions. They are bulbing up nicely.

Incredibly enough, I have trouble growing summer squash in my garden. Maybe they don’t get enough sun, not sure. I planted these Lebanese squash from seed and they are struggling along. BTW, I have netting over everything to keep the birds out.

I have harvested only one turnip so far. Here is another one struggling along.

I have about 20 carrots scattered about the front bed. I can see them poking their orange roots up out of the ground, so they may be ready to harvest soon.

The Deer-tongue lettuce is about ready for a first picking. I grew these heirlooms from seeds that I saved a couple of years ago.

Kale, kale, and more kale. This one is Lacinato or dinosaur kale. I also have Scotch Blue Curled and something that sprouted from Lacinato seeds that I saved that obviously isn’t Lacinato. That darn kale is so promiscuous. You never know what you will get from home-grown kale seeds.

The back veggie beds are a mess. Better to show a close-up of sugar snap peas.

Here is a cauliflower head that is growing nicely. We won’t speak of the other seven cauliflower plants which don’t appear to be doing anything at all that is going to be useful. Kind of like my red cabbage–nothing looks like it is going to be harvestable there either.

I haven’t been good about photographing my harvests, but here is one day’s harvest of mustard greens, kale, gold potatoes, a turnip, and chard. All of this went into a wonderful beef stew, along with the last jar of my home-canned tomato soup that was lousy as soup but great as a stew base.

The first of the peaches went into a fruit mix with store bought strawberries and blueberries, along with maple syrup and Grand Marnier. It went on top of a German pancake.

This is my German pancake fresh from the oven, cooked in my husband’s great-grandmother’s cast iron skillet.

Here he is in the paddock at his first livestock show. I know, not a very photogenic photo, but this is the steak end, my favorite part. 🙂

Bucket doesn’t miss a lot of meals. Or any opportunity to get more food. He should top out at about 1200 lbs by county fair time in June. Then he will fulfill his destiny as a meat animal.