Midsummer 2018

We've undertaken a remodel of the poolhouse and lanai. The columns need to be reworked due to water damage. In the poolhouse we're removing the grill, adding roll-up doors, and replacing the old warped cabinetry with new outdoor cabinets.

We plan to add a water softener and to rearrange the cabinets to allow a full size fridge/freezer.

In news of the recovery, we're up to 18 Vidal Blanc vines with signs of growth. Exciting to see the other grapes coming a long. We've already got bird netting on the Frontenac which show great color.

Despite the beetle damage, I still hope to have enough grapes for a small batch of wine.

My goal has always been to get one new fruit species per year and this year we met the goal with Garcinia intermedia, the lemon drop mangosteen. Apparently the old name was G. edulis and that is the label on this plant, which just goes to show you how long it took to get fruit. Honestly it wasn't great - inedibly sour - but I now have a second plant flowering and several more fruit set so there is hope for better fruit.

Starfruit is not a candidate for new fruit this year, but perhaps it should be. We've been without 'Kari' now for a couple of years and the new tree from Pine Island has set fruit.

Mango is another ineligible candidate. I grew 'Cogshall' for several years and finally got so irritated with it that I got rid of it. 'Cogshall' would never hold fruit to maturity. This time I went with 'Mallika' and so far it has not disappointed.

Trying a new technique - pollarding - on the lychee trees this year. Normally then get a firm prune mid-July but this time I really pruned them back very hard in an effort to get growth I can reach without a step-stool. Results in about 10 months.

We're just back from the Chalet and the post would not be complete without some Lake Michigan pictures, final pic photo credit to Bob Pierce.

Patience Rewarded

Jaboticaba blooming bright.

Narrow garage bed replanted with some lamium and dwarf abelia. The haskap harvest will be limited this year due to a late freeze.

Trying a new pollination technique with the lychees.

With any luck, this will be the Pierce Estate Norton 2020.

And finally, patience rewarded.  Asimina triloba in bloom.

Lychees and Elderberries

At long last, we're making lychee wine.  My winemaking schtick originally was that I would grow the majority of the primary ingredient in each wine.  I've loosened that up a bit, and now the idea is that I grow an important portion of the primary ingredient in each wine.  I think this qualifies.

It took a bit of driving around with Shawn and Suzanne, but last weekend we found some canned lychee at an Asian market in Columbia.  My harvest this year was only about 15 fruit, but they are large, delicious 'Sweetheart' lychees, now frozen.

Lychee wine recipe

6 20oz cans of lychee

8oz fresh frozen 'Sweetheart' lychee

1 liter WGC

900g sugar

3/4t Fermaid K

1t GoFerm

3/4t tannin

4t pectic

1.5t citric acid

1.5t tartaric acid

QA23 yeast

6g bentonite

Add together the canned lychee, WGC, tannin, acids, sugar, and pectic.  Allow to sit 12-24 hours.  Check and adjust SG and pH/acid.  Rehydrate and pitch yeast.  Bentonite day 3.  Carboy when around 1.010.  Rack off gross lees after 1-2 weeks.  Rack at 30 days.  Thaw and lightly chop frozen lychees and add to carboy.  Rack again at 30 days and usual care thereafter.

This is basically the approach I took with my passionfruit wine...a "secondary infusion."  The lychee pH was 3.24 but TA a little low at 3.  I think my new WGC has less acid buffer than the old because the last two batches of wine needed far less acid to get to desired pH.  OG was fine at 1.080.  It may need a little more citric acid, we'll judge that after the third racking.  I moved it to the carboy after 6 days.

*****

Allie will be home next weekend from her internship in Washington, DC.  It will be great to hear more details about her adventure.  She enjoys being around people as passionate as she is.  

She will be home just in time to 1) sample last year's elderberry wine and 2) pick some more elderberries.  My elderberries have started to ripen and I have a few handfuls in the fridge.  But our big pickin' spot doesn't have too many ripe berries yet.

Last night Lisa and I popped open the first bottle of 2014 elderberry, batch 3.  Lisa was concerned about how many bottles we would have.  Between the four batches we have about 120 bottles of elderberry from last year so we were safe, in my judgment, opening a bottle last night. 

This wine is very good, just really young.  The color is terrific, so purple it has almost a blue color at times in the glass.  It is a little tart, and a little green peppery.  The tannin adjustments were right on.  I believe and hope this wine will settle down, the fruit will come forward in another several months.

Breaking convention, we had drank the elderberry with cedar-smoke-grilled chinook salmon and a mango-fennel-avocado salad.  Cheers!

Craft Day in the Garden

We started off in the greenhouse Saturday, and I'm happy to report that 'Kari' continues to show signs of recovery.  Every year is different and interesting.  This year, the second, younger jaboticaba bloomed dramatically, and I think we'll have more fruit from this tree, this year, than we have had from the older tree in its lifetime.  Jaboticaba has become one of my favorite trees.  If I freeze every fruit for 8-10 years I might be able to make a gallon of wine.

First jaboticaba of the year

I was forced due to time constraints to try a new lychee pollination program.  I had little to lose, because the paintbrush method used for the last several years produced nothing.  This year, no paintbrushes.  I just took blooms loaded with males and beat them over and onto blooms loaded with females.  What do you know?  I have about 20 lychees right now.  Some will inevitably drop, but many are already dime-sized.  I do believe we are back in the lychee business.

We have blooms on dragonfruit, citrus, plumeria, sugar apple, and many others.  Dwarf Namwah bananas have started to ripen.

Dwarf Namwah bananas, less the two ripe ones we ate Saturday

We started moving plants out this weekend.  No blooms on the passion fruit yet, but growth is emerging.  My daughter would be tickled to see our solution to the ugly, fragile trellis we had last year.  We found tomato cages at the store for $7.  Add a can of purple spray paint (so that the color matches the blooms) and we have a new and improved passion fruit stand.

Winston can't believe the color

The yard is approaching its spring bloom peak.

Viburnum, katsura tree, and fragrant abelia

Amsonia is filling in the greenhouse bed

The mint is up and that means it is mojito time.  Dinner was mint/red pepper lamb chops, bacon-wrapped home grown asparagus (can you find the stray in the pictures above?) and fruit salad.  With dinner we cautiously opened a bottle of white catawba.  I failed to adequately adjust the acidity preferment on this wine and so the main task became taming the sharpness.  Maybe it was the mojitos clouding our judgment, but this bottle was better than drinkable.