This ancient fruit has so many uses! You can pickle it, dry it, dice it into salads, eat it fresh off the tree, or bake it in a Christmas pie for Little Jack Horner. The plum dates back thousands of years. European plums (Prunus domestica) trace to Western Asia and...
Do you have an endless appetite for citrus? Then consider the pomelo (Citrus maxima), the world’s largest citrus fruit, sometimes as big as a basketball! Native to Southeast Asia, this grapefruit cousin has thick skin, pale flesh (ranging from yellow to pink),...
Johnny Appleseed spread the gospel of the apple tree on the American frontier, traveling barefoot as far as Indiana and possibly Illinois. He never made it to California, but the apple did, introduced by Spanish missionaries who also cultivated oranges, olives,...
Young George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree. An early biographer fabricated the story — a lie to illustrate Washington’s love of the truth. Washington was a Virginian, and Virginia was a prime area for cherry cultivation at the time. But the trees...
Georgia is the Peach Tree State. Everywhere you turn, there’s a Peachtree avenue, shopping center, medical building, school, and so on. Meanwhile, the Golden State contributes about 80% of the US peach harvest. Southern California’s mild winters and warm,...
Gardening in Southern California is a year-round activity, thanks to mild winters, hot summers, and varied microclimates. However, in some areas, the soil may work against you. The Los Angeles Basin features soils like the Chino Association, a gray, calcareous silt...
