The Pink Pearl

Nick and I went with some friends on a local winery tour last fall, and at one of the tastings there was a selection paired with apple slices that were such a bright pink that I thought maybe they'd been soaked in wine. I asked about the variety and was told it was a "Pink Pearl."

The inside of a Pink Pearl apple

After doing some research and finding they aren't very common to find for purchase, obviously the answer to this problem was to grow our own tree. There weren't a lot of places online that carry the variety and those that do appear to sell out quickly, so I put in an order right away.

The place I purchased my tree, Bay Laurel Nursery, doesn't ship right when you order. They allow you to select delivery date ranges in the early spring based on when the best time to plant is in your specific zone, so the tree arrives near the end of its dormant period and ready for transplant.

There was a slight delay in getting my tree as UPS fucked up and delivered to a completely wrong address several miles away, where some jerk signed for it even with the wrong address and name. On their third attempt to retrieve the package, UPS finally succeeded and got it to me--5 days late. I was worried a bit about it being in the box for so long, but since it was dormant, it was fine.

The area I chose for this tree is this little cove in the most south/eastern corner of the back yard:

Before

When we bought the house, the above is what this area looked like. Right off the photo on the left side is the east fence gate, and to the right is the house. This space wasn't being utilized well. A couple random tree seedlings were coming up, there was a large bush of dead grasses of some kind, and a cute but overgrown non-deciduous bush that I haven't identified. The latter was close enough to the house to be out of the way and nice enough to keep, but the tree seedlings and dead grass bush had to go.

At some point over the winter I took the hand saw to the seedlings. I also removed the random chicken wire and other junk. When the Pink Pearl arrived I prepped the rest: dug up the dead brush and pulled up all the long grass and ground covers. Nick helped dig up the roots from the previously-removed seedlings. After everything was cleared out I used the rototiller and turned all of the soil.

After

After moving the tree around to decide where best to place it, I dug a large hole and filled in around the roots. It's several feet from the fence on both sides so it should have plenty of room to grow up and out. With the sun high in the sky over the summer, it should have plenty of light where it is.  

Tree planted

There were a few fuzzy buds on this little guy when I planted it. I'll add some more photos when it has some leaves and blossoms on it this spring. It's only about 2 1/2 feet tall now, so I'm looking forward to seeing how much it grows. And maybe we'll have a couple of apples in the fall!

Gainey Pots and Indoor Plants

With south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows and such a big living room space, adding a few indoor plants was an obvious must. Especially after scoring two large Gainey pots on Craigslist. I wanted to have at least one fruiting tree, since our entire space is so much about functionality. The first was an easy choice - a lime tree!

After doing some research on different varieties and finding out which grow best indoors, I decided on a 3-year old Bearss lime tree, which we purchased back in early October from Four Winds Growers. It's a seedless variety, and when ripe we'll be able to pick limes right from the tree in the living room and add to a rum and coke, Nick's famous tacos, or just a glass of water.

It began blossoming in mid-January, and here's a picture of it on February 1st:

I selected the matte black planter for the lime tree, which is my favorite of the two Gainey pots. It looks a bit funny because the tree is only about 2 feet tall right now, but it will definitely grow into it. The Bearss lime is a semi-dwarf variety, which means it can get up to about ten feet tall. We'll probably let it grow to around the top of the window. And there's a plant caster with wheels underneath the pot to make it easier to move if needed.

I was really surprised at the number of blossoms on such a small tree. Obviously they won't ALL turn into limes, but there are easily over 50 of them on this little guy already. Here's a closer look at the top cluster:

I liked the idea of having the window framed by plants on each side, and really wanted another fruit of some kind that wouldn't do well outside here (at least not year-round). We considered avocado, pomegranate, and another variety of citrus, settling on a clementine tree. Finding true clementines in the store is sometimes difficult. I would like an avocado tree, but there are several cold-hardy varieties that grow just fine outside in the northwest, so that's what we will get if/when we decide to get one of those.

The grower where I found my lime tree doesn't sell clementines, so I just looked around for a good deal. Once ordered, the clementine tree took awhile to arrive because of a snowstorm in the midwest, and it was pretty much dead on arrival. The company does have a replacement policy and did send me a new one, though it seemed to take threatening to contact my credit card company to reverse the charge to hear back from them, claiming they hadn't gotten my earlier email. So I'm not going to name the company I bought from. Also they've sent me so many spam emails since my purchase, while I've had zero from Four Winds.

Still, once they sent my replacement clementine it arrived quickly AND was blossoming, which was great! It's a 5-6 year old plant and quite tall:

We also have a little aloe plant at the base of the clementine

You can see in the above photo the second Gainey pot, similar to the other but a glossy black instead of matte. I don't like the shiny finish as much as matte, so from most views within the room it's partially hidden behind the Plycraft chair.

The trunk and branches are pretty thin but will thicken up over time. There was a pretty good-sized unripe clementine on one of the branches upon arrival and it made that branch droop over a lot, so I'm not sure how it will handle mass fruiting. This one has quickly gone from having a few blossoms to, like the lime tree, having at least 50 in clusters all over.

Closer look at one side of clementine blossoms

I've been pollinating both of the trees with a small paintbrush since there aren't any bees around to do it. We'll see over the next few months how well that worked.

The final indoor planter we needed to find an inhabitant for was the pot and stand we bought from Modernica. With the two larger indoor pots being used for fruit trees, this smaller one was perfect for a purely decorative plant. We perused the indoor/tropical section of Portland Nursery and fell in love with this dracaena marginata, or Dragon Tree. It's the 'colorama' variety, so instead of solid green fronds it has green and pinkish-red ones. Since this matte black pot matches well with the matte black Gainey planter, those are the most prominently featured within the living room. The dragon tree and its beautiful pot and stand looks perfect placed between the fireplace and the hutch.

We also recently found 2 smaller brown Gainey pots at Hawthorne Vintage in Portland, but those will be used outside on the patio, plants to be determined.