My Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes!

One plant in a semi-sheltered location is still blooming, setting fruit and ripening.

The only other thing that's looking good is ski season :)

Hah! Congrats on the tomatoes, Lazy! That's great. Hopefully they'll stay strong and productive for you! Keep us posted!

Had a warm and sunny day yesterday, and now a cool and rainy one today. Here's my basket of 'Purple Pirouette' petunias on a hook in front of my small orange tree.

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Thanks for the fun, and funny update!
Grant

Habaneros are finally turning orange and boy do they taste good on pizza or eggs! Anaheims are doing well, too.
Nothing else except the peas are doing so well. I bought new dirt for the raised beds and am not happy with it. I think I need to pull it out by and mix it half and half with my composted horse manure, about to give up on my microscopic brassicas and lettuces.

I have 3 blood oranges that are almost ripe! First fruit ever on the dwarf Sanguinelli tree, 3 years after planting.

Mmmmm, bloody.

Congrats on the habaneros, Tracy, that's great. I love me some hot peppers too. :)

Congrats on the blood oranges euqruob! I planted a small tree in my last garden and LOVED them. I've got quite a few citrus in my current garden but no blood oranges. Hmmmmm!

Here's a couple of other pics from my garden this month. Hope everyone has a great holiday and a great new year!

Arizona sweet oranges on a small tree I planted four years ago. It had no fruit the first two years, then three fruit last year and several dozen this year, so the trend is good!
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'Sweet Tart' Petunia/Calibrachoa:
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Happy gardening,
Grant

By the way, my 'Minneola' tangeloes taste absolutely perfect right now--the pefect blend of sweet and tart. Delicious.

'Minneola' tangelo:
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Take care and happy gardening (and eating)!
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden (indoors and out) December 2011

Your garden is looking great Grant. Oh that Hercules...love it!!

Let's see...the aloes are all starting to grow their flower stalks, hardenbergia flower buds are peeking out and the citrus look and taste wonderful. I have 6 different ones and lots of citrus popped this year. The palms finally don't look so tiny and I'm starting to reach the look I wanted when we planted 4 years ago. Mature plants rock.

Nice update, Sherizona! We'd love some pics (hint hint hint). It's just as much fun to see other folks' garden pics as it is to share our own.

I love hardenbergia, but have never grown it personally. I'm surprised the buds form this early, but it's neat to hear. I've got lots of aloes in bud too--great stuff! I've worked hard to get early, mid, and late blooming aloe varieties so I can have aloe blooms from October through May or so. Love them! Below is a pic of the hybrid 'Cynthia Giddy' that pups like mad and is in bloom right now. I bought one plant years ago and now have probably a dozen clumps each with five or six plants in each clump.

Cynthia Giddy hybrid aloe:
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Great your citrus are doing so well too. Yum! My 'Minneola' tangelos are OUTSTANDING this year! The AZ Sweets are very good too, and the 'Lisbon' lemons are great (and the delicious foliage on the Thai lime is perfect right now). I planted half a dozen other citrus trees around my small garden, but the rest are still too young to bear fruit. Hurry hurry hurry, LOL. I'm envious of your mature plants. :)

Anyway, thanks your fun update. Don't be shy with pics!
Happy gardening all,
Grant

Is there an orange that tastes more like a lemon? I've always called my tree a lemon tree but it really has more orange characteristics, except the juice is tastes lemony and I use it to substitute for lemon. It's like an orange/lemon hybrid but not a Myers. Orange zest and appearance, orange colored juice, big, round fruit but lemony/orange juice flavor. Makes a wonderful lemonade and the lemon bars are amazing.
Anyway, it's an older tree, quite large and this year it's loaded with huge, orange,juicy fruits. I love it for kitchen use. Can't get enough of it! Just have no idea what to call it! This is probably the best year I've had for it.
I made my wedding cake with it, a lemon cake with a zesty lemon frosting and blackberry fruit filling.

Hiya Tracy and all,

Your citrus sounds neat! Any pics? Hopefully one of our regular members will chime in with a possible ID for your lemon, er, orange, er, "citrus", LOL. Either way it sounds wonderful and I'm so impressed you used it for your wedding cake. How fun is THAT? VERY, I'd say! Let us know if you get a definitive ID for it. Was it there in its current form when you moved in?

So far it's been a great year for citrus in my little garden. Some of my trees are too young to bear, but others are really getting in to the groove and the fruit is GREAT. I can't wait for my little variegated 'Key Lime' (AKA variegated 'Mexican lime') to start producing!

And not to leave my fellow cactus lovers out, here's a tiny Mammilaria in my back yard making some really nice little late December blooms. Wilson the tennis ball is trying to push his way in to the pic to provide relative size.

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Happy gardening all!
Grant

Tracydr, sounds like you may have a sour orange tree, good for cooking and juicing but not for fresh eating. Some of the navels here are grafted onto sour orange root stock.

Definitely sounds like a Seville Sour Orange. Most of the older, big citrus trees in Phoenix, including grapefruit and most sweet oranges, are grafted onto Seville Sour Orange.