Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Name That Tree!

So to finish my reporting of being in California last week, it's pretty amazing driving in the San Joaquin Valley and seeing how much food is being grown.  You can see all of the trees and grapes preparing for growth as spring begins.  And open fields show where vegetables will be.  We stopped at this orchard and there was a deck overlooking rows of different kinds of trees.  Beautiful view and I would certainly sit there often if I worked there.  Although there is so much work to do they probably don't sit around too much.  Hey, let's play a game:  Name That Tree!  A blog first.
This one is easy.  (I'll put the answer below the pic each time.)
OK it's some sort of orange.  Most of the oranges are already picked by now.  But what's this next one?
A kumquat tree!  I can't really recall eating a kumquat before....but had several right after I took this picture. Delicious, like tiny juicy oranges.  I should have put something in for scale, but the fruit is like meatball size.  Next???
Cherry trees.  Look how these big trees have been pruned back to keep them manageable.  Cherry blossoms below.
These next trees hadn't started growing leaves yet, and were right across from the cherries.
Those would be walnut trees.  Almost all of the country's walnuts are grown in California.  And these?
The green trees are the Page Mandarins I showed earlier.  And the trees across are pistachios.  I love pistachio nuts.  I get them in the shell so that I don't eat them so fast.

And next is the number one valued crop in California.  (Thanks to Dylan for the pic.)
That would be almonds, with a harvested value of over $5 Billion (yes that's a "B").  Although I think there is some debate between the wine grape and almond growers on who is really #1.  Well it's all good to me.       So what about this last tree?  You can't eat it!
No, but if there is a beach, it sure adds value to me.  So that was a fun and informative week.  I look forward to a return trip this summer to see good things growing with AgroLiquid.