The Ghostly White Nectarine

Arctic Jay White Nectarines-Bird Back 40

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you've probably come to realize that I'm just a tad fanatic about fresh fruit from the backyard. Some might say I'm just a tad off my rocker. Still others might suggest a little white jacket and some time in a padded room.

You see -- a normal backyard fruit enthusiast will select a perfect spot in the backyard and plant one (1) fruit tree and be done with that. Someone who loves citrus, for example, might even take it a bit further and plant one (1) lemon tree and one (1) lime tree together. Still others -- again on the normal side of the ledger -- will search for that perfect lemon tree that yields a special kind of lemon juice.

Fantasia Nectarines: Delicious

And then, there's someone like Bill Bird. He's anything but normal. He is the "anti-normal." The "what the heck are you doing," normal. My line of thinking goes like this: One fruit tree is just that, one. As Three Dog Night once crooned, "One is the Loneliest Number." One is also boring. Why have one when you can five or six. And why stop with just one variety of fruit when you have so many to choose from?

You can see how this thing called "reality" can easily slip from your grasp.

My evidence in this case questioning my sanity? Easy. It's that Backyard Orchard Culture adventure that I set out on several years ago in a quest to bring fresh nectarines to the Bird Back 40. Ever heard of Backyard Orchard Culture? It's a practice of the mildly insane. The thinking goes somewhat like this: why stop with one fruit tree when you can have three? Think of a harvest season lasting a solid month rather than just a week or two. Go ahead -- make my day -- and plant three fruit trees in that hole you just dug for one and see what happens.

Tree Ripened Nectarines Sweet with Juice

This sickness is fed by horticulturists who tinker with this and that -- call it the "natural order of things" -- when it comes to fruit trees. At one time in our recent past? You couldn't grow blueberries west of the Mississippi River. Blackberries without thorns was an oxymoron. And who had heard of a pluot 15 years ago? Get my drift? Thanks to our friends at Dave Wilson Nursery and others, there's so much new stuff to experience that it's tough to stop at "just one."

When you catch a sickness like this, that "perfect spot in the yard" for a fruit tree is snapped up fairly quickly. Oh, sure, you might find another "perfect spot" or two over time, but conventional backyards in conventional subdivisions only offer so much room. Pretty soon you'll find yourself tearing out shrubs against a lonely wall of your house because "shrubs are boring."

Our Nectarine Jungle

That's what I found myself doing some four years ago -- during an NFL Playoff football game no less. There are times in my life where it would have taken a loaded gun to drag me away from an NFL playoff football game. Instead -- on this day -- my life was consumed not with football, but rather, Flavortop and Fantasia. Those happen to be the first two nectarines I planted against that side wall. I would add the Arctic Jay, the world's best white nectarine, a few days later.

Why nectarines? If you get afflicted with this "grow your own" disease, the answer is "why not." People will question your sanity at the time, but will eventually come round to your way of thinking. They'll tell you: "It will never work." But, in reality, who can ignore that white nectarine tree in the front yard? Suddenly, and without warning mind you, the people who either laughed or questioned your moves, are stealing fruit from right under your nose.

Flavortop Nectarines

This is why I've chosen to rename my white nectarine tree from "Arctic Jay" to "Ghostly White." Do you recall what Casper the Friendly Ghost was most famous for? If your guess is "vanish," you're right on the money but you don't win a white nectarine. You see -- I don't have any left to give. I didn't get any myself. Over the space of ten days this month every last white nectarine on the "Ghostly White" tree up and VANISHED. I mean GONE.

Where did they go? Good question. Did a bird invade and take them all? That would have been one big bird, and no, this was no thieving bird. I have a strong suspicion that this was a thief of the two-legged and no wings variety. Someone in the neighborhood developed a taste for tree-ripened nectarines.

This is your reward for planting those nectarine trees in the FRONT yard. On this fine morning I am singing the farmer's lament: There's always next year...

The Fruits of My Labor . . . Have Flavor!

Tree Ripened Flavortop Nectarine

Isn't that just a clever little title? I thought of it all by myself. Are you impressed? Please, stop laughing.

I mean it, please stop laughing.

Now that we have proper introductions out of the way - may I introduce you to my latest "sweetheart" in the kitchen? No, the wife that is Venus has not been replaced. She has not taken a sabbatical (she'd better not!). She did not "fly the coop."

That sweetness -- pictured top right -- is none other than the Flavortop Nectarine. It is now coming ripe by the dozens in the Front Yard of Bird and is one of three varieties that I have stuck right next to one another in a crazy madness known as Backyard Orchard Culture (BOC).

Three nectarine trees instead of one!

But -- in this case? The plantings are in the front yard. Nevertheless -- it's still crazy. A fruit lover must be slightly off his or her rocker to try something like this. But the proof is in the Nectarine Pudding. The close planting of fruit trees does work -- and I have the lip-smacking, juicy, tree-ripened Flavortop Nectarines to prove it.

This is the second year for our nectarine plantings. These trees really aren't supposed to produce a large amount of fruit until the third year and successive years after that. But who am I to argue with a nectarine tree like Flavortop? If it wants to produce two or three dozen nectarines in just it's second year of growth? You won't get any arguments from Bill and Venus Bird.

Not hardly.

Flavortop Nectarines ready for slicing!

This is also just the start of fresh nectarine season? Still to come? The best tasting white nectarine on the market I'm told -- the Arctic Jay White nectarine. It's absolutely loaded with second year production. And as for the largest tree in the bunch? The Fantasia nectarine? It didn't produce so much as a single piece of fruit.

Go figure.

The Arctic Jay nectarines are still a good 5-7 days from that "soft to the touch" kind of ripeness that orchard culture freakniks like myself crave. And that is the method to the Backyard Orchard Culture (BOC) madness. The goal isn't to produce a boatload of fruit from every single tree. The goal is to produce just enough to keep you  in nectarine flavor heaven, until the next variety ripens up.

Sliced Flavortop Nectarines

As for the Arctic Jay? It is a tried and true Taste Test Winner: best of all fruits at the Dave Wilson Nursery blind fruit tasting held July 5th, 1996. The variety gets an enthusiastic two thumbs up from none other than Farmer Fred Hoffman, and others who have this treasured tree as part of a backyard planting. This is truly one productive variety.

The three nectarine trees pictured below are all in need of a "haircut." That's the beauty of BOC. You never allow these trees to reach a height of more than six or seven feet. Constant pruning is a must. But I've come to find that fruit trees react and react well to constant pruning. It's not difficult -- and the fun part is -- you get to choose the size and shape. Does tall and thin work for you? Round and large? A nectarine hedge perchance? The decision is yours.

A little off the top barber!

But not everything is wine and roses either. The nectarine trees -- much like the peach trees planted in the Bird Back 40 -- suffered from a bout of peach leaf curl thanks to a wetter than normal spring. The new growth and shoots that would later emerge from the trees were covered with a shade of white -- which is not a good thing children. That's powdery mildew and it can and did affect fruit production.

Some of the nectarines were covered with a frosting of white that would not wash off, no matter how hard I tried or whatever method I employed. While the trees did eventually recover from the mildew attack, some of the fruit did not and there was considerable damage to the nectarine skin. UC Davis documents powdery mildew here, and another excellent resource for home growers comes from West Virginia University.

Powdery Mildew damage on fruit skin

Fortunately? The mildew did not penetrate any of the fruit itself. The flesh literally glistened with sweet juices. The taste? Hard to describe. You're not going to find nectarines that taste like this in your local grocery store. Nectarines at Farmer's Markets are allowed to sit on the tree a little while longer, but still cannot compare to the sweet, tree-ripened fruit that comes from your own fruit tree.

I will never forget the steps I took two winters ago to plant these bare root fruit trees. An ugly hedge stood in my way during the NFL playoffs. But rather than watch the Saints, who would go on to win the Big Enchilada that year, Bill and Venus Bird were outside in a light rain, setting up the first BOC "experiment."

After one taste of a tree-ripened Flavortop Nectarine? Consider this a wise step in a wonderful experiment for home fruit production.

In other words, I don't miss that hedge.

When a Nectarine Blossoms...

Artic Jay, Fantasia and Flavor Top Nectarine Trees

I feel an extra special sense of joy when fruit trees begin to blossom. It means that fresh fruit season isn't very far behind. My gardening insanity reaches entirely new levels when I stand in the front yard - looking up at a flowering Santa Rosa plum tree -- hoping to find a sign of a bee or any other pollinator on tender blossoms that are now just starting to unfurl.

The neighbors think I've gone nuts -- AGAIN! But there is a method to my madness. If I spot a pollinator on the plum? I hope the same pollinator makes a similar trip some 75 feet away in the backyard to a Flavor Finale Pluot tree that is flowering for the first time since I planted it about a year ago during the 2010 bare root season.

Artic Jay Nectarine Blossoms

Pluots are special trees. But they require a pollinator to produce fruit. I have that pollinator in the form of the Santa Rosa plum. But is it planted close enough? Will the colony of bees that are now streaming daily in and out from the neon pink Hello Kitty Hive favor both blossoms during the same trip?

Questions, questions! Time will tell...

The gardening experiment known as Backyard Orchard Culture or "Orchard Insanity" as I call it is now in its second year in the front yard of our North Natomas fruit farm. The three nectarine trees that I planted in a corner of the yard last year are flowering to life again. The chilly nights and bone-chilling rain we received last week didn't seem to bother the Arctic Jay White Nectarine much. She was the first to open up. The Flavor Top and Fantasia yellow nectarines are not far behind.

Although I had my doubts about this planting concept -- it's working better than I expected. You can grow fruit trees in tight spaces after all. And although the hardest part of the procedure is hacking and whacking four-or-five foot tall trees back to knee level -- it doesn't seem to have caused much of a problem.



Center Cut, Arctic Jay Nectarine

You can easily see where I cut the Arctic Jay back last winter after planting in the photo to your right. It was nothing more than a single stick after I got done with it. But new branches emerged over the spring and summer -- and were pruned back carefully to limit growth. I never let any branch get beyond five or six leaf-sets before lopping it off with my Corona cutters.

But I noticed something both interesting and uplifting. With every cut I made? Two or three new branches emerged. Know what that means? It means two or three new branches to hold delicious, tree-ripened nectarines! That's what it means!

There are some gardeners who will allow fruit trees to grow for at least three years before allowing it to produce any fruit. That means any fruit that forms in the first, second and even third years is picked off and thrown away. The thinking behind this practice is that you give a fruit tree time to develop strong root and branch systems. The fruit will come later.

Personally? I think the people who think in this manner are as insane as I am. Not allow fruit to ripen? That's a crime against humanity. So -- any nectarines that do result from the blossoms that are now opening have a breakfast or lunch date with my kitchen table. We don't let any fruit or citrus go to waste here!

The nectarine trees that are now blossoming in the corner of my front yard will almost certainly grow at a much more rapid rate than they did last year. My thinking in this matter will not change. No branch will be allowed to grow more than five leafsets before it has a date with my sharpened Corona choppers.

Center Cut, Flavor Top Nectarine

By the third year these trees will have probably reached a height of six to seven feet and will not be allowed to grow any taller. They can most certainly spread out a bit and take advantage of the room they have. That much we will allow.

But -- I'm getting a ahead of myself. As of right now? We have blossoms. Let's hope that the wife that is Venus and I are munching on an Artic Jay White Nectarine later this summer.

What more could you ask for?