All my dwarf citrus trees are now safely tucked away for the winter.
I have quite a large collection of warm-weather plants at my Bedford, New York farm, including citrus trees and a vast array of other tropical specimens. During the colder months, these warm-weather plants must move indoors, where temperatures and humidity levels can be controlled. Fortunately, I am able to keep them in high-grade greenhouses, where they can thrive for seven months out of the year. This week, my outdoor grounds crew and gardeners moved the last of the plants into their designated enclosures, grooming and feeding every one before it is brought indoors.
Here's a look inside the citrus hoop house. Enjoy these photos.
During the summer, I bring all the citrus plants outdoors. Dwarf citrus plants can be kept outdoors as long as temperatures stay above 40-degrees Fahrenheit. This year, they were displayed outside my vegetable greenhouse, all well-spaced so no two specimens were touching to prevents diseases from being transferred specimen to specimen. Here, they can be closely maintained and protected from any high winds.
Once it gets cold, the citrus plants and other tropicals are stored in one of five greenhouses. This hoop house down near my chicken coops is mainly for the citrus this year. The entire structure is built using heavy gauge American made, triple-galvanized steel tubing covered with heavy-duty, woven polyethylene.
These are very young white pummelo grapefruits. The large, round fruit is also known as the Chinese grapefruit or shaddock. The tree has dark green, glossy foliage and produces fragrant white flowers in the spring that give way to large, juicy fruit in the winter.
Also growing nicely are these blood oranges, which are still green, but will be bright orange in a few months. The blood orange is a variety of orange with crimson, near blood-colored flesh. The dark flesh color is due to the anthocyanins, a family of polyphenol pigments common to many flowers and fruit, but not common in citrus fruits.
These are growing oranges. Most citrus fruits are harvested in winter. These will be ripe for picking around February, when they are also bright orange in color.
This is Citrus sinensis ‘Parson Brown’ – known for its cold tolerance, often surviving to the upper teens. The fruit was one of the leading sellers in Florida until around 1920. They’re large, very juicy with a mild sweet flavor.
Calamondin, Citrus mitis, is an acid citrus fruit originating in China.
Calamondin is also known as kalamansi, Philippine lime, or Philippine lemon. It is native to the Philippines, parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, as well as parts of southern China and Taiwan.
In the front of the house is this citrus limon ‘Ponderosa’ or ‘The American Wonder Lemon.’ This plant produces a thick mass of highly fragrant flowers, which become tiny lemons. Those lemons get bigger and bigger, often up to five pounds!
These are baby Meyer lemons. Citrus × meyeri, the Meyer lemon, is a hybrid citrus fruit native to China. It is a cross between a citron and a mandarin/pomelo hybrid distinct from the common or bitter lemon. The Meyer lemon was first introduced to the United States in 1908 by the agricultural explorer, Frank Nicholas Meyer, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China. Citrus limon ‘Meyer’ is my favorite lemon because this thin-skinned fruit is much more flavorful than the ordinary store-bought. I love to use them for baking and cooking.
These are more mature lemons. Dwarf citrus trees require at least eight to 12 hours of full sunshine and good air circulation to thrive. I am fortunate to have these hoop houses to keep my citrus collection in excellent condition.
Many citrus specimens have thorns on their branches. Some of the most common citrus trees to have thorns are Meyer lemons, most grapefruits, and key limes. Thorns provide protection from predators, specifically animals that want to eat the tender leaves and fruit. In here, they will be very well protected.
This is Citrus limon ‘Pink Lemonade’ – it produces fruits with pink flesh, and little to no seeds. The fruit grows year-round, and is heaviest in late winter through early summer.
I also have a couple grapefruit trees. As many of you know, grapefruit is a subtropical citrus tree known for its relatively large, sour to semi-sweet, somewhat bitter fruit.
It takes some time to grow grapefruits. Grapefruits take six months to a year to ripen in hot, humid climates; in relatively cooler regions, grapefruits can take 14 months and even as long as 18 months before they are ready to pick.
Outside the hoop house is my collection of fig trees. Figs, Ficus carica, are members of the mulberry family and are indigenous to Asiatic Turkey, northern India, and warm Mediterranean climates, where they thrive in full sun. These trees will also be kept in the citrus house.
The fig tree has been sought out and cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world, both for its fruit and as an ornamental plant. Most fig tree leaves are bright green, large, singular, and well-lobed.
The chill of fall signals to figs that it’s time to go dormant. Dormancy is vital to many fig species and a perfectly normal part of their life cycles. Yearly, leaves will change color and drop — and then new leaves will emerge in spring.
As with every plant before it is stored, these figs will all get groomed and fed before going into the hoop house.
Once ready, they are lined up on this side of the hoop house where they will stay until spring.
To simulate the best subtropical environment, we try to keep the temperature in this greenhouse between 60 and 80-degrees Fahrenheit with some humidity. These citrus plants, my figs, and other tropicals are now safely stored for the cold season ahead. This week is expected to be chilly – we got them all in just in time.
Halloween is among my favorite occasions. I always decorate the front entrance to my farm in preparation for all the little ghosts and goblins that go trick or treating on All Hallows' Eve. This year, I added something even more exciting than candy to each of the children’s treat bags.
Enjoy these photos!
Autumn is a beautiful time of year. Around my home, I always display all the pumpkins we grew in the garden. This season, we harvested so many. This grouping of orange pumpkins is on a table outside my Winter House.
As you know, pumpkins are cucurbits, members of the Cucurbitaceae family, which also includes squash, gourds, cucumbers, watermelons, and cantaloupes.
These pumpkins are on the low stone wall outside my home. The name pumpkin comes from the Greek word ‘pepon’ which means “large melon”.
Some are even grown in a beautiful shade of gray.
We lined dozens of pumpkins along the front stone wall also – I love this palette of fall colors.
Some of the outdoor plants also look holiday appropriate. This is Syneilesis – a tough, drought-tolerant, easy-to-grow woodland garden perennial commonly called the shredded umbrella plant because of its narrow, dissected leaves that cascade downward like an umbrella.
These pumpkins are on the steps of my Tenant House, where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit. After displaying the pumpkins in the fall, one can scoop out the large hull-less seeds, which are delicious roasted or save them for planting next year.
I am always trying to grow different and unusual specimens along with the more traditional varieties. Look at all the different colors and shapes. Many are cultivated for their witch and goblin-like appearances – the more warts the better.
This is one of my Martha Stewart Wire Spiders with LED Lights – from one of my previous Halloween collections on QVC.
Another past collection item is this 22.5-inch Indoor/Outdoor Halloween Candle. I always try to make our display a little different every year.
And, here is one of two menacing Halloween skeleton horses. This equine friend is 74-inches tall and has sound effects. I like to have this on the front driveway to greet all the children, and the adults who accompany them.
In my guest house cookbook library and studio, we bagged lots of candy for all the little revelers.
I like to group several candies together and place them in cellophane bags. These bags are available online and can be so helpful for gifting an array of small items.
Each bag contains about 10-pieces of candy. Just the perfect amount for our littles trick-or-treaters.
But look, I also added one dollar to each bag. One can also add some pennies – you know, the ones collected in jars and other vessels for that “rainy day.” It’s a great way to get rid of all those pennies, while offering something a bit more valuable than candy.
We tied each bag with black and white baker’s twine.
Every trick-or-treater will love their bag of goodies from Cantitoe Corners.
And, in production line process, as each bag is finished, it is placed into a large plastic bin ready to go out to the front gate.
Here is our basket of treats. Lots of children always comes to visit for Halloween. Any leftovers go to my hardworking staff here at the farm. Here in New York, the weather was mild – a perfect night for Halloween. I hope you enjoyed the night of fun and fright.
The landscape looks so mysterious shrouded in thick fog.
Do you get a lot of fog where you live? My Bedford, New York farm is in close proximity to a reservoir, where early patches of fog are quite common. Fog is essentially made up of condensed water droplets - a result of the air being cooled to the point where it can no longer hold all the water vapor it contains. It can be thin or thick - sometimes so thick it obscures the road and other objects ahead making it difficult for driving or even walking. There was a very very dense fog over my home and property yesterday morning. It was a great opportunity to capture some photos of this atmospheric phenomenon and perfect to post for Halloween.
Enjoy.
This is my allée of pin oaks – one of several allées here at the farm. These tall majestic trees look bewildering in the fog. At the end is a carriage road intersection, but the thick fog makes it nearly impossible to see.
Do you know how fog forms? Fog can form in two ways: either by cooling the air to its dew point or by evaporation and mixing. This happens often when the earth radiates heat at night or in the early morning. This view is of the carriage road just outside my Winter House. The red tree on the left is Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as tupelo, black tupelo, black gum or sour gum. It is a medium-sized deciduous tree that shows off beautiful, scarlet red leaves in fall and shiny, dark green leaves in summer.
Fog happens when it is very humid. There has to be a lot of water vapor in the air for fog to form. Hard to see through the fog, but this photo shows London planetrees in my maze. And look carefully, my handsome Friesian Rinze is grazing on the left.
Here are three of my five donkeys in another pasture. Don’t confuse fog and mist. Fog is denser than mist. This means fog contains more water molecules in the same amount of space. Fog cuts visibility down to six-tenths of a mile while mist can reduce visibility to about one to 1.2 miles.
Some of the ginkgo trees have already lost their leaves but many tend to lose all their leaves at the same time. As the weather gets colder, the petioles get what’s called scars to protect the tree from disease after the leaves fall. After the hard frost sweeps down the east coast, this ginkgo, and others at the farm, will drop the rest of its leaves leaving an even larger carpet of color below.
This is a view looking down a section of my Linden Tree Allée – one of two at the farm. At the end is the carriage road to my home – hard to see, but it’s there.
Here is what we call the “pine” paddock, with the great pine trees on the left. Hard to see their bold green color, or the gold, yellow, red and brown of the changing trees nearby.
The thicker the fog, the longer it takes to dissipate. This fog lasted several hours along with rain showers. This view shows my pool, now covered for the season. Antique staddle stones, originally used in the 17th and 18th centuries as support bases for granaries, hayricks, and game larders, are on the far side.
This photo shows the thick fog just past the weeping branches of the willow.
Do you know what’s ahead in this photo? This image was taken from my Boxwood Allée looking toward my stable at the end.
These are also linden trees – half of my long allée that starts at the carriage road to my Winter House and extends north between the fenced pastures all the way to my chicken coops. But, the foggiest place in the world is Grand Banks, off the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The cold Labrador current from the north and the warm Gulf Stream current from the east create just the right conditions for thick fog to form almost every day of the year.
This fog is seen in the middle hayfield. Beyond the trees is an expansive field where I grow lots of hay for my horses.
Here is another photo of the middle hayfield. Not long ago, we baled the second cut of hay from this area.
This photo shows the longest allée here at the farm – the one planted through the carriage road in the middle field where we have great London planetrees and Cotimus flanking the road. There are actually many different types of fog – radiation fog, sea fog, ground fog, advection fog, steam fog or evsporation fog, precipitation fog, upslope fog, valley fog, ice fog, freezing fog, and artificial fog.
On the left, the gold leafed trees are Japanese zelkova trees, Zelkova serrata – a medium-sized deciduous tree that typically grows up to 100-feet tall with a spreading, upward-branching, vase-shaped crown. I planted this stand in 2019 and they’re all doing so well in this part of the field.
This view is from the opposite side of the hayfield. Ever wonder why it is called “fog?” One definition of fog from the 14th century refers to tall grasses. Many grasses use fog as part of their name such as Yorkshire fog grass. Fog was also the Danish word for mist or spray in the 16th century. It is thought that the two definitions may have merged when mist was noted over a field of grass.
This young Pin Oak Allée is down a long road leading to my Contemporary House, which is primarily used for storage. These young trees are thriving here beneath their taller neighbors – I am looking forward to seeing them at maturity.
Edging the back hayfield on one side is a stand of red maples. Look at the photo long enough and you may just see them.
Here, one could see the leaves of a maple up close, with thick fog behind it. Another interesting story involving fog includes President George Washington. During the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, George Washington and his troops were fighting a losing battle against the British. When a thick fog descended on the area, Washington took the opportunity to withdraw thousands of his troops into Manhattan. After the fog lifted, the British descended on the American positions, only to find they had left. The Americans’ miraculous retreat saved their lives.
At the far end of the back hayfield is my giant sycamore tree, the symbol of my farm. This tree is among the largest of the trees on the property.
This is the view through this grove of dawn redwoods, Metasequoia. These are so pretty in fall. They have feathery, fine-textured needles that are approximately a half-inch long. And look at its bark. The bark of the dawn redwood becomes deeply fissured as the tree matures.
In the fog, the climbing hydrangea vines creeping up the trunks of these bare sugar maples look almost frightening.
I hope you all have a very safe and frightfully fun Halloween. This is a photo taken by Mike Hester, a member of my security team, the night before the fog rolled in. It shows the eerie skies above my allée of boxwood. It almost appears as if there is a face in the clouds backlit by the moon.
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