Fruit Trees

Soap star Drake Hogestyn is ready to sell the Malibu retreat where he has no doubt spent many days of his life. It is up for sale at $4.995 million. The Tuscan-style two-story, built in 2002, features wood-beam ceilings, French doors, hardwood floors, decks and balconies. There are fireplaces in the living room, family room and master suite of the 6,616-square-foot house, which has a total of five bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms. The grounds of about an acre include a circular driveway, a swimming pool, sycamore trees, fruit trees and an herb garden.

Soap star Drake Hogestyn is ready to sell the Malibu retreat where he has no doubt spent many days of his life. It is up for sale at $4.995 million. The Tuscan-style two-story, built in 2002, features wood-beam ceilings, French doors, hardwood floors, decks and balconies. There are fireplaces in the living room, family room and master suite of the 6,616-square-foot house, which has a total of five bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms. The grounds of about an acre include a circular driveway, a swimming pool, sycamore trees, fruit trees and an herb garden.

Mention growing apples to Southern Californians and many picture old, knobby trees in nippy New England orchards. While it's true that many apple varieties are grown in chillier parts of the United States, it is possible for local gardeners to grow crisp, juicy apples. "Many people think it's not cold enough here for apples, but there are varieties that produce well here," says Andrew Sprague, assistant manager of Armstrong Garden Center in Fullerton, which carries several types of apple trees.

"Supernatural" star Jensen Ackles has sold his house in Brentwood for $3 million. The Mediterranean home, built in 1947 and recently renovated, sits on a walled site of about a third of an acre. The 3,554 square feet of living space features high ceilings, a loft library, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. The 900-square-foot guesthouse has a gated entrance. Outdoor amenities include a swimming pool with spa, a kitchen, a lawn and fruit trees. Ackles, 35, has been on “Supernatural” since it started in 2005.

Sometimes, the peach on a backyard tree is just a peach, a sweet, home-grown bonus. In certain circles of Altadena, though, that peach is a gateway fruit. One tree becomes three, which becomes an orchard. The quest for organic fertilizer leads to a flock of chickens, which beget a garden. Before you know it, there's a herd of goats out front, heritage turkeys in back, a beehive, a rabbit hutch and a guard llama. This isn't just growing your own, a few clay pots on a condo balcony, say, or a tomato patch next to the rose bed. It's full-on urban homesteading, people raising fruit, produce and livestock in the city, and nowhere in Southern California has it taken off like in Altadena.

Let me tell you how much I enjoyed your magazine article on exotic fruits (Citrus: The Right Tree Can Deliver a Big Crop in a Small Space, June 23). I am going to purchase several trees this afternoon. I appreciate the descriptions and the concise, easy-to-follow planting instructions in your articles. I would like to see more articles on fruit trees. Joanne Pierce Rancho Mirage

Flowering peach, nectarine and apricot trees are grown for their springtime blossoms, not for fruit. 'Alma Stultz,' for example, is a flowering nectarine, sterile but with large, pink, showy flowers. Prune flowering fruit trees after they bloom, not now. However, do cut back fruit-bearing trees this month or next. Make clean cuts that are flush with the trunk; stubs may rot and provide access for insects and diseases. Prune roses before new growth starts.

Del Aire residents got to enjoy the fruits of their labor Saturday with the unveiling of the state's first public orchard. Residents of this quiet, unincorporated slice of Los Angeles County had helped plant 27 fruit trees and eight grapevines in Del Aire Park and 60 additional fruit trees in the surrounding neighborhood. It was part of a larger renovation that included face lifts for a community center, basketball court and baseball field, all nestled in a green space just southwest of the juncture of the 105 and 405 freeways.

Fruit trees are flowering, or will soon, and if you are able to fertilize only once a year, now is the time to do it. Any granular fertilizer will do. First, determine how many square feet are under the tree's foliage canopy, and use the amount recommended on the package label. Scatter the fertilizer under the tree, making sure that you distribute it evenly, and then work it into the soil by roughing up the ground with a steel rake.

a peach, a plum and a nectarine (all big and mature)--were beautiful and full of fruit last year, but this year major branches have died back, and the bark on the upper surface of these branches is brittle and falling off. There is also some jelly-like material oozing out of the bark in spots on live branches. What happened, and can I save my trees?

Whenever I head to Good Girl Dinette for a hot bowl of pho, I like to sit directly across from a large oil painting of a beautifully depicted delicata squash that hangs alone on one of the restaurant's walls. A Highland Park local, Timothy Sellers, painted this rendition of the yellow-and-green-striped squash. His vegetable portraits inspired by his garden, fruit trees planted over a dozen years ago at his Highland Park home and the local farmers market, can also be found on view at Folliero's Pizza and exhibited occasionally at Future Studio . When Sellers is not painting portraits of tomatoes or mushrooms, he's making music with his band, fittingly named Artichoke . One of the band's songs.

Faye Resnick of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" has purchased a home in the Hollywood Hills for $1.605 million. The traditional-style house is surrounded by mature landscaping and sits on slightly more than half an acre with fruit trees, patios and a swimming pool. Features include an open floor plan, with hardwood floors, a living room fireplace and a wall of French doors in the dining room that open to a balcony with treetop views. There are three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and 2,567 square feet of living space.

The Japanese apricot -- a plant native to China, actually -- is one of the longest lived of the flowering fruit trees. It's a symbol of resilience in the face of adversity thanks to its early flowers, delicate promises of spring that can begin blossoming before New Year's Day. The tree continues to send out white, rose or red flowers on nearly leafless branches, luring bees all through the winter. And then there is the fruit. Golf-ball sized orbs begin to appear in spring.

Del Aire residents got to enjoy the fruits of their labor Saturday with the unveiling of the state's first public orchard. Residents of this quiet, unincorporated slice of Los Angeles County had helped plant 27 fruit trees and eight grapevines in Del Aire Park and 60 additional fruit trees in the surrounding neighborhood. It was part of a larger renovation that included face lifts for a community center, basketball court and baseball field, all nestled in a green space just southwest of the juncture of the 105 and 405 freeways.

Actress Sharon Stone has sold a compound in the Beverly Crest area for $6.575 million. Surrounded by walls and gated, the Mediterranean-style estate sits on five acres with pathways, bridges, waterfalls, fruit trees, a meditation garden, a swimming pool and a tennis court with viewing pavilion. The main house, built in 1991, includes a paneled library, a wet bar in the living room and a master suite with dual bathrooms, dual dressing rooms and a terrace. The guest house contains a media room, a gym and two bedrooms, for a total of seven bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms and four fireplaces.

Actors Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott have flown the coop in Malibu, selling their 1.73-acre fowl-friendly property for $2.3 million. The 2,300-square-foot renovated house features century-old oak floors, three bedrooms and 21/2 bathrooms. Custom-built sliding doors lead to multiple decks, an outdoor fireplace and sitting areas. There is a chicken coop, a horse corral, an organic garden and fruit trees on the gated lot. Spelling, 39, played Donna Martin in "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990-2000)

The time to start training any fruit tree is just as soon as you put it in the ground. Proper training is needed for strong limbs that will not break when they are eventually weighted down with fruit. Proper training also shapes the young tree to a form that keeps all the branches bathed in sunlight, even as the tree ages. Train a fruit tree either to a "central-leader" shape or a "vase" shape.

An elephant weevil, a tiny insect that attacks wine crops and fruit trees, was intercepted last month at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex in a container of oranges from Australia, officials said. It was the first time the pest had been found in the United States. It attacks roots, stems and fruits of cultivated vines, and also feeds on citrus, blueberry bushes and fruit trees. "Had this pest gone undetected, it could have had a serious impact on the California wine industry," Todd C. Owen, Customs and Border Protection director of Los Angeles field operations, said in a statement last week.

SAN FRANCISCO - All Tara Hui wanted to do was plant some pears and plums and cherries for the residents of her sunny, working-class neighborhood, a place with no grocery stores and limited access to fresh produce. But officials in this arboreally challenged city, which rose from beneath a blanket of sand dunes, don't allow fruit trees along San Francisco's sidewalks, fearing the mess, the rodents and the lawsuits that might follow. So when a nonprofit planted a purple-leaf plum in front of Hui's Visitacion Valley bungalow 31/2 years ago - all flowers and no fruit, so it was on San Francisco's list of sanctioned species - the soft-spoken 41-year-old got out her grafting knife.