Bearing Fruit

Years ago, many years ago, more than 6,000 years ago, when this writer was yet to be born, there existed perhaps two to four types of citrus trees, in Southeast Asia. From these few types, all the citrus we have today was formed mainly by natural hybridization.

We now have all the familiar types such as oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, lemons and limes. We also have the less known types such as pummelo (an 8 pound fruit that is very sweet and looks like an oversized grapefruit), kumquats (or golden orange), limequats (a cross between a lime and kumquat), sunquat (sourced from a lemon and kumquat), calamondin (a small lime-like juicy fruit), citrons such as Buddah’s Hand and Etrog, tangelo (a cross between a tangerine, grapefruit and orange), minneolas (a cross between a tangerine and grapefruit). You get the pictures; there are more types of citrus than you can shake a stick at, which makes for an adventure in growing that can result in rewarding palates with taste delights. And each type such as kumquat has many varieties with varying flavors from sweet to tart. For instance, there are Meiwa, Meiwa Seedless, Nagami, Nagle’s, Changshou and Marumi, and who knows, maybe more.

Now, what good is this information? We can research each of these types of fruit for more data and amaze our friends with mainly useless facts, unless we choose to do something with our findings. We could learn the qualities of each type and variety, such as flavor, cold hardiness, production level, seediness, size, ripening times, pest and disease issues and uses. We could determine which varieties have been grown and tested in metro Houston, in order to make wise purchasing decisions.

Oh, that has already been done to a great extent, and the information can be found on the Urban Harvest website. Whew, I though I would have to spend days and weeks before I could make a good decision on what to plant next in my yard. There are only 22 citrus trees in my landscape and I want to plant more. I think I’ll check the Urban Harvest website to see if there is something new and enticing being offered at the January 14 fruit tree sale at the University of Houston Robertson Stadium. Maybe, just maybe.

- posted by Ray Sher

The twelfth annual Urban Harvest Fruit Tree Sale is coming up on January 14, when the weather might be quite chilly…not the most conducive weather for gardening, you might think. Why are the big fruit tree sales in January?

Long ago, in the dark ages of fruit tree experimentation in metro Houston, before we learned how easy it is to grow citrus and how tempting it is to grow mildly tropical fruit trees, people planted mainly cold hardy trees like peaches, nectarines, plums, apples, pears, persimmons, pomegranates, figs and grapes. All of these trees go dormant in the winter and are therefore ready to be planted while dormant to avoid the trees being stressed.

And thus, the master gardeners and Urban Harvest started fruit tree sales in the winter, mainly in January to insure the best possible situation for the trees.

Twenty years ago, I purchased my first fruit trees in January, about 70 of them. The sale was in the rain in almost freezing weather, and for my skinny body not a pleasant day. Of course upon arriving home from the sale, I still had to plant these bareroot trees (not in pots) before the roots dried out, which meant as soon as possible.

Fortunately we had dug a pond a few weeks earlier in good weather and used the soil to build mounds for the fruit trees. So, in the rain and cold, we planted all the trees. I think I had never been so covered in mud in my life, except for maybe as a kid when I made mud pies when it rained. Needless to say, I slept well that night.

I don’t think I ever missed a January fruit tree sale. There was always room for one more tree.

Once we started growing citrus and some tropical trees, the fruit tree sales were kept in the winter, for no one wanted to hold two big sales a year. The Urban Harvest January fruit tree sale is a near 12-month per year planning effort, culminating in about 200 volunteers on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It would be hard to duplicate that effort twice a year, once in the winter for bareroot dormant trees and once in the spring for citrus and tropical trees.

So, make your plans for the winter sale, for it is there that the most types and varieties of fruit tree will be available.

- posted by Ray Sher

Temperatures in the Houston area are dropping this week. Here’s how to protect your fruit trees from possible frost and freezes.

Young dragon fruit plant, protected from the cold winds by a purple blanket

Nothing is sadder than losing a fruit tree to a freeze, especially when it could have been prevented.

I can think all summer and fall about getting ready to protect the tender fruit trees, but when Mother Nature sends her winter blast my way, I want to be inside roasting chestnuts in the fireplace, or at least reading a good book.

Here is the scoop about protecting fruit tree in the winter. The really good news is that most fruit trees don’t need winter protection. They gradually begin to go dormant in the fall and by the time there is a hard freeze, they are ready and suffer not at all. This includes pears, apples, plums, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, figs, persimmons, grapes, muscadines, jujubes, pecans, blackberries, cherries, blueberries, mulberries and olives.

That leaves us with oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, pummelo, lemons, limes, kumquats, other citrus, guavas, mangoes, star fruit, lychee, longan, avocados in the first winter, dragon fruit, jaboticaba, Cherry of the Rio Grande, sugar apple, pitaya, banana, papaya and other tropical and semi-tropical fruit.

Most of these are protected in the same way.

• To protect from freezes, place a 5-gallon bucket of water next to the trunk. When there is going to be a frost or freeze, wrap the tree in a blanket or two with the bucket inside of the blanket. This will keep the temperature around 32 degrees rather than lower falling lower.
• This works for small trees. When the trees become bigger and more mature, they have deeper root systems and trunks and can withstand freezes better with just the bucket of water and blanket wrapped around the lower part of the trunk.
• Papaya will lose all vegetation that is not wrapped in blankets. In the spring, just unwrap and cut back below the mush. Most of the time, the tree will sprout new branches and produce more fruit.
• Banana canes that have produced hands of bananas will not produce again. No need to protect this plant. The cane that already produced can be cut down after they produce. New canes will grow. In our milder winters, bananas often don’t get damaged.

All of this may seem like a lot of work, but it really isn’t. It is just work done in the cold or just before the cold arrives. Plan ahead. Get a bunch of 5 gallon buckets. Try bakeries, which are usually happy to give them to you, if you clean them. Shop in resale shops for old blankets and quilts. Do this in the summer when there is usually a supply. Ask friends and family if they have old blankets they no longer use.

Just know that some of the best tasting fruit requires a little work for large rewards. 700 tangerines on one tree each year and 150 persimmons as examples.

– posted by Ray Sher

I have heard three main questions about the drought and fruit trees.

 Question 1: How much and how often should I water?

At the Westbury Community Garden, there is a team that has a watering schedule for the fruit tree orchard. They watered twice a week during the drought, and each time let a lot of water soak in. A slow running hose left for 10 minutes allows water to soak deep down where the roots are. The trees in the orchard show no signs of damage from the drought, and in fact look really good, and the fruit from the year old figs was exceptional.

At my house, we watered the mature trees less often, about once every two weeks. The young trees were watered twice weekly. They all survived and put on several spurts of new growth during the spring, summer and fall.

 Question 2: Will the drought adversely affect the amount of fruit produced?

With sufficient water, fruit production will not suffer. We have an abundance of good looking and tasting fruit on the trees in my yard that flowered and put on fruit in the spring. I noticed that the fruit on our blood orange is a little smaller than usual and that is likely because we didn’t water the entire area from the trunk to the drip line well enough. Just didn’t have enough time or energy to water out to the drip line on all the mature trees in the yard.

 Question 3: Does it make sense to purchase fruit trees when the drought may continue next spring and summer?

Planting trees of any kind is exceptionally important, since the Houston area is losing an estimated 66 million trees from the drought. These are trees that could not be watered. Think of the size of Memorial Park and the number of trees. It is impossible to water and save those trees. BUT in our yards, where we can spend a few minutes watering a few young trees, I think it is our moral obligation to plant trees.

And what better tree to plant than a fruit tree. It provides everything that other trees provide, including carbon sequestering, with the added plus of fruit production.

The drought will end, and the sooner fruit trees are planted, the sooner there will be fruit for the family to eat. You may be surprised with the kinds of fruit trees that can be successfully grown in our area.

Citrus trees are bearing well this year, despite the drought

This gorgeous, tasty Ujukitsu orange is sometimes called the Lemonade fruit.

How many different varieties of citrus have you tasted? Most of the time, we buy lemons, oranges, grapefruit and tangerines at the store and don’t even know the variety. We just buy what is available and eat it, without a thought that there may be 12 or 14 varieties of oranges that can be harvested locally.

Let’s take a stroll down citrus lane – a look at some of the varieties that are grown locally in back yards and small orchards.

Oranges – Moro, Tarocco, Sanguinelli, Vainiglia blood oranges, Cara Cara and Cara Cara variegated, Marrs and N33 navel oranges, Valencia, Republic of Texas, Pineapple, Murcott, Shamouti

Tangerines – Pong Koa, Ponkan, Honey Mandarin, Sunburst, Page, Seedless Kishu, Nova, Bell, Clementine, Fairchild

Satsumas – Miho, Seto, BC1, BC2, Owari, Dobashi Beni, Okitsu, Brown Select, Little Sweetie

Tangelos – Wekiwa, Orlando, Minneola, Umatilla

Lemons – Meyer, Ponderosa, Iranian, Lisbon, Eureka, Ujukitsu lemonade fruit

Limes – Mexican Thornless, Kaffir, Palestinian, Persian

Grapefruit – Bloomsweet, Golden, Rio Red, Oro Blanco, Duncan, Cocktail, Ruby Red, Rio Star, Star Ruby

Pummelo – Chandler, Hirado, Sarawak

Kumquats – Meiwa, Meiwa Seedless, Nagami, Changshou

Metro-Houston has become the northern most point for growing a wide range of excellent tasting citrus. Personally, I have 20 varieties of citrus in my regular sized yard, and more than one tree of some of them for a total of 23 trees. Of course, I can’t eat all the fruit, but friends, neighbors, family help out, and some is sold at the Eastside Farmers market on Saturday mornings.

Would you like to taste some of these fruits and even take seeds home to plant? Would you ever think that you could taste 50 or more varieties of citrus in a one hour time period? Well, you can! And you don’t even have to pay, it’s free. And there are 3 tastings to choose from, one at each of three of the Urban Harvest farmers markets.

-  posted by Ray Sher