Fruit – Lee Reich

O OLIVE TREE, O OLIVE TREE, HOW LOVELY ARE . . .

December 17, 2024/6 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Consider the Olive

I’m not suggesting that olive trees should elbow out spruces, firs, and other conifers that are our traditional Christmas trees. Still, an olive tree symbolizes peace and is a tree you actually would find growing in Jerusalem, so is an appropriate accompaniment to the holiday season.

Old olive tree in Spain

Even if you’ll never see strings of light bulbs corralling cut olive trees together on bare lots of land the way they do cut Christmas trees, you could Read more

INTERMENT, BUT NOT DEATH

December 11, 2024/12 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

(The following is from my book GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES)

The Warm Earth

I buried two fig plants a few days ago. No, not because they died. The reason was night temperatures occasionally dipping into the low ‘teens (13°F, to be exact, on December 4th), which is just about the limit for fig stem survival. If the stems die from cold, there’ll be no fig harvest from them them next summer.

Last summer’s figs

So what’s the connection with cold and burying the plants? The ground is a repository of heat; dig a few feet down Read more

CURING CHESTNUTS, AND MORE

October 24, 2024/1 Comment/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Gathering

“There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” Likewise for chestnuts, in this case twixt the ripening of the nuts (in September and October and the lip. That is, if you want the highest quality nuts.

We can start right when the nuts begin to drop. They’ll do so still enclosed in their spiny burs or the burs will open to release the nuts. Don’t be disappointed with burs pretty much empty, perhaps containing a couple or more small, slivers of nuts; these are the result of inadequate pollination.

Those disappointing burs are among the first to drop. The real show yields burs bursting with two, even three fat, mahogany brown chestnuts. For the best quality nuts, I gather them daily, at the most every other day, before Read more

UPS AND DOWNS AND UPS WITH CHESTNUTS

October 9, 2024/8 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

The Best of Them, No More

Of all species of chestnuts, none is finer than the American chestnut. This majestic tree towered to 100 feet high in America’s virgin forests and yielded a wood that was used in musical instruments, molding, fenceposts, barrel staves, even telephone poles. The nuts of American chestnut are deliciously sweet and flavorful. Or, so I have read and been told, having never tasted one myself. Old photo of giant American chestnut

But the sturdy chestnut had its Achille’s heel — chestnut blight. The disease, accidentally introduced from Asia, was first noted at New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1906. It spread 25 to 50 miles a year and within 50 years had left 7 million acres of Appalachian forests with dead or dying chestnut trees.

The American chestnut is not gone, though. Trees cling tenaciously to life. Read more

GILDED BERRIES

September 25, 2024/5 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Making a Good Impression

When I really want to impress some visitor to my garden, I offer a taste of Fallgold raspberries. Here is a fruit that is truly unique in a number of ways.

First, of course, is the flavor. Many raspberries taste good, especially when picked dead ripe and popped right into your mouth, but Fallgold is perhaps the tenderest and sweetest raspberry around. Here’s a berry that you’ll never find on a supermarket shelf; it’s too fragile to travel much further than arm’s length. Good for fresh eating but not freezing or processing. A university publication, while admitting that there’s currently limited commercial use for this variety, it could become a “gourmet item on the fresh market.”

Raspberry kin

Fallgold berries also have a unique appearance. The pale yellow, blushed orange color of the berries seems to speak out their sweetness and tenderness. Read more

FIG SEASON

September 5, 2024/66 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

(This post is adapted from my book Growing Figs in Cold Climates)

Figs for All

For cold-climate fig growers, the harvest season is upon us. (Fig growers in warmer climates have been harvesting fresh figs for weeks.) But even here in the north, the harvest could continue for weeks to come since the so-called “main crop” fig fruits keep forming and ripening as long as the weather and sunlight keeps stems growing.

Some people might say, “Why go through the trouble of caring for a fig plant when you could buy fresh figs in the market? The fragile skin and the perishability of the fresh fruit doesn’t lend itself to commercial handling, which is why commercial figs, when you do find them in the market, have been harvested while still underripe and firm.” Then the claim could be, “Just let those market fruits sit out for a few days to sweeten up.” Nix on that also. A fig fruit will not further ripen once harvested. It might soften and sweeten a bit, but what’s taking place is more incipient rot — microorganisms degrading cell walls and changing starches to sugars — than ripening.

In fact, caring for a fig tree is very little trouble. Even in cold climates, where special techniques are needed for this subtropical plant. Fig plants are relatively pest-free. And, they can be grown in pots, even small ones, although the larger the pot the larger the harvest. Their main requirement is to bathe in six or more hours of daily summer sunshine. Read more

THINNED TREES AREN’T SKINNY

May 16, 2024/4 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Avoid Extremes

A week or so ago, fruit trees were so full of blossoms that they looked like giant snowballs, foreshadowing a heavy crop of fruit later this season. Too heavy, perhaps, for the branches to support. Too heavy, perhaps, for fruits that are large and luscious. Surely so heavy that next year’s harvest could be paltry.

Some fruit trees are more prone than others to getting into a feast and famine cycle of a heavy crop one year and a light crop the next. My Macoun apple tree, although it bears delectable fruits, is the worst in this regard among the few apple varieties that I grow. Read more

FORM & FUNCTION MEET WITH ESPALIER

May 1, 2024/6 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Espalier Goals

Espalier (es-pal-YAY) is the training of a plant, usually a fruit plant, to an orderly, two-dimensional form. The word is derived from the Old French aspau, meaning a prop, and most espaliers must, in fact, be propped up with stakes or wires. This method of training and pruning plants had its formal beginnings in Europe in the 16th century, when fruit trees were trained on walls to take advantage of the strip of earth and extra warmth near those walls.

Espalier in Normandy, France

Why go to all the trouble of erecting a trellis and then having to pinch and snip a tree frequently to keep it in shape? Because a well-grown espalier represents a happy commingling of art and science, resulting in a plant that pleases eyes and, if a fruit plant, also palates. You apply this science artfully (or your art scientifically) with manipulations such as pulling exuberant stems downward to slow their growth, by cutting notches where stems threaten to remain bare, and by pruning back stems in summer to keep growth neat and fruitful. Read more

HAVE YOUR “CAKE” AND EAT IT, TOO

March 27, 2024/7 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Take a Moment for Forethought

Luscious photos now splash pages of mail-order catalogs, the web, and plant tags at local nurseries. It’s hard to remain rational about planting this time of year, and more so the colder the last winter’s climate.

What I’m suggesting is to give plantings some forethought and, rather than looking for either ornamental or edible trees and shrubs, considering plants that fulfill both functions. That is, trees and shrubs that earn their keep year-‘round with leaves that remain lush and verdant all summer, then light up with fall color, and, of course, bear fruit, and perhaps unfold with eye-catching blossoms in spring.

Persimmons ripening

Lots of trees and shrubs fill this bill, but here I’d like to restrict consideration to fruits that I would pop into my mouth right out in the garden; doctoring up as jam or in a pie is not obligatory. Read more

CLEAN APPLES, EDIBLE APPLES

March 13, 2024/10 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Popular Though They May Be . . .

Apples may be a common fruit, second worldwide and in the U.S., bested only by bananas, but they surely are not the easiest ones to grow. At least not over much of this country east of the Rocky Mountains, and here on my farmden. Throughout this area, insects and diseases are ready to pounce on virtually every unsuspecting apple tree.

Pesticides will control these pests but, if needed, are effective only if used rigorously: trees must be regularly and thoroughly doused with the correct material, used at the correct concentration, and applied at the correct times. No wonder the average gardener is daunted at the thought of growing apples!

Dwarf Liberty apple tree & Sammy

The prospects for backyard apples, organic apples, even in pest-prone regions brightened a few decades ago. Not all apple varieties are equally susceptible to diseases, and apple breeders went to work. Read more