Fruit – Page 4 – Lee Reich

ORANGES IN NY’S HUDSON VALLEY, OUTDOORS

January 24, 2024/9 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Frightening, Beautiful, Edible

Right now, my hardy orange tree might look at its finest, standing at the head of my driveway against a pure white, snowy backdrop. An orange tree!? Outdoors with a snowy backdrop?! Okay, in all honesty, it’s a bush, not a tree. But it is an orange plant, and it does survive into Zone 5 outdoors. (Temperatures plummeted to 2° F a week ago, and coldest temperatures typically arrive around the end of this month.)

Botanically, the plant was Poncirus trifoliata. I write “was” because a few years ago, this citrus relative was welcomed closer into the citrus fold, with a new official name, Citrus trifoliata. Not all botanists recognize this closer kinship, and insist on keeping the plant in the Poncirus genus.

The kinship of hardy orange with other citrus is obvious from its glossy, forest green leaves, the sweet (but very slight) aroma of its flowers, and its fruits, which are pale orange. The fruits are edible but I wouldn’t bite into one; the flavor is orangish, but also sour and bitter. Perhaps I’d squeeze the pulp to add a hint of citrus flavor to some other cooked fruit or a baked good. Perhaps not.

What I like best about this plant are its stems, which are most evident now, when bared in winter. Read more

YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS (title of 100-yr-old song)

January 10, 2024/4 Comments/in Fruit, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

I Receive a Giant Teardrop

Since I don’t live in the tropics, I bring a bit of it into my house. Hence, the banana tree that, years ago, tropicalized my living room for a number of winters. The plant made a nice houseplant for awhile, its large leaves jutting into the air like velvety, soft, green wings. Pests never bothered it. It even signaled to me when it was thirsty by drooping its leaf blades down along its midribs.

Banana plant in summer

But mind you, I was not growing this plant only for show. I also wanted to harvest bananas. In the warm tropics, bananas fruit when they are only ten to fifteen months old; in a warm greenhouse, plants fruit in two or three years; in my sixty to seventy degree, sometimes colder, house . . . well, fruit was a goal, but I was in no particular hurry. Read more

APICAL DOMINANCE — WHAT FUN!

December 13, 2023/4 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Suppression & Stimulation

“Apical dominance” sounds sadomasochistic, but no reason to shudder: it’s practiced by plants and, even when carried to an extreme, results in something as agreeable as a head of cabbage. True, we gardeners sometimes have a hand in apical dominance, but it’s still just good, clean fun.

Look upon it as hormones gone awry or as hormones doing what they’re supposed to do; either way, apical dominance is the result of a hormone, called auxin (AWK-sin), that is produced in the tips of growing shoots or at the high point of stems. Traveling down inside the stem, auxin sets off a chain of reactions that puts the brakes, to some degree, on growth of side shoots, giving the uppermost growing point (the apical point) of any stem the upper hand in growth.

Side shoots mostly arise from buds along a stem, and whether or not a bud grows out into a shoot depends on how close the bud is to the source of auxin; the closer to the source, the greater the inhibition, how far and to what degree depend on the genetics of the plant. ‘Mammoth Russian’ is a variety of sunflower that grows just as a single stem capped by a large flowering disk; with no side branches at all, this variety demonstrates an extreme example of apical dominance. At the other extreme would be one of the shrubby species of willows that keeps sprouting side branches freely all along their growing shoots.

Even within a single species of plants, individuals vary in their tendency to express apical dominance. A fuchsia variety Read more

IT’S FIG SEASON!

September 28, 2023/20 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Not a Hot, Dry Desert, but No Matter

Today’s cool temperatures, along with this overcast sky that’s periodically sneezing raindrops, doesn’t conjure up weather we usually associate with fig harvest. Still, I just returned from the greenhouse with near overflowing handfuls of dead ripe figs.

This harvest does highlight one of the many characteristics of figs that makes it possible to grow them in cold climates. The particular characteristic, in this case, is the plant’s rather unique way of bearing fruit. Read more

RIPE FOR THE PICKING, BUT WHEN?

August 31, 2023/10 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Subtle Messaging

I grow a kind of strawberry — the white alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca) — whose flavor, when it is fully ripe, is an ambrosial melding of strawberry and pineapple. But if it’s even slightly underripe, it tastes like cotton soaked in lemon juice. How do I know when to pick a white strawberry? One way is with my nose, by the delectable aroma of a fully ripe fruit. The seeds also darken when the fruit is ripe.

Other types of fruits have their own ways of signaling when they are ripe, and to taste at their best, they must also be harvested at just the right moment. Many people mistakenly believe that any fruit can be picked underripe, then ripened on a kitchen counter. Softening does occur, and perhaps some changes in color and sweetness, but, with few exceptions, fruit picked underripe is no match for fruit fully ripened on the plant. That softening and sweetening is more akin to incipient rot than ripening. Read more

TWO BLACK BRAMBLES

August 22, 2023/4 Comments/in Fruit, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Good Stuff

What an unexpected treat this year. Black brambles galore. I choose my words carefully.

Over twenty years ago I grew blackberries, the variety Chester because it was the most cold-hardy variety of the thornless varieties, available at the time. I finally gave up on Chester because winter cold would snuff out many of its canes down to ground level. If I remember correctly, surviving canes bore fruit that was too late in the season to ripen fully or in sufficient quantity. Read more

SOME LIKE IT HOT

June 28, 2023/4 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Exotic Grapes

You’d think that I’d be over and done with the greenhouse this time of year. Spring vegetables and flowers have been germinated, pricked out, grown on, and all established in their homes in the garden.

But no, the greenhouse is still chock full of goodies, plants that tolerate heat. The first plant to jump out at you (visually) as you pass through the greenhouse door is a grape vine. Not just any old grape vine, but a vinifera grape vine (Vitis vinifera). “Vinifera” is the species of European wine and table grapes. They’re generally neither cold-hardy here, nor can they fend off attacks of our native insects and diseases, so have been hybridized with hardier and tougher American grape species, such as the fox grape (V. labrusca).

Point is, the grapevine in my greenhouse could not survive outdoors here. The variety I’m growing is Perle de Csaba, a table variety, which first fruited here a couple years ago; it’s seedless and sweet, with a strong aroma.

I grew it in a large pot, then didn’t move the pot, so it’s roots have sneaked out the pot’s drainage holes and into the moist, compost-enriched soil below. That’s fine. It’s in a good place, it’s stem now trained to climb up a chain to one of the greenhouse rafters. Short, fruiting shoots grow off up and down on either side of that permanent stem, a perfect bunch of grapes dangling from each of those shoots. Read more

EASY CHERRIES

June 21, 2023/32 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Sweet, Juicy, & Tolerant

Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) are now at their peak of perfection, sweet and sprightly flavored, brilliant red in color, still firm, and, as usual, abundant. Nanking cherries are very juicy and not stingy to release the juice. Straight up, it’s the most refreshing juice imaginable.

You’ve never heard of Nanking cherries? Understandable since they are an uncommon fruit. (And warranted a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, now out of print but in the works for updating and expanding.) As the name tells you, they are native to China, more generally to the cold, semi-arid regions of Asia. This provenance tells you something about the toughness of the plant, where it weathers winter temperatures below minus 20 degrees F. and summer temperatures as high as 110 degrees F. Read more

A FRUITFUL YEAR?

May 31, 2023/10 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

High Hopes

Apple, pear, and plum branches frothing in white blooms this spring foretold of bountiful crops of these fruits. Wrong. They foretold of the potential for bountiful crops. I’ve mentioned before the abundance of insect and disease pests that lurk here, ready for action, and the potential for late spring frosts. So I don’t get my hopes too, too high with these fruits, except for the pears, European and Asian, which are naturally pest-free here.

Lots of things can be blamed for a barren fruit tree, bringing disappointment no matter what the cause.

Apricot trees in bloom

If the tree is young and not yet of flowering age, fruitlessness can be forgiven. Pears, for all their qualities, are typically slow to come into bearing.

Who Needs a Mate?

There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. Read more

IS IT SUNNY, ENOUGH?

April 26, 2023/13 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

A Plant’s Perspective

No matter what you’re growing, and especially if you’re growing most fruits or vegetables, you need to know what “full sun” and “part shade” mean. People with shady yards often have their own definitions.

The tall trees that surrounded my father’s yard created lots of shade; he once planted a grapevine in what he called a sunny spot, which was where the leafy tree canopy spread open enough to let a ray of sunlight peek through for about an hour at 12:30. The grape vine did grow, but bore a paltry crop, and those grapes it did bear were sour.

Grapes need “full sun. “Full sun” to a plant means direct, unobstructed sunlight for at least five or six hours a day. Besides vegetable gardens and most fruit trees, many flowers also require this exposure.

Sometimes Shade is Tolerable

There are plants that are well adapted to, even need, shade in their youth, but require more sunlight as they age. Maples and beeches, for example, as well as other forest trees which start out as seedlings in the shade of existing forests, but eventually reach light and become the canopy itself.

Pawpaw, which is a forest tree native throughout the eastern part of this country, is also in this category. That applies to seedling trees, that is, trees Read more