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FRUIT BOOK GIVEAWAY, AND FRUIT FUTURES

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 The Eternal (Fruit) Optimist

   We fruit growers get especially excited this time of year. On the one hand, there’s the anticipation of the upcoming season. And on the other hand, we don’t want to rush things along at all.
    Ideally, late winter segues into the middle of spring with gradually warming days and nights. Unfortunately, here, as in most of continental U.S., temperatures fluctuate wildly this time of year. Warm weather accelerates development of flower buds and flowers. While early blossoms are a welcome sight after winter’s achromatic landscapes, late frosts can snuff them out. Except for with everbearing strawberries, figs, and a couple of other fruits that bloom more than once each season, we fruit lovers get only one shot at a successful crop each season.Some berries of summer
    How did all these fruits ever survive in the wild? They did so by not growing here — in the wild. Apples, peaches, cherries — most of our familiar fruits — were never wild here, but come from climates with more equable temperatures, mostly eastern Europe and western Asia. We favor them because they are part of our mostly European heritage.
    The fruits that I never worry about here are the few that are native: pawpaw, persimmon, grape, mulberry, lingonberry, and blueberry, to name a few. (Also raspberry, gooseberry, and currants, cultivated varieties of which are hybrids of native and European species.) After decades of fruit growing, I’ve hardly missed a harvest, no matter what the weather, from any of these native fruits. (I cover native, non-native, common, and uncommon fruits in my books Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden and Grow Fruit Naturally.)
 Some fruits of fall   Still, I can’t deny the delicious flavor of apples, peaches, and other non-native fruits, especially those I grow myself. So I do grow them, do what I can for them, and hope for the best. I may even put a thin coat of white kaolin spray on these trees to reflect the sun’s warmth and further delay awakening of the buds.
    Last year was a very poor year for many tree fruits, and I’m not sure why. (Recovery from the previous years cicada attacks could be part of the reason.) Nonetheless, every year about this time I’m bursting with optimism for a bountiful fruit harvest.

Veggies, As Usual, Chugging Along Nicely

    I consider vegetables relatively easy to grow because most are annuals and because, with most of them, I can sow and harvest repeatedly throughout the growing season. Let cold or some pest snuff them out, and I can just replant.
    The first of my lettuces, sown early last month in little seed trays, are up and growing strongly, each seedling transplanted into its own APS cell (available from www.gardeners.com). Ninety-six seedlings take up little more than a couple of square feet and, with capillary watering from a reservoir beneath the APS trays, I need check the water only about every week.Seedlings in APS trays
    My next wave of indoor seed-sowing will take place in the middle of this month. That’s when I’ll sprinkle pepper, eggplant, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and cabbage seeds into the miniature furrows of miniature fields of my seed flats.
    I’ll also sow another batch of lettuce seeds indoors, this batch for eventual transplanting outdoors. The first batch is soon to be transplanted into greenhouse beds.

Fig Prophylaxis

    Buds on fig trees planted in the ground in the greenhouse are showing hints of green and swelling ever so slightly in spite of the cool night temperatures in there. The scale insects that I battled last year  are undoubtedly also coming to life on those plants. In the past, I’ve kept these insects at bay by scrubbing the bark in winter with soapy water or by spraying it with insecticidal soap, or, during the growing season, wrapping the trunk with a sticky Tanglefoot barrier to stop travel of ants that herd the insects.
    I’ve never gotten rid of scale insects, only kept them from gaining the upper hand. And some years it’s been a neck and neck race as to who would win out before the end of the season.
  Spraying oil on dormant fig tree  I’ve already begun this season with prophylactic sprays of oil. Oil has a long history of controlling insects and some diseases, with the advantage of causing little collateral damage to the environment, including beneficial insects. Because it’s main effect is to clog insect breathing ports (spiracles), there’s little danger of insects developing resistance.
    Oil’s major hazard is its potential to injure plants, mitigated by spraying when temperatures aren’t too hot or below freezing, or when rain is likely, all easily avoided in a greenhouse. Various kinds and formulations of oil — kinds include vegetable, mineral, and neem oils — differ in their hazard to plants. I’m using a high-purity mineral oil (Sunspray) from which I expect no damage, especially since the plants are still leafless.
    Scale insect eggs should be hatching about now. Brutal as it may sound, I hope to suffocate the crawlers before they settle down to one spot to cover themselves with their protective armor and literally suck the life from the plants. Weekly sprays should cover successive hatches.

New Video

Check out my new video on “pricking out” seedlings!

Free Book!

Book giveaway! Write a comment here telling us which is the most difficult fruit you grow, and why, and why you grow it, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to get a free copy of my most recent book Grow Fruit Naturally. Comments must be submitted no later than noon, March 23rd.Grow Fruit Naturally, front cover of book

Upcoming Lectures

Check out the “Lectures” page of my website for some lectures I’ll be giving in the next few weeks.

The Unknown Known

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   To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary under W, there are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Donald, you forgot about the unknown knowns. Lets talk about gardening, not war, and the knowns that need to be better known.
Visitors to my garden (actually workshop attendees) were oohing and ahing over some 18-inch-high stalks each capped with a crown of leaves beneath which dangled a circle of red blossoms. Aptly named crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis, deserves to be more widely known. No one seemed put off by the skunky aroma that suffuses the air even feet away from the plant; I like it.
Perhaps crown imperial would be better known if the bulbs didn’t go for more than 10 dollars each. My gardens’ profusion of crown imperial stalks is more an indication of my green thumb than my wealth. They all arose from a single bulb my father gifted me more than 20 years ago. I learned to propagate them by bulb scaling, which involves digging down into the ground to remove scales from the bulb, then mixing the scales with barely moist potting soil. After a couple of months storage at warm temperatures followed by a couple of months storage at cool temperatures, the scales can be potted up to be nursed for a season before planting out.
Every year I make new crown imperial plants. Will I ever have too many?
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F. michailovskyi
Crown imperial also has some unknown known kin. You have to see Persian lily, Fritillaria persica, to appreciate it. A written description — foot-high stalks lined with nodding, small, plum purple to gray green flowers — doesn’t do justice to the beauty of this bulb. I hope to start multiplying this one also. Another unknown known is Fritillaria michailovskyi, this one with nodding, bell-shaped flowers with yellow-tipped, purple petals.
F. persica
F. meleagris
Among crown imperial’s kin is also a known known: Guinea hen flower, F. meleagris, with large, nodding, checkered flowers. Even White Flower Farm sells these bulbs for less than a dollar each. No wonder they are better known.
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Let’s segue over to unknown knowns among fruits. 
Right now, a billowing wave of white blossoms lines my driveway, the blossoms of Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosum), a shrub that can grow 8 feet high and wide. The show matches that of any other flowering tree or shrub.
What do other flowering trees and shrubs — forsythia, lilac, flowering cherries, and the like — offer after their flower shows subsides? Nothing, nada, zip. Nanking cherry, though, goes on to bear oodles of small red cherries with a flavor somewhere between that of sweet and tart cherries.

And what does it take to get a decent crop of sweet or tart cherries? Pruning, perhaps spraying and bird control. What does it take to get a crop of Nanking cherries? Nothing, nada, zip. The plants bear heavily with little or no care, and bear enough to satisfy birds, squirrels, and humans.
Okay, every rose has it’s thorns. Nanking cherries are small, one-half to five-eighths of an inch in diameter. The smallness is more than offset by plant’s beauty, its profusion of fruits, and its low maintenance .
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And one more unknown known: gooseberries (both gooseberries and Nanking cherries warrant a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden).
Many people imagine all gooseberries to be small, green, and tart, suitable mostly for cooking. Not so! There are over a hundred varieties of gooseberry in various colors and sizes, and a whole category of them, what the Brits call “dessert varieties,” are for fresh eating. Good flavor is what should warrant gooseberries known known status among fruits.
Most important in growing gooseberries is to choose a good variety, both for taste and for resistance to disease powdery mildew. Don’t plant Pixwell; the berries are small, green, and tart. Do plant varieties such as Poorman, Chief, Hinonmakis Yellow, Red Jacket, Captivator, and Glendale. They’re all tasty and disease resistant.
If you want even better flavor and you’re willing to deal with powdery mildew, plant varieties such as Colossal, Whitesmith, Achilles, and Webster. Dealing with powdery mildew involves spraying, but it could be something relatively benign, such as horticultural oil, sulfur, baking soda, soap, or horticultural oil plus baking soda (1-1∕2 tablespoons baking soda plus 3 tablespoons oil in 1 gallon water).
Right about now, gooseberries can experience one more pest, the imported currantworm, which strips plants of their leaves, beginning at ground level. The leaves will grow back but the plant is left weakened. A spray just as soon as chewing begins will stop this insect in its tracks and, again, benign products such as insecticidal soap or horticultural oil should be effective. I’m training some of my plants as 3-foot-high trees, which might also thwart the worm because there’ll be no leaves near ground level on which the insects can begin their feast.
If all this seems like too much potential trouble for gooseberries, it’s not. The best dessert varieties have flavors that might be compared to that of grape, plum, or apricot, and have a “cracking” texture, a crisp flesh that explodes with ambrosial juice when you bite into them. A writer of the last century characterized gooseberries as “the fruit par excellence for ambulant consumption.” I agree, and you might also if they become a known known in your garden.

Fruit of the Gods (and So Easy)

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Every taste reaffirms the botanical name, Diospyros, which translates as “food of the gods” (or, more poetically, “Jove’s grain”). And, as usual, this time of year, the crop is good so tastes are aplenty. I’m

Sukis American persimmon & Jiro kaki

referring to persimmons, American persimmons, a fruit you’ve got to grow to enjoy because, when ripe, they’re too soft to travel much further than arm’s length, from tree to mouth. Eating them is like eating dried apricots that have been plumped up in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice.

All this god-like fruit comes at little cost in terms of time or know-how. Once established, the plant does not call out for pruning or even for help against insects or diseases. Just enjoy. The only caveat is to start out with a good tasting variety that ripens within the growing season. Here in USDA hardiness Zone 5 in the Hudson Valley, for flavor, cold-hardiness, and ability to ripen within the growing season, I recommend the varieties Szukis, Mohler, Dooley, and/or Yates.
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In contrast to our native American persimmon, it’s cousin, the Asian persimmon, also known as kaki, is quite familiar in markets. Kakis have been cultivated in Asia for centuries. Marco Polo saw them near what is now Shanghai and, over the centuries, many varieties have been selected, over 2000 of them. Previous to the 20th century, it was the most widely grown fruit in Asia.
Alas, I cannot grow kakis because they generally succumb to winter cold below about zero degrees Fahrenheit (USDA Hardiness Zone 7). But would I want to grow them? As compared with American persimmons, this other “fruit of the gods” is larger — the size of a medium to large tomato, depending on variety — and firmer, which is why you do find them in supermarkets. With some varieties, you can bite into and enjoy them while the flesh is crisp. Try that on American persimmon, and for the next half-hour, you’ll feel like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner is at work inside your mouth. As far as flavor, kakis are more watery than American persimmons, perhaps a tad sweeter, but not as rich.
Most gardeners, given the choice, plant kakis rather than American persimmons. After all kakis taste good and they are larger and easier to handle and store.
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I would not grow kakis instead of American persimmons, but I would grow both, if I could. And now I’m thinking it may be worth a try this far north (a possibility actually suggested back in 2004 by author Lee Reich in his book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden). My friend Vicki (who illustrated the aforementioned 

Jiro persimmon (kaki)

book) planted a tree of the kaki variety Jiro in her front yard a few years ago and this year reaped a bountiful crop of large, beautiful, crisp, tasty persimmons — that’s in Maplewood, New Jersey, USDA Hardiness Zone 6b, only 90 miles and one degree of latitude south of here.

Jiro is not a particularly winter cold-hardy variety of kaki. What’s more, crisp-ripe kakis, such as Jiro, generally require warmer summers than kakis that only develop full flavor when soft. New Jersey summers may be hot, but nothing like the hot, long summers of Mediterranean climates where these fruits grow so well.
My plan, then, is to plant one of the known cold-hardier varieties of kaki, varieties such as Eureka, Saijo, Giombo, and Great Wall. With a prime location, such as a south facing slope or backed by a warm wall, the trees might survive and ripen their fruits.
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Persimmons — both kakis and American persimmons — are interesting fruits, sexually. Individual trees

Szukis persimmon

bear only male flowers or only female flowers. Because a fruit is the fleshy expansion of female flower parts around the seed, only females bear fruit. With most plants, those female parts swell in response to seed development which, in turn, is in response to pollination from a male flower.

But not to worry; there’s usually no need to plant useless (except for their pollen) male persimmon trees when growing persimmons. Many cultivated, female varieties of persimmon bear fruits parthenocarpically (from the Greek, “virgin fruit;” is there a religion here?), that is, without pollination. The previously mentioned varieties of American persimmon are parthenocarpic.

If parthenocarpic fruits were tainted with pollen, they will, of course, contain seeds. With some kaki varieties, bite into the fruit and you experience more than just the presence or lack of seeds. So-called “pollination-variant, non-astringent” kakis are only non-astringent (astringency being that vacuum-cleaner-in-the-mouth sensation) if pollinated. Fortunately, the crisp-ripe Jiro fruits grown by my friend Vicki, is a “pollination-constant” variety of kaki: sweet when crisp-ripe whether or not they were pollinated. The fruits have no seeds and no need to be sired by a nearby male.