Category: Fruits

Fruit Tree Orchard

Posted on by dkelly

The local nursery had bare root fruit trees for $15, so we bought 8 to add to our Fruit Tree Orchard.

We purchased 2 grape, 2 fig, 2 pear and 2 apple (varieties in images below). I also bought mulberry clippings from central Florida and they have rooted and looking great, so added to the orchard. The grapes were potted and need a trellis.

Soaked in rooting liquid and planted. They seem to be doing well.

Our property had 1 fig and 2 overly large pears when we purchased it 27 years ago and those fruit trees have since died and we wanted to replace them.

We do still have several loquats, bananas and a couple oranges (one original to the property). Last year we added 3 blueberries and will be putting in several more soon.

Fruit Tree Orchard

Bananas – how to ripen

Posted on by dkelly

banana trees
Bananas are coming along nicely… I’ve asked an extension agent, master gardener and he said that once the first bananas turn ripe, I can pick all of them from the tree, and put them in a cool place, eat them off the bunch as I wish.
“When the top hand starts to turn yellow cut the whole stalk and hang it somewhere in the shade to use as they ripen. You can cut off the bloom stem end portion when the flowers stop setting bananas. ”  – Tom Maccubbin, Extension Agent Emeritus
Special Note:  Also check out their web site at http://www.betterlawns.com and tune in their 30 Year Better Lawns & Gardens Radio program Saturdays between 7 & 9 AM on Orlando’s FM 93.1 & AM540 Radio Stations.  Or anytime at https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-better-lawns-garden-29843164/

banana trees

Bananas

Posted on by dkelly

After living in my current home in North Florida for about 27 years, I’ve only seen one banana flower on my banana trees.

We cleared a large portion of our property over the past year and found we had several other banana trees, and while excited to find them and clear around them, the real excitement came this summer.  We noticed a banana flower by the trees next to our back porch, which has yet to produce a banana.  Then noticed 4 bunches in the trees ‘down the hill’ on our property. More bananas than we will likely be able to eat, and certainly more than I’ve seen in my life.

Our family loves bananas, and growing up we did have a bunch in my parents’ yard, but we didn’t seem to love them, likely picked too early with my mom’s enthusiasm biasing her decision about when to pick them.

I’ve read up a little and spoke to my neighbor to determine when the best time might be.  It was decided that we would cut off the flower after the bananas stopped being produced, and then when the bananas get to be a bit more rounded, we would ‘pick’ them.

Funny story, as my dad told it, he was visiting my mom’s family in Venezuela, where she lived for a part of her life, and as they were ‘picking’ bananas, one of my uncles cut the tree down, instead of just cutting the bananas off the tree.  My dad was alarmed and asked why they didn’t just cut the bananas.  He was told that once a banana tree produces a flower, it will die after the bananas are ripened.  So rather than just cut the bananas (which in most cases they couldn’t easily reach), they cut the tree.  The trunk of the tree is actually good for the living bananas as well so when possible, I’m told it is good to leave the trunk to decompose by the living trees.

As I was walking around my yard, I noticed one more banana flower right by my porch. So, 6 banana flowers, 5 banana bunches… Yum.

I hope the rest of N. Florida is enjoying bananas as I hope my family will be soon.

Passion Fruit

Posted on by dkelly

passion fruit seedsOver July 4th weekend visiting my parents’ home, I picked up a few passion fruit.  They were on the ground and rotting as they have taken over a small area of their property.

They have since been drying out and so I thought I’d start the month with harvesting the seeds, planting a few to see if they sprout and sharing with family and friends.  I have only harvested seeds from one fruit, I have two more to go, but thinking I’ll do those another day.

Fingers crossed.

They can be invasive if not careful.

A master gardener video I watched on Sunday had a great idea for how I would grow these quick growing vines.
Video: https://twitter.com/uf_leon/status/1289260025207111681  <– highly recommended for North Florida Gardeners!

Mangos

Posted on by dkelly

Grafting MangoesVisiting my parents property in Central Florida, they have some enormous mango trees.  My mother grew up in South America, and her love of mangoes was passed down to her children.  Unfortunately, we don’t know which mango is which, but we know that they are large and without strings, the two things that matter when picking a mango tree.

My dad also loved mangoes, taught me as a fairly young child about air layering and grafting mango trees.  He also showed me how to graft orange trees and we had a ball in the yard putting different varieties on one tree.  I’d spend hours in the yard just starting oranges from scratch and putting other oranges on them… but I digress.

Grafting and air-layering are different, but produce similar results.

  • Grafting is taking a bud from a delicious mango tree, and grafting it onto a mango seedling, to ensure the mango it produces is a good one.
  • Air-layering is when you gently trim the bark of a cutting size limb of a tree, wrap it with wet sphagnum moss and plastic wrap, and tie the ends of it tightly to keep the moisture in the wrap so that roots will grow on the limb before cutting off the limb and planting it.

Air-layer

The reason you would want to graft a tree, is so that the fruit you know and love would definitely be produced from the tree you spent time caring and feeding.  For many varieties of plants and trees, you don’t know what kind of fruit you will get from a seedling, and this ensures you get what you want. So I wanted the large, string-less mangoes, and I had mango seedlings to graft them onto when I was visiting.

The reason you would air-layer a plant is that you can actually cut off a part of the tree, and there would be roots to give that cutting a good start when potted. So I also air-layered a few limbs of the mango tree, as my dad had taught me to do.

On a previous visit, I noticed a large tree, with smaller mangoes on it, that had several young trees growing under it, likely due to the mangoes falling and no one there to hear them.  It is nice to have so many plants on a single property to test on with old grafting and air-layering skills, and since my siblings aren’t overly concerned with mango seedlings, they don’t have an issue with me grafting.

Definitely need to go visit again so I can see if any of these ‘took’.

 

Fellow Garden Enthusiasts!

Posted on by dkelly

I love gardening and have since I was very young. My parents had 4 acres in central Florida and at 10 years old I had my own hot house… yes, a hot house in central Florida. It wasn’t covered in clear plastic much of the year, but we did have a few cold nights.

My parents instilled a love of gardening in me and I hope to pass that along to my children. To have food and herbs in your yard, to pick them fresh and cook them for dinner, a few left over to share with neighbors and family, even having some fresh mint for that mojito, can be very gratifying.

I plan to post about my garden, partly to share what I’ve learned, but mostly so that next year, I can plan a little better and learn from what went wrong and what went right.

Thanks for stopping by!