A ‘Spring Tour’ of My Fruit Trees
I just wanted to post a few photos of the new growth, blossoms, and fruit as spring gets into full swing. To the left is one of my fig trees that is about 6 years old and is starting to leaf out nicely. It is a Brown Turkey and as you can see is quite large. I have trimmed it back hard every year, and if I had not done so, it would be far taller than I could manage with a ladder (it’s already hard to reach the fruit with one).
This particular fig tree has been extremely productive and produces two sets of fruit each summer. While the birds get their fair share, there is still plenty of fruit left over. Also, note the aluminum I have wrapped around the trunk to deter climbing critters like raccoons and opposums from stealing the fruit. Also, in the foreground, my some of my blueberry plants can be seen. One thing that I noticed this season is a sharp decline in the number of pollinating bees on the flowers - and I have noticed a decrease of fruit set accordingly.
Seen in this picture are the blossoms starting on one of my Fuji persimmon trees. This is one of the non astringent oriental varieties and is quite delicious! I had severe branch damage from raccoons done in the past few years, as persimmons are a natural source of food for them and they will climb the branches and break them off to get to the fruit. From one of my past posts, you can see that I have partially resolved this problem by removing the lower branches and wrapping the trunk with aluminum.
Pictured here are fruit starting to form on a plum tree that I planted two years ago. Many varieties of plum require many days of sufficiently cold weather to set fruit, and in the deep south where I live, this can be a problem. This particular variety was developed at the University of Florida for the southern climes and does not require this amount of cold exposure for fruit production. I have another plum tree which is much larger but does not set much fruit (it is undoubtedly a northern variety). However, I leave it in my yard because of the beautiful blossoms and also because it helps pollinate this tree.
I have other varieties of fruit in my yard such as tangelo, lowquat, cumquat, blackberries, blueberries, and bananas. However, I will leave it there for now as I plan to delve into more detail in future posts concerning the specifics of growing these.
