Today I wanted to share a technique to water those containers that has been just too convenient with all the snow that we have received this winter. Rather than hauling water to the fig trees, you can simply pack a bit of snow onto the top of the planters wherever you are storing them for the winter.

Using Snow to Supply Moisture to Potted Fruit Trees

The snow will gradually melt and supply the fig tree containers with just the right amount of moisture at opportune times. It’s easier for the soil to slowly absorb the melted snow and you’ll have less water simply running through a frozen pot.

I learned this trick from a bonsai plant grower but it works great with my fig trees and other dormant fruit trees that are over wintered in unheated sheltered locations where they don’t receive any normal precipitation.

Just a Little Water Goes a Long Way with Dormant Plants

Be careful not to go overboard because these plants are dormant and don’t require routine watering, you just want to provide enough moisture to keep the soil from completely drying out. But don’t allow the soil to become the least bit water logged.

A light watering once every five or six weeks works out well for me with these dormant potted fruits and trees. They are low maintenance, have shed all their leaves, and are perfectly comfortable spending the entire winter cooped up in tight quarters with no light, no fertilizer, and very little water.

Other Plants are a Lot More Demanding during the Winter Months

Tropicals, herbs, and other patio plants that are still active and retain their leaves after being moved into a heated living area are a completely different matter and require much more attention and moisture to get them through the winter months.

But for those dormant plants a little snow may be all that you need to create the perfect self watering set up.

I took advantage of just that kind of opportunity recently when I met Tom Burford at the Backyard Fruit Growers winter meeting and intently listened as he spoke on “All Things Fruit.”

And the Expert’s Secret All-Time Favorite Apple Variety is…

Tom is an orchardist, writer, lecturer, and apple historian who also conducts hands-on workshops over at Vintage Virginia Apples. He has personally grown over 500 different varieties of apples and is on a mission to rediscover, preserve, and share the best of apples. Tom didn’t hesitate to reveal that without a doubt his all-time favorite apple is… “the last one that I ate!”

Here are my comments and notes from Tom’s lecture a couple weeks ago:

• Commercial orchards have historically dictated what fruit would be made available but recently consumers have become a driving force in demanding better fruit. From a high of 17,000 varieties in the early 1900’s, we are now down to a total of 2000 – 3000 different apples.

• The only way to preserve the diversity and tradition of many heirloom apple varieties will be for home gardeners to adopt them and begin to raise them right in their own backyards.

• Cider is the big story in the apple world with increasing interest and awareness of high quality, crafted heirloom ciders that can’t even be compared to the cheap commercial products made from imported concentrate that passes for apple cider at the grocery store.

• Apple cider was once a booming industry in the U.S. and is now regaining attention as a business opportunity. It has even raised concerns as a threat within the carbonated soft drink industry in part because of the increasing health consciousness.

• Heirloom apples shine the brightest when used in specified roles; not all of them best serve as desert apples. An heirloom that’s unsuited to fresh eating could turn out be the finest baking, sauce, cider, butter, or drying apple you ever tasted!

• Apple grafting workshops are becoming more popular among backyard gardeners looking to raise their own apple trees… Tom rationalizes that planting as few as two trees qualifies as an orchard. And if the two trees die you still qualify as an orchardist because your intentions were in the right place.

• Apples were prized by early settlers to the U.S. and much effort went into the introduction of the fruits and spreading apple seedlings westward. Even before the days of refrigeration apples stored well and could be transported rather easily.

• Old-school orchardists would dig young trees out of their nurseries and then replant them, taking extreme care to ensure that the seedlings limbs were facing in the same direction as they were when growing in the nursery bed.

• It can be a challenge to locate and confirm specific apple varieties. There is also a need to look out for elaboration and misinformation when it comes to heirlooms. Always keep track of the original sources and lineage of all your fruit trees.

• Variety selection is the critical factor for organic and backyard apple growers. Be diligent about planting trees that are suitable for your climate and growing conditions rather than choosing varieties that may have more sex appeal but will never survive or thrive in your growing region!

Highly Recommended Fruit Varieties, Books, and Workshops

Tom did pass along a couple of variety recommendations for the home gardener to consider. First there was the Pomme Gris apple touted as a care-free variety that you could plant today and simply return in five years to harvest tasty fruit. For a fine pear the nod went to the Burford pear as a good, all-purpose choice.

You can find several great books authored by Tom Burford including “The Best Apples to Buy and Grow” which is published by the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

And don’t hesitate if you have an opportunity schedule one of his workshops or lectures, despite Tom’s joke that; “I’m already booking through 2013, but for all I know I may be dead by then.” I certainly hope to share in more of Tom’s humor and incredible wealth of apple and fruit knowledge well beyond those scheduled appointments!

There are many unusual fruits found growing in St. Croix, and I did my best to throw a slight curve by showing a different view on any common tropical fruits that were included in the photo line up.

There’s More that One Way to Serve a Breadfruit

Starting with the breadfruits, these are strange but versatile fruits that I had never seen or tasted prior to my visit to the island. The flesh inside is white to cream colored, dry, and not quite as sweet as a typical tropical fruit.

The trees are very productive, bearing grapefruit sized round fruits. Although there are different varieties of breadfruit that produce larger fruits and some that are oblong rather than round.

Breadfruit trees offer many beneficial uses from lumber, to medicines and food. I wasn’t excited about the taste initially when I tried one breadfruit that was baked and another that was made into a fruity desert. I had a change of heart and enjoyed this tropical fruit when it was grilled or fried like plantains.

Uncommon and Edible Banana Flowers from St. Croix

Next on the list is a very familiar fruit, the banana which you may not have recognized because the odd part pictured was the banana flower or blossom rather than the fruits that we are accustomed to finding in bunches at the local grocer.

Bananas grow well in St. Croix and always seemed to be in season and ripening during my visits to the Caribbean. I have a friend that grows banana plants here in Pennsylvania during the summer months, but getting them to bear fruit in our climate is a totally different matter!

It turns out that the showy banana flower pictured is actually edible itself and commonly used in Asian and Indian dishes ranging from soups and salads to stir fries. You may also stumble upon recipe ingredients such as banana blossoms or banana heart, which are just other names for the banana plant’s flower.

Tropically Refreshing and Juicy Passion Fruits

The passionfruit flower is probably more recognizable than the fruits themselves and that is unfortunate because they are tasty and can be used in a variety of ways. I’ve tasted passion fruit in tropical fruit flavored drinks but the fresh fruit was an entirely new experience.

The fruits are about the size of a large lemon and can be cut in half to reveal a juicy mix of seeds, gel like pulp, and juice. The seeds are soft enough that you can eat them along with the flesh and enjoy the slightly sweet, tart, tropical flavor.

This plant isn’t a tree but a vine that can be staked along rows in the garden, making for an attractive windbreak or divider. Passionfruit vines are very productive and the fruits turn yellow as they ripen and fall to the ground where they are easily harvested.

From Papaya Flowers to Perpetually Productive Fruits

Papaya trees are ornamental and incredibly productive with mature fruits ripening towards the bottom while new flowers continued to set and develop new fruits at the top of the tree.

Papayas are so exotic and attractive that I would love to grow one out on the patio. We did come across an annual variety that was being propagated at the University of the Virgin Islands so maybe that’s not such a far fetched idea after all.

There were fruits almost as large as coconuts ringing the tree trunks in a circular arrangement. The dark green, slightly ridged papayas quickly turn orange as they ripen to signal that they are ready for harvesting. The fruits are eaten fresh and used in a variety of cooked dishes.

Whoever Said that You Can’t Eat a Loofah?

This final fruit could easily be mistaken for some climbing variety of cucumber, but it is actually an edible loofah. The loofah is a plant that I grew to love in St. Croix and I will definitely find out how well it will grow in my garden this coming summer.

I always considered loofah to be nothing more than an oddity grown to create sponges and was surprised to learn that certain loofah varieties are not only edible, but actually very delicious.

A strong climber, loofah will need to be trellised and given plenty of room to roam. In return it will produce enormous fruits that are tasty and make a great addition to soups, stews, and stir fries.

If you’re fortunate enough to be blessed with a tropical climate you may want to try your hand at growing some of these exotic fruits in the garden. If not a visit to local market or ethnic grocer may turn up a surprise or two from the exotic fruits described in the past few articles here.

You can see more photos from St. Croix and the Virgin Island Sustainable Farm Institute posted on the Veggie Gardening Tips Facebook page.

I have to give James credit for making short work of it and coming up with the correct identity to every single strange and unusual fruit that was presented. I didn’t moderate his comment until today but he responded on Saturday and was the first and only person to get them all right.

James admitted to taking advantage of the clues offered in the November issue of the Gardening Secrets Newsletter and Wikipedia as resources but I think that being an avid sunny California gardener may have helped as well. Read on for alternate photos and additional details on the plants that were included in the tropical fruit identification challenge.

Eggfruit a Surprising and Unusual Discovery in the Tropics

First up is the very unusual and uncommon Eggfruit. This was a new one in my book and I was a little hesitant to try it out because I wasn’t sure what to expect from this odd fruit with a strange and somewhat pasty texture.

But I have to admit that I found it rather tasty with a rich, sweet flavor that is difficult to compare to any other fruit. Eggfruits grow larger than softballs and the bright yellow fruits offer a nice contrast against the dark green and shiny leaves.

At first I couldn’t imagine what this tree or its fruit had in common with its namesake, but later realized that the fruit does have somewhat the look and texture of a cooked egg yolk. A little research turned up lots of interesting recipes for preparing eggfruits along with references of it being referred to as a “wonder fruit.”

The Uncommon and Very Cool Caribbean Style Sorrel

Ida was right when she commented on the second plant which is Sorrel and is used in the Caribbean to make a delicious fruit flavored beverage, herbal teas, and syrups. The leaves can also added to leafy green salads for extra nutrients and a bit of sweet-tart flavor.

Not to be confused with the Common Sorrel that is often found growing wild stateside, I believe this sorrel is the same plant known as Red Roselle. Sorrel requires warm temps and a long growing season to mature. The bright red calyxes resemble flowers but are actually the fleshy seed pods used in drinks and to prepare delicious sorrel syrup.

This is a very attractive plant with bushy growth that reach over five feet in height. I think it’s appealing enough that I will attempt to get a few seeds off to an early start and see if I can coax it to maturity in my northern climate.

Malabar Spinach the Heat Tolerant Warm Climate Alternative

The next plant isn’t quite as tropical as it may appear; Malabar Spinach can adapt to a temperate region garden and I’m planning to plant some in my backyard next season. This is a great substitute for spinach if the temps in your growing region are too high to cultivate the regular spinach varieties.

Malabar Spinach has a vining habit that will climb a trellis and produce loads of thick, crisp, leaves for salads. You can cut back and harvest this plant to the ground and it will quickly sprout back to produce multiple crops.

As Ida commented, the leaves do have a slimy consistency when eating but don’t let that put you off, we’re not talking okra level slime, just a bit of gel like texture when the leaves are chewed that I found to be very pleasant with no lingering aftertaste. This definitely makes a great addition in combination with other salad greens!

Dragon Fruit a Rare Find on the Island of St. Croix

Next up is a curious fruit with reddish-purple skin, white flesh, and hundreds of tiny black seeds. Dragonfruit is rare and isn’t cultivated as far as I’m aware in St. Croix, but it does grow wild in mountainous regions of the island.

I was surprised to hear James mention that Dragon Fruit is offered in Southern California markets. In St. Croix it is a specialty fruit that is foraged from wild groves and sold for a tidy profit around town by those willing to seek them out and harvest them from typically remote areas.

Dragon Fruit is exotic looking and the flesh is incredibly striking but it doesn’t come close to the top of my list of favorite tasting tropical fruits. I’d take a fresh mango, sour sop, or papaya over the dragon fruit any day. Maybe I shouldn’t judge from one try, and it was good, but I think its popularity may have more to do with its rarity or reputed health benefits more so than its taste.

The next entry will wrap up this run down of unusual tropical fruits and share more photos and additional details about breadfruit, bananas, passionfruit, papayas, and edible loofahs.

All you need to do is guess the identify of the following photos that were taken during my recent trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands and a stay on the island of St. Croix. It’s such a lush environment where the vegetation is amazingly productive and exotic.

There are always exciting plant discoveries and new fruits and veggies to sample. We won’t waste time rehashing past tropical edibles like the sour sops, sugar apples, and tamarinds that I shared the last time I was in St. Croix.

Take Advantage of all the Help You can Get for this Challenge

Those were easy compared to what’s in store for you today, but guess right and you’ll be in the running to receive a nice little prize from my OpenSky storefront. If you’ve subscribed and read the latest issue of the Gardening Secrets Newsletter you will have a huge advantage because the names of all the plants in question were mentioned there!

It’s not too late to sign up for the newsletter and snag copy of the November issue from the archives if you want to improve your chances of coming up with all the correct responses. Or if you’re feeling pretty confident, just jump right in and list your answers in the comment section below.

Be sure to place the names in the same order as the photos appear. If more than one person gets them all correct a winner will be selected at random. Good luck and here is the lineup of exotic vegetation found growing in St. Croix that will challenge your plant identification skills:

Unusual and Exotic Vegetation Spotted in the U.S. Virgin Islands:

Go right ahead and give it your best shot to identify all of the plants pictured above. One final clue, which you’ve probably guessed by now if you follow this site, is that some part of each plant is edible or medicinal, but the catch is it may not be the part that is pictured in the photo.

I’ll return in a couple days to post the correct identification of these tropical plants and announce the winner of the contest and the prize that they will be receiving.

How could you possibly go wrong living in a place where you can grow tropical fruits, visit nearby beaches, and garden outdoors on a year-round basis? Here’s Barbara to share some interesting information about her garden in the charming little country of Belize:

Eat Your Heart Out there are Fruit Trees Galore

We have a Mammee fig and a shaving brush tree close to the river. We also planted Paw Paws and Tamarinds on each of the two bottom corners of our property. Tamarind is a tree with SO many uses.

Moving closer up the bank to the house, we have coconuts, lipstick trees, bananas, plantains, starfruit, and soursop trees. There are many bay cedars, craboo, and guavas that we put in, breadfruit trees, seven coffee trees planted on the outskirts of the breadfruit trees’ shadows and trumpet trees.

Then in front of the house we have a really large mango tree, custard apples, avocado trees, limes, the huge humming ceiba, a grapefruit, cycad, cashews, I think that is all. We also planted oranges, lemons, key limes, almonds, more avocados, pomegranate, loquat, and tangerine trees. Then there are mulberry and lychee trees on order.

You’ll Find Gardening Woes, even in Paradise

We use no pesticides at all at all. We do use a copper oxide spray for killing black fungus on the trees. The fungus seems to attack the custard apples and grapefruit especially. In the past we have used poison to get rid of leaf cutter ants as they can overnight eat ALL the leaves off ALL the citrus trees, plus all the lettuce and the roses; leaves and all.

Previously we tried using everything from urine (yip) to egg to control the ants! It works less well but we do not like the idea of poisoning things. Hopefully now I have cooked the leaf cutter ants goose; I got a beautiful bean, called Jackbean and planted it around the trees and around their nests. It ought to chase them away. The bean is large and pearly looking and comes up within five days, amazing!

Currently it is a real battle to keep things alive as it is the dry season and it is very, very hot, or did I maybe mention that fact before? We do not have a proper irrigation system but we directly use the grey water from the washing machine and the kitchen sink. We must water a quota of trees on a three day rotation system.

A Seedy Situation for Gardeners in Belize

We plant each and every seed on which we can lay our hands. American seeds are sold here when the sell by and plant by dates have passed already. And even then it is still sold for the equivalent of 2-3x the USA price printed on the packet. It is frustrating as the coming up rate is of course not good at all.

So we do seed saving where we can but with GM seeds also being sold here, the seed saving can be problematic as it either does not seed or the seeds are juvenile. They want one to repurchase rather than save your own seeds, but I’ll step away from the GM topic as I usually have a soapbox hour if I start thinking and talking about it.

I wanted a bit of color round the house so I bought sunflower seeds sold as parrot food. They came up very well but some are 4 INCHES off the ground and they start flowering, tiny, pathetic flowers which do not even follow the sun and the mature flowers did not make seeds at all.

Thanks Barbara, and I really do hope to make my way to Belize sometime in the near future! For now I will simply be content and try to control the envy as I enjoy the virtual visits through your correspondence.

So far we’ve journeyed to a garden in Patzcuaro, Mexico, visited a plot growing in Northern Virginia, and spent time today in Belize. We’ll wrap up this tour with a final stop back in the States as we check out a colorful edible garden in Tennessee.

I have to admit that I wasn’t overly optimistic about the odds of success when I attended the Backyard Fruit Grower’s grafting workshop. Mainly because this wasn’t my first attempt at grafting and the previous try was a complete failure that ended with one graft and absolutely no sign of life from the poor plant.

If at First Your Fruit Tree Graft Does not Succeed…

That was a part of the logic behind my decision to try grafting a total of SIX apple trees this time around! I also considered that the dwarfing rootstock I used would be perfect for creating a hedge-like compact ‘step-over,’ which is a low growing single tiered row of apple trees that I could use as a border around part of the vegetable garden.

But still, I really didn’t anticipate winding up with half a dozen living apple trees on my hands. During the grafting workshop it all seemed so exacting and precise to carefully cut a notch into the rootstock and then mate it to a similarly notched piece of fruiting wood. There was just no way that my rookie attempts at apple tree grafting could have gotten everything right!

Especially when you consider that after cutting and splicing the first couple of grafts my attention was focused much more keenly on keeping my fingers intact then it was on making exact cuts and perfectly aligning the separate “twigs” together to form an ideal union between the two.

Wonders Never Cease in a Backyard Edible Garden

Surely the rootstock would reject this foreign object that I was basically taping to the end of it. And how is it possible for two inches of wood taken from an unrelated apple variety to meld with the strange rootstock in such a way that the roots will nourish and support the fruiting wood above the point where it was attached?

Can some life-force flow upward from the ground, through the rootstock, into the attached scion and unite all the layers of bark, sap, and heartwood from one piece of branch to the other? Will this fragile connection then grow and endure to the point that one day the two will work together to actually bear delicious fruit?

Well this is just one of the wonders that I’m currently observing in my backyard garden. Now I have to come up with a trick of my own and figure out how six apple trees are going to coexist in a landscape full of veggies, herbs, berries, and other gourmet edibles. Guess it’s a good thing that I selected the extra dwarfing rootstock for these surprising grafted apple trees!

And of course the varieties offered were rare, antique, and unusual cultivars that are grown and maintained in the orchards and backyards of the organization’s members. It was a great opportunity to expand a fruit tree collection, or as in my case, to learn the tricks of crafting a fruit tree from two slender twigs.

Pros and Cons of Grafting Fruit Trees for the Backyard Garden

Grafting is the practice of uniting a scion (the fruiting wood) to a rootstock (base and roots) to create a tree that will grow to the desired size and bear the fruit of your choice. If you’ve purchased a fruit tree from a nursery all this work has been taken care of for you already.

The advantages of grafting your own fruit trees include the fact that it’s a lot more economical than purchasing grafted trees. Also, the grafting process is relatively easy to do, and it gives you total control over the varieties of fruit and the size at maturity of the trees that you plant in your backyard.

On the downside, grafting may result in longer wait before you taste your first fruits since trees purchased from the nursery will be older and further along. Also there’s no guarantee that a graft will take, especially if you are just learning the process. Care is required as there is knife work required to cut, notch, and splice the end of the scion wood to the rootstock.

Scion Wood for Use in Grafting Antique Fruit Trees

The scion wood available for grafting at the workshop was all contributed by BYFG members from prunings that were recently cut from mature fruit trees. There were over fifty antique apple varieties, and a smaller number of pear scion wood on hand for participants to select from.

The scion wood looked like ordinary tree trimmings that you could find lying around the lawn. Most were the thickness of a pencil or slightly thinner and up to a foot in length. In theory all you need is a small section of fruiting wood with a couple of live buds to perform a successful graft.

There are advanced techniques and varying preferences for grafting fruit trees but during the workshop we were using a pretty basic whip and tongue graft to mate the scionwood to the rootstock. Skills such as interstem grafting or grafting multiple varieties onto a single tree weren’t covered but once you get the basic technique down there’s no limit to the types of grafts that can be experimented with.

Rootstocks; Starting a Fruit Tree on a Good Foundation

If you ever hear a group of apple growers tossing around strange combinations of letters and numbers, they are talking rootstocks… M 27, ELMA 26, BUD 9, GENEVA 30, and MM 111 are just a few of the common rootstocks used to graft fruit trees.

Selection of the appropriate rootstock is very important as it will determine the ultimate size, vigor, and height of the mature grafted tree. The rootstock can maintain a tree at a dwarf size that can be harvested without a ladder or allow it to grow to the proportions of a full sized fruit tree .

To create a whip and tongue graft you match the thickness of a rootstock to the scion wood, make diagonal cuts and grooves in each, and the lash the pieces together with grafting tape. It’s not quite as easy as it may sound and takes a little practice to get the technique just right.

While even experienced fruit growers don’t achieve 100% success with their attempts at getting grafts to take and grow, youngsters like Olivia pictured above prove that grafting can become child’s play with a little care and practice.

For my time and effort I left the grafting workshop carrying six heirloom apple trees. Two Esopus Spitzenbergs, an Ashmead’s Kernel, a Caville Blanc d’Hiver, and two Yellow Newton Pippens, all grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks. My ultimate goal is to train the trees into a simple tiered espaliered shape, but the first I’ll have to cross my fingers and wait and see if the grafts will even take.