The Flawless Fruit Tree

January is here, which will be followed by February and very cold weather. But spring will be coming soon and you will begin wandering through the garden centers, wondering what kinds of plants you might want to grow. Far be it from us to tell you what you should be growing, but we can share some thoughts and experiences. This month we want to offer some ideas about growing fruit trees. Over the past ten years, we Lawn Chair Gardeners have discussed backyard fruit trees several times and we also have a pretty good chapter on the subject in our book, Gardening in the Humid South. It is now available in paperback and not very expensive. Copies of it are also in the libraries, so you might want to look at it for more detail. Today we are offering a few ideas that might be useful as observations, encouragement and occasional warnings.

Most gardeners who contemplate planting fruit of some kind in their home gardens would like to be able to pick fruit at the peak of ripeness rather than at a nearly-ripe stage that can stand being shipped long distances and going through the distribution ordeals needed to get it to the local market. There will always be newer varieties that we don’t know about, but remember that there will always be hazards from the various critters that compete with you for the fruit. But you are probably willing to accept a few blemishes in order to get really ripe fruit.

One reason that our home-grown fruit may not be as pretty as what you see in the produce section of the supermarket is that almost all of the fruit in commerce requires treatment for disease and insect control that we are not prepared to provide. Few home gardeners have sprayers or dusters to apply control materials on plants larger than bushes. In addition, our rainfall patterns (which we have been used to over the years, but which could be changing) make it difficult to maintain what are called “cover sprays,” which aim to cover developing leaves and fruits with protective materials. As the young leaves and fruits grow, they require more cover for the new areas, and rain will remove much of what is already there—so, if it rains, even off and on, for about ten hours, more cover material will be needed, since the rain also can spread the infectious spores and bacteria.

You are not going to go out in the rain to spray, but commercial growers have to. Commercial crops of peaches and plums get at least eleven sprays during development; apples get cover sprays every ten to fourteen days from bloom to harvest; blueberries get nine sprays, pecans eight, and citrus five. Fortunately there are some low-maintenance fruits that usually produce good crops without all of these sprays—including figs, persimmons, loquats, pears, mayhaws and citrus.

Before planting fruit trees, bushes or vines, consider that they all need light—direct sunlight for at least six hours a day—and you should look ahead to what trees are growing on your neighbor’s lot. They may not be a problem now, but how big are they going to be in eight or ten years? Your own plantings will shade each other as they grow. Most fruit trees need at least three hundred square feet but it can be fun, if you have the time and inclination, to prune trees so they will grow against fences or walls and reduce the need for space.

Don’t get impatient if you aspire to grow fruit in your garden. We have answered many inquiries about why fruit trees fail to bloom after several years. It is usually due to the fact that the plant will form flower buds instead of stem and leaf tissues only when there is a surplus of what we call “plant foods”—carbohydrates from photosynthesis as mineral nutrients (fertilizer) are taken up by the roots. Until it reaches that surplus stage, the plant is juvenile and can be kept juvenile by things you are doing to it, such as applying too much fertilizer, planting where it does not get those six hours of full sun that we talked about, pruning it at the wrong time or pruning it too severely. It may be that the plant needs its flowers to be pollinated by a different variety of the same species. (If your garden center cannot advise you on this, consult the various bulletins available—mostly online these days—from your friendly Extension Service county agent.)

Not all fruits require this cross-pollination. Some are fruitful with their own pollen, while others can produce fruit without pollination. These are called parthenocarpic fruits. This is an interesting term taken, like a lot of botanical terms, from the Greek: Parthenos means virgin (think of the Parthenon, the temple to the virgin goddess Athena) and carpus means fruit, so this term means “virgin fruit.” Many of the figs we have in our area are that type, like the Celeste fig; however, some other figs need pollination and the symbiotic relationship with a tiny wasp in order to make fruit, but our cold weather kills the wasp. The navel orange is parthenocarpic, but we seldom encounter it except in the most southerly areas of our readership.

In the years since we last talked about fruit in the garden, some new varieties have become available. The process of fruit breeding is slow, and in light of the current financial situation in most states, support for it will shrink drastically, but there are still things that we can recommend on the basis of our own experiences. First of all, since Ed spent a few years on the project, we will mention the several new fig varieties released by the LSU Agriculture Center. They include LSU Purple and LSU Gold (names chosen by Ed), and Champagne, Tiger and O’Rourke—names given by a “release committee.” These have some advantages over the Celeste, which may make them worth planting.

If you would like to grow apples and have at least thirty square feet of area that will get at least six hours of direct sunlight for the next ten years, try to get the Anna apple, a variety produced by an Israeli horticulturist and named for his daughter. It is self-fruitful, begins to bear in about four or five years after planting and stays fairly small. For peaches, most will not last much more than ten years, but if you have space, try the Hawthorne peach, named for P.L. Hawthorne, who spent many hours on fruit breeding at LSU. It can get by without a pollinator and is a fine, large, freestone peach.

Pears present a different problem. The nice soft fruits you get at the store are from some European varieties that get a disease called fire blight if they are grown down here. Most of the varieties that we can grow have the Japanese sand pear in their parentage and can be full of grit cells under the skin and around the core. Here is a tip that usually helps a lot. When the pears are about full size, cut one and see if the seed coats have turned brown. When the seed coats are brown, take a few off the tree and bring them inside where air conditioning will keep them much cooler than they would be on the tree. The ideal ripening temperature is 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but most of us keep our temperatures in the low 70s. Even at this temperature the fruit will soften in about a week and have fewer grit cells. The fruit you left on the tree will still be rock-hard but will ripen when you pick it and give it lower temperatures. This treatment is a bit of trouble, but it will give you the choice of ripening the amount of fruit you want and saving the rest for later.

Now, quickly because time’s a-wastin,’ there are several varieties of very good blueberry varieties coming out but they are hard to find. Ask the garden center about some varieties of the “Southern highbush” blueberries. They are crosses between the Northern highbush and our local “rabbit-eye” plants. They grow best on pure organic matter potting mix and produce large, excellent tasting blueberries. The final “hard to find” is a Japanese, very astringent, persimmon called “Triumph.” Apparently the leaves are so astringent that insects and diseases stay away. The plant keeps very green leaves and has beautiful red fruit that birds occasionally taste and remember how astringent it is. But, toward the end of the season, those fruits ripen to be very soft and non-astringent and have a taste much like our native persimmon. The size is much smaller than normal Japanese fruits but a bit larger than our native type.

Ed O’Rourke, Jr. and Leon Standifer are the authors of Gardening in the Humid South (LSU Press, 2002), now available in paperback.