The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have bamboo growing on my property. I live in the Central Valley of California.  Keep in mind, that once a bamboo forest is established, it is nearly impossible to get rid of.  Your neighbors are going to hate you if you plant it on the edge of your property, since it will invade into their property.  The bamboo rhizomes are going to compete against your other trees and may even choke out the roots of nearby trees.  Bamboo groves may reduce your property value. The bamboo poles do come in hardy though, for projects and building things like tomato cages, and vine trellises.

This bamboo has been in my property in my parents' house since before I was even born. If I had my own property, I would not plant bamboo on it.

Here are my tamarillos this winter. The tree always loses all its leaves through frost burn in Northern California whenever it gets below -2 degrees C.  Then all the fruit falls off once it gets frost burned.





My tamarillos came out as orange, with a few reddish purple ones.  The seeds are orange instead of black. I haven't tried the reddish purple ones yet.  Its interesting how random the colors of tamarillos are.  Every poster on this forum seems to have a different color of tamarillo. They taste like a combination of a sour orange with tomato.  It had a violin resin smell to it.  They are good winter time fruits.  I don't think it needed anything like sugar, whipped cream, or cheese to improve the taste, it was already sweet and fruity.  The skin wasn't really overly bitter either. I could even eat the inside flesh of the skin, it wasn't bitter.

I found a few feijoas growing around town around businesses and in parking lots. They were surprisingly good, and actually larger and had more fruit than the Nazemetz feijoa tree I bought.  I picked these up from the ground.  I'm surprised at how many feijoas were growing, even though I assume they were just ornamentals and never hand pollinated.





The more oblong ones on the left were from a parking lot around a shopping center more gritty in texture, they had more meat vs pulp.  The skin texture was more rough, thick, lighter green.  The taste was sweet, but sour too, they were good feijoas.  The skin wasn't too good.

The ones on the right, the more round feijoas were ones I found at a parking lot around a business center. They have more pulp than the ones on the left, and it had a more jelly-like texture over the gritty pear-like texture of the feijoas on the left. The skin was more smooth, shiny, and thin.  The taste was sweeter and more intense than the ones on the left, and the experience was more like eating a jelly than a fruit.  The skin had a good lemony taste.

I preferred the ones on the right more.  But overall- I'm very surprised at how good quality parking lot feijoas can be.   They were probably planted as decorative plants from seed in the 70's and 80's.  I assumed they would just be tasteless and poor quality, but they were sweet and delicious with a nice scent.

This tree was started from seed in August 2013, then I planted it outside in February 2014.

I probably did over-fertilize it last year, giving it tomato fertilizer. This year, I'm not going to fertilize it at all, besides natural leaves. I'm mulching it more heavily with cardboard and newspaper, and I'm making sure the ground always stays moist.  Last year, it always had periods during the summer where the leaves would be wilted because of the summer heat, until I gave it some water.

Today I look under my tree and find a few fruit that fell off because they were broken at the nodes to the inflorescence.  These nodes connecting the fruit to the inflorescence look very weak, some of them have a brown ring around the node, and it looks like the tree won't hold any fruit at the rate they are falling.

How do I stop this from happening? Is the tree missing some nutrient that would cause this? Is there something I can put on these nodes to strengthen them?

Some tamarillos are showing up on my tree. They start as these tiny green fruits, then grow.  Last year, the tree aborted every single one of these fruits.  Some of the green fruit rotted with black rot , and the rest of the fruit simply disappeared and I couldn't find them under the tree.  Below is my thread on what happened to the tamarillos last year.

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16449.msg208651#msg208651

How do I keep these fruits on the tree until fall when they are ripe? I'm mulching them more this year with cardboard and newspaper. And I'm making sure they are watered more regularly so the leaves never droop in the summer sun of the Central Valley of California.  Last year, a lot of ants and aphids were on the leaves, so it could have been aphid introduced diseases that caused the tree to abort all the fruit.

I liked the books "Lost Crops of the Incas" and "Lost Crops of Africa.' They were very interesting, and I'm sure there are plenty of lost crops of Asia, North America, Europe, Australia, and South America too.

One of my favorite articles in "Lost Crops of Africa" was about fonio. Digitaria exilis and Digitaria iburua. It is native to the arid regions of West Africa.  It grows in as little as 6-8 weeks, without needing much water and in poor soils.  There are two native Digitaria species to North America, Large Crabgrass- D. sanguinalis and Smooth Crabgrass D. ischaemum.  They grow as weeds and in lawns.

I think the seeds of these plants can be used just like fonio. I occasionally eat the seeds of large crabgrass, unhusked, with water.  It has an oaty taste.  Crabgrass was actually an important food to the Chinese, Indians, and Eastern Europeans.

Another of my favorite underused plants is the Tree Tomato, or Tamarillo.  I do have one in my backyard in California, although the unripe fruit vanished for some reason.  Its fun to watch it grow since it grows so quickly and the leaves are big and smell like popcorn.  I've never tasted one, but there are a lot of recipes from Latin America and New Zealand that use it.  It looks like a fun replacement to tomatoes during the winter. But even in Latin America- its more of a backyard fruit than a commercial one, and in New Zealand, many of the tamarillo farms are disappearing.

My feijoa tree finally dropped some fruit on the ground, so I picked it up and tried my first feijoas ever.





These are Nazemetz feijoas. The largest was about 3 inches tall.  They were juicy and watery.  The texture is gritty like a kiwi or a pear.  It mostly just tasted like kiwi to me, the flesh around the peel tasted more sour. The peel tasted like a sour kiwi with a pine needle minty aftertaste. 

I do like these, its a nice fruit to have during the winter, I couldn't taste any pineapple in it.  It has a long lasting refreshing aftertaste.

I read that tamarillos are low light trees. I think the big leaves are an adaptation to low light.  I think most big leaved plants will be shade tolerant.

I woke up today to the unpleasant surprise of my tamarillo tree with completely black frost burned leaves because it dipped to -2 degrees C yesterday night.  I don't get why its not more frost resistant, I assume it could grow well in La Paz, Bolivia- and their temperature averages get down to -3.5 degrees C.   Thankfully, the tamarillo tree will regrow in the spring.

I also have a feijoa tree- its a very frost resistant plant and grows well in Northern California.  The frost isn't going to hurt it, the leaves are still green and the fruit is still growing.

Quote from: King on October 28, 2015, 06:15:16 PM

They are supposed to be highly drought resistant and don't require much water.

How much do you water yours? I'm just curious what the water requirement is to have fruit.

That's what I keep hearing for some other plants as well. For jujube at least, you do have to give it a good amount of water if you expect to have fruit to eat.

I don't really water my feijoa tree all that often. Probably only once every week.   Even in the summer, I don't water it that often.  Feijoas have small leaves with a waxy sheen to conserve water.  I did hand pollinate it though, and Nazemetz is one of the few self pollinating varieties.

South America and Africa have a lot of local fruit that are practically unknown to the outside world.  This one looks interesting because it can grow in some of the subtropical regions of the US.

That small stump isn't going to be hard to remove by just cutting the roots and prying it up with a long crowbar or long board.  I suggest just doing it the old fashioned cut and pry method for a stump this small.  It will take less time than driving over to the store to buy any chemicals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNGqfZrAJAQ

I've heard that an old fashioned way of removing stumps in the Northeast was to drill holes in a stump, fill the holes with soil, and then plant squash or pumpkin seeds in those holes.  The greedy roots of the squash should split apart the stump wood.  I don't know if this works though.