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What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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Posted by drasaid zone 9 (My Page) on Fri, Dec 6, 02 at 21:19
Magnolia vine? Chilean weirdness? Oddball tubers?
Are the oddball, back-o-the-catalog stuff worth a go? Or are they just a taste tease? |
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RE: What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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| Well, now; that depends! Do you have plenty of room? Will you go hungry if your space isn't growing something you need to eat? D'ya like to grow weird stuff? I have planted peanuts and cotton in the garden; along with kohlrabi and spaghetti squash before they were popular. I want to try mangle beets again; and maybe one of those 9 pound radishes... Blue potatoes were a bust for me; but spuds usually are - unless I toss old store 'taters into a cold compost pile and ignore them for a few months. Just make sure whatever you grow isn't invasive (NO! No more bamboo. nonononono!) |
RE: What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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Good recommendations from Polly, above.
Another caveat - don't buy into their descriptions wholeheartedly - even the catalog descriptions of the more traditional things, like apples, don't always give 'the whole story' - sure, one variety may be great in a small area of VA, but it might not ripen at all in northern IL, or might die outright in a MN winter, and might not get enough chill-hours to even set blossom buds in south AL.
I've seen enough descriptions of some of the 'wierd' things, and then received first-hand reports from other fruit enthusiasts that I know, to know that everything is not always as it's presented to be. There are a few of those nurseries, specializing in 'exotic' fruits and such that you have to watch out for - you might think you'd be getting a grafted plant, but you may only be getting a seedling, which at best, may take an inordinate time to reach fruiting age, or at worst, may produce fruit nothing like what you thought you were getting. |
RE: What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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| Some of those are tempting (those vitamin c rich berries from Russia - forgot the name), but I am trying to pick mostly native trees/shrubs that will bear well under these conditions and varieties of better known fruits that should also survive and bear here. I may experiment with the odd stuff later. Lee AKA Fireraven9
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than
the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined
branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of
the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike
you with the presence of a deity? - Seneca |
RE: What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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| I like to experiment with odd offerings and can usually find a spot somewhere to try a new food plant and sometimes flowers. I planted seed for a red-stemmed Malabar Spinach vine two springs ago along a new trellis/screen in among gourds. The gourds did well but I thought the Malabar had passed on to rabbit heaven. Saturday, I cut back some perennial chili peppers and LO! and BEHOLD!, there they were pushing their little hearts out in spite of near freezing temperatures at night and 6.6 inches of rain last week. I suppose for the Permaculture Purist, native ought to be selected over the exotic...rather odd that because so much of what we eat came from somewhere else. |
RE: What about Weird Fruit? One Green World type stuff?
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| I planted the seedling seaberries 7 or 8 years ago and am still waiting for fruit. I haven't seen much of the weird stuff that is as good as blueberries, my favorite, or black and red currants, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. But what can you grow where you live? If you can grow citrus, that would be wonderful. I would like to be in zone 9 again and grow blood oranges, peaches, persimmons, pistachios, pecans, and subtropicals. I have magnolia vines and they do fruit some and the fruit is edible but the yields are not much and the flavor is somewhat medicinal. |
Yes, I can grow citrus...
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So can everybody else. Also, they are not so expensive here when in season. I am considering a variageted lemon and kumquat; but I can buy those here.
One thing I am considering too is white sapote. I have some seedling cherimoyas and other tropical things; I have found out that the space between my shotgun house and the next is a tropical microclimate! Now I just have to make my trees fit that slot of space!
I am just curious, I guess; I'd like to grow what nobody else does. |
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