A CR Garden

[Gordo]

Nice, I did wrap mine up in cardboard boxes in its first 2 years, and then filled the boxes with leaves.  As the leaves compost they give off heat, that seemed to work well, but once the roots were deep and established, I stopped doing that.  The last couple years I do dump a pile of leaves around the base but don't do anything else.  Some of the branches die, but most survive.  I just cut out the dead wood and it takes off every year now.  

[mccoy]

Speaking of figs, presently that's the only edible plant I have in my garden. But it is a pretty old fig, when it starts producing it's hard to eat all of'em.

These are the fresh fruits, which I pick underripe so they contain less carbs.

And this is the tree, I estimate its age from 50 to 100 years, it has been pruned drastically many times.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Those look great mccoy! What a nice tree. I'm jealous. I'd love to see the interior of one of those figs if you can take a picture. Do you know if you have the fig wasp in your area so your figs are pollinated?

Here is the best looking figs I've harvested so far:

I like them very ripe!

[mccoy]

23 hours ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

Those look great mccoy! What a nice tree. I'm jealous.

Dean, nothing to be jealous of since figs thrive in Mediterranean regions, whereas you guys are doing an exceptional job of farming them in NE USA. I see they are even producing fruits, although small ones. I don't know about wasps, even though I read about them. The variety I have produces an early crop (July) of large, luscious fruits, with a sweet but delicate flavour. Later on, in September, the fruits are smaller and more abundant. This year there even was a pre-early crop (first time I saw it) with very small but not good-to-eat fruits.

I snapped more pics, the tree has been pruned to let it develop along the horizontal axis (easier to pick up figs). Usually, they develop in height but you have to climb pretty far up the tree to pick all the fruits  (I used to do it often when younger).

 

 

 

[mccoy]

 

[mccoy]

 

[Dean Pomerleau]

That's quite a fig tree Mccoy! I bet it must produce many hundreds of fruit. 

Do you know what variety it is? It looks to me like it might be Fico Moro (aka Fico Moro Da Caneva). In the US it is also called Fico Secco, which is one I'm growing! Here is what my ripe Fico Secco fruit looks like:

 

Yours look a lot nicer than mine, but then again mine is only seven months old and only about 12" tall.

It would be cool if we are growing the same variety!

 

 

[mccoy]

On 7/13/2023 at 10:30 PM, Dean Pomerleau said:

Do you know what variety it is? It looks to me like it might be Fico Moro (aka Fico Moro Da Caneva).

Dean, I don't know exactly and you piqued my curiosity since I'm in the process of searching but, that you believe it or not, I still wasn't able to find a precise description. I know it's a so called biferous variety (yields 2 crops) so it may be the callata variety rather than the more common brogiotto which seems to be uniferous (single crop).

Some varieties are uniferous if pollinated by the common fig wasp, biferous if pollinated by another species of fig wasp.

The early production of the variety I have (june-july) has big, elongated luscious figs like the pics I posted above. They are called 'fioroni' (big flowers) or  'primacciani', meaning early figs and are the best in terms of texture, flavor, dimensions.

The later production (September) has a slightly different shape with smaller fruits, less elongated, and sometimes sweeter.

The fico secco (literally, dried fig) you posted is probably another variety used, as its name suggests, to make dried figs.

 

 

 

[Dean Pomerleau]

Thanks for checking Mccoy. There are so many varieties of figs! 

[Saul]

Hi Dean!

How did you get a fig tree to grow and produce edible figs in Pittsburgh?

(Reminds me of a palm tree that I once found growing in Edinboro -- right next to a hot water pipe parallel to its trunk.)

🙂

  --  Saul 

[Dean Pomerleau]

2 minutes ago, Saul said:

Hi Dean!

How did you get a fig tree to grow and produce edible figs in Pittsburgh?

(Reminds me of a palm tree that I once found growing in Edinboro -- right next to a hot water pipe parallel to its trunk.)

🙂

  --  Saul 

Saul,

As I said above, I grow my fig trees in containers and overwinter them in my garage. This year I woke them up early (mid-March) under lights in my garage to give them a head start on the season.

[Saul]

Hi Dean!

OK; that makes sense.

  --  Saul

[mccoy]

Back to the variety of figs, the description below, found in an online seller of plants, would fit my tree, based on the picture and double crop timings. Although, the soil here is not calcareous, but rather siliceous. Also, the dominant color is deep purple and green is very limited (maybe the second crop is greener). Fico Domenico Tauro. Never heard of it previously.

Description
The Domenico Tauro fig is a purple, biferous skin cultivar: 2 productions per year.

It is an early variety: the first production is in June (larger fruit) and the second in September (medium sized fruit).

The skin is green with a purple blush. The fruits are medium-large in size and globular. The pulp has a pleasant sweet taste. It loves calcareous soils.

Edited July 17, 2023 by mccoy

[Gordo]

On 7/17/2023 at 9:40 AM, mccoy said:

my tree

Mccoy, your fig tree is freaking me out 🤣

 

In other news, it's been a wonderful year for fruit where I am, raspberries are booming:

My plums are ripening now too but the deer are helping themselves.

[drewab]

My CR garden doesn't quite compare to many of the great gardens in this thread. Having said that, my basic low maintenance garden helps produce a few CR friendly foods. I am lucky that they provide me with about a 1-1.5 pounds of leafy greens daily for 90 days or so. I harvest the largest leaves while leaving the rest intact and they keep on growing. My growing season is quite short living north of 50 degress latitude! Below are some photos:

In the front is kale and collard greens - in the back is butter crunch lettuce and oak leaf lettuce. 

Here are some herbs I add generous quantities of. This includes parsley (apigenin anyone?) and basil. 

I also like to add some allium family vegetables and cruciferous vegetables when possible. I add green onion daily to my monster salads. The front previously included radishes that I had grown and harvested.

Here I have some green beans growing in the back and a second batch of lettuce greens that were planted mid-season after my swiss chard grew poorly. 

Next up is two batches of carrots (one is orange, the other is tri-color) that will be harvested in the fall. 

I also have a sour cherry tree that produces a small quantity each year (I also have an apple tree that has failed to produce fruit this year).

A little green thumb can go a long way!

Drew

[Dean Pomerleau]

Great edible garden Drew! I really like the raised beds and all the healthy greens you are growing. 

[Gordo]

[Dean Pomerleau]

Nice Pawpaws! Is that the tree I gave you?

[Gordo]

On 7/27/2023 at 6:43 PM, Dean Pomerleau said:

Nice Pawpaws! Is that the tree I gave you?

Yes indeed, and the fruit was delicious. Hoping for a lot more this year.

Thought you might get a kick out of this... I got an order from Prague, Czechoslovakia on eBay for those high capsinoid pepper seeds we long ago collaborated on.  Some time passed and then I got another order from the same person, I asked if there was a problem with the first order? He said "Not at all, we are just starting to plant them. We are planning to analyse the profile of these peppers and try to isolate capsinoids from them. I am from the Institute of Chemichal Technology in Prague. Our plan is to harvest as much as possible, isolate the known ones and try to identify unknown and send them for biological activity. That's why I bought another batch 🙂I’ll send you feedback if you want. But it is work for a year or so at least (the planting, harvest, isolating and profiling especially). If and when a paper comes out, I can let you know and send a copy if you would be interested."

It's fun to know that your interest in cold exposure and BAT activation is now connected to researchers in far away places analyzing peppers 🌶️ 🤣 We'll have to look for their paper a year from now. I wonder if they are going to try to make synthetic capsinoids? It's not something I've researched so I have no idea if anyone has done that already, but it could be a huge market.

[Dean Pomerleau]

I'm glad the pawpaws have done well for you! Did you have to hand pollinate them? I've purchased scions of several different pawpaw varieties and plan to graft them onto my pawpaw trees this spring to increase the range of flavors. I also need to revisit the semi-private lake around which I guerrilla planted about 150 pawpaw seeds in January 2020. If any of them survived they should be getting pretty good size by now and ready for grafts.

That's very cool about the high-capsaicin but not spicy peppers we grew and you distributed. I look forward to seeing the paper from the researchers in Prague! I purchased seeds for a new pepper to grow this season - Biquinho peppers also known as "Sweety Drop". We had them in a salad at a fancy restaurant last summer and they were a delicious combination of sweet and spicy.

In general I'm continuing to add to my food forest. New additions I'll be planting this spring include a jujube tree, a medlar tree, two additional varieties of hardy kiwi vines, a couple hardy passionfruit vines, grafts of new pawpaw, mulberry and persimmon varieties, and ~35 new varieties of fig trees (in pots) to bring my total to around 100 different fig varieties. In fact I was just preparing to start waking up my fig trees in my basement grow room so they'll be ready to fruit in May through August.

[Gordo]

That's awesome, I would like to plant more variety, definitely interested in kiwi. There is a huge wild patch of pawpaw trees in the woods behind my house and the fruit is terrible, I would like to graft some good scion wood to some of those trees. I did hand pollinate the trees in my yard last year just to be sure, but there were tons of pollinator flies on the flowers so I think I should not really need to do that. I also planted seeds all over the place just for fun, especially along a local river bank.