edibles

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Our fruit trees, and other edibles, here in southern Arizona

When I got the house in the 1980s, I was real excited to have a place to grow fruit and nut trees. I got the Sunset Western Garden book and read that lots of trees wouldn't grow here in the Arizona desert, including pears and filberts, two trees I'd had my heart set on. I found the varieties in the book that would grow here and started planting. The first tree was a Bonanza peach. I prefer white peaches, but this one was supposed to grow here and did for a few years. I also put in some grapevines and plum trees. I followed the planting method recommended in a gardening book to dig a huge, deep hole and mix in sulfur, steer manure or other organic material, and ammonium phosphate, packing the amended soil as it is put back into the big hole. I would dig the hard clay soil when it was dry because the book said not to dig when wet to not pack the soil. It would take me hours to dig the holes using a pick ax. Later I finally learned that moistening the soil saved lots of time and energy and didn't pack the soil after all. Most of the trees hung in there for a year or two and finally died. I originally blamed Texas Root Rot since the books talk a lot about that fungus being a problem where there were cotton fields in the past, true here. When I dug out the dead trees, the roots had hardly grown. Also, the amended soil was hard as a rock. There was no organic matter, but instead lots of very small holes where apparently the organic matter had dissolved. I think I'd accidentally made one big brick. When I bought a tree at Baker Nursery in Phoenix, a worker there told me to mix gypsum with the soil 50-50 with the dirt. I tried that, but with less than 50% gypsum, when I planted a Weeping Santa Rosa plum tree and finally had success. Later I obtained literature from the county extension office about a new tree planting technique. It recommended not using the previous, common method, but instead to dig a wide, shallow hole and simply to replace the soil, unpacked back into the hole. It's okay to add fertilizer, but organic matter was not recommended since it only lasts a year in the Arizona sun. I used this new technique on a grapevine, and had success there too. So, I learned after many years that I'd spent hours picking away, sometimes in the summer heat, for nothing except for the exercise.
I set a goal to have twenty varieties of fruit-producing plants, or at least producing something edible. Sometimes there are twenty, but plants come and go. Right now in July 2014, we have the following:

fruit trees

White Mulberry
These are sweeter than the black mulberries, and apparently to the birds too. They eat them the second they ripen.
Black Mulberry
This tree doubles as a shade tree for part of the house in the summer afternoons.

Orange, Arizona Sweet
This has been a great tree--lots of fruit, very sweet some years. I think it's the Marrs variety of Arizona Sweets.

pomegranate, Wonderful
The 2006 crop was the best ever for this and for the Plantation Sweet. There were more pomegranates than usual, very sweet and only a few with the cracking problem.

pomegranate, Plantation Sweet
I tasted a yellow pomegranate several years ago that tasted better to me than the red ones. I thought that's what I was getting when I ordered this, but the tree and the fruits look exactly like the Wonderful pomegranate.

fig, a light colored fig called Baker Fig (by Baker Nursery), with Black Texas Mission and Conadria
This was a great producer for a few years, and still is, but after a certain date all the fruit is spoiled by a beetle that crawls in the open eye on the end of the fruit. We've grafted on a Texas Black Mission variety that has a closed end, and hope to gradually prune the tree so those branches are dominant. Unfortunately, in 2001, the beetles started spoiling the Mission figs too, even though the bugs stay in the opening part and don't enter inside completely. In 2003, we T-bud grafted using Conadria fig cuttings hoping to beat the beetles. In 2004, there were a few, tasty Conadria figs that had closed ends so the beetles couldn't crawl inside. The plan is that with pruning over many years they will become the dominant branches. ...And finally by 2013, the conadria branches are in the majority. Oddly, the Texas Black Mission branches went bad and had to be mostly removed. [click here for fig pictures]

new limb on bud graft
new Conadria fig bud graft

jujube, Li
Put in the front yard for the shade and the beauty of the tree. I was worried about the birds getting all the fruits, but there are so many there are plenty for them and for us. The fruits taste very good. They can be picked a little early before the birds are too interested and taste like apples, or can be left to ripen till brownish and then have a date-like taste mixed in. I don't understand why this tree isn't more popular. Maybe I'll find out some day why. One negative aspect is the suckers that come up from roots all over the yard far from the tree. Almost every week in the summer I have to dig down and remove several of them.

apple, Golden dorsett
It's tough to grow apple trees in clayish soil, but another try is being made. The tree survived its first year although with apparent chlorosis keeping it from thriving. It keeps plugging along, surviving, with three total apples about the size of large cherries in 2010. As of 2013, the three apples in 2010 is the record.

peach, Flordaprince
The Flordaprince began to bear fruit very young. Have to cover it with a bird net when the peaches are still very green.
vines
- Perlette grape
  Great producer. I fell in love with this variety after buying a bunch from the orchard they used to have on the road to Sedona. There's a narrow window between being ripening and over-ripening, but when you pick them at the right time, you can't stop eating them. The vine was purchased and set out in January of 1990. In 1997, I began recording the quantity picked, at first by numbers of bunches, then weighing. Making an estimation of ounces per bunch before weighing, this one vine has produced 326 pounds of grapes between 1997 and 2013. It faded and looked pretty shaky in 2009, but came back somehow with increasing yields. Since then I've pruned it to reshape to a taller height, sacrificing output.
- Black Monukka grape
  The perlette grape had been such a great producer with minimal care, we decided to put in another variety of grape. If I ever move within the Phoenix area, I might just put in about eight grapevines and maybe a peach tree and call that "the orchard." The 2006 crop of these grapes had two seeds per grape, and Black Monukka is supposed to be seedless, so I don't know if that's a weird characteristic of this variety to sometimes have seeds or if it was originally mislabelled and is something else. Some years the grapes are nearly seedless.
cactus
- prickly pear tuna
  When I'm in Mexico I eat all the tuna fruits I can. Alma says they aren't good for a home garden because they take so much space, one fruit per huge branch. It took about seven years before finally blooming, a test of patience. The birds have learned to like the fruit, and they get most of them each year.
shrubs
- natal plum
  There isn't much fruit from this, but it tastes good for something different.
- jojoba
  I planted eight seeds and ended up with one female nut producer. The odds are slim for that, I think about 3 in 100. I really like the taste of the beans.
- desert mahonia
  They say this is edible, but the berry I tried didn't taste so great.
- wolfberry (Lycium pallidum)
- Goji berry, I think another wolfberry-type plant
  It has bore a few fruits but barely hangs in there each year so far.
- Purple hopseed bush
  May never eat the fruit, but it's supposedly edible.
- Ouachita blackberry
  Plant looks great but don't remember it bearing a single berry, maybe two one time.
other
- Mormon tea
  I've made tea from this a couple of times--unique and mild tasting.
- aloe vera
  Alma uses this sometimes for medicinal purposes.
- banana yucca
  No fruits yet.
- rosemary
  Found out that rosemary thrives in the hot desert so put out several plants.
- French lavender

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