In My Garden: Winter fruit trees

Nov 30

It's that time of the year again when most fruit trees are bare. I have finished eating my chocolate and fuyu persimmons and this year I got 30 to 40 white sapotes from a seedling that came up about eight years ago. I had heard white sapotes were good, but had only tried them once, about 30 years ago, and wasn't impressed. Well, this tree of mine completely changed my mind. It is now one of my favorite fruits and I can't wait until next year.

The last fruit tree to bear fruit, besides of course winter avocados and oranges, is the cherimoya. I have seven really good varieties. Last year I wanted to see how much fruit I would get if I didn't hand pollinate them. I got maybe 20 fruits. This year I hand pollinated the trees two or three times a week for six weeks. It took only about 20 minutes each time, so not much of an effort is needed. This year the trees are overflowing with more than 200 pieces of fruit! I just started picking my first harvest last week, and hopefully will have fruit until February.