In My Garden: Fruit Trees

It's been unusually warm in my Southern California backyard and my fruit trees seem to thrive in the extra heat, especially my cherimoyas and tangerines. I usually hand pollinate my cherimoya trees to get a good crop of fruit because we don't have the right insects here that normally pollinate the cherimoyas in their native habitat. But this year I was too busy and only got out a couple of times and thought I would be lucky to get a dozen fruit. To date I have picked 40-50 fruit and there's probably that much still on the trees, waiting to get large enough to harvest. I have two of the best tasting cherimoya trees that I think there are, if you like really sweet fruit. Also this year my tangerine tree is producing a ridiculous amount of fruit, and all those tangerines are really sweet and juicy. Only in Southern California are we lucky to be getting incredible fruit November through February when fruit trees in other parts of the country are dormant.