Home Improvements and Gardening

One fig! I’m hoping all my little fruit trees will produce their first crop this year.

Last July, I planted four new fruit trees on our property … two Naval Orange Trees, one Brown Turkey Fig Tree, and one Fuyu Persimmon Tree. Even though the persimmon tree was small, it had several persimmons on it when I bought it. I had hoped to eat one of those beauties last year, but squirrels stole every single one before they ripened.

This year the trees are planted and well established in our backyard, but this fig has been the only piece of fruit to show up. I think the trees have spent all their energy putting down roots and had nothing left over for producing fruit. I’m thinking of this fig as the promise of good things to come, so I’ll hang on to that and dream of fig preserves and toast!

I’m considering planting some edible flowers around our property, so I’ve been doing some research about them. Edible flowers had fallen out of vogue for many years, but they are beginning to make a come back … most likely due to the poor state of our economy which is fueling a greater interest in sustainable gardening. Imagine my surprise when I learned that a fig is actually an inverted flower! Who knew?! I guess I’m already on my way in my new endeavor to incorporate edible flowers into our landscape. See me smiling BIG!

Keeping it real,

I purchased four new fruit trees to add to our backyard garden and hauled them home in our truck, along with three ornamental sweet potato vines for the Crepe Myrtle bed in the front yard. The lady at our local Farmer’s Cooperative, where I bought the trees, suggested that I use a root stimulator to give the new plants an extra boost.

The old home property where we live already had two pear trees that produce heavily, and we wanted to add naval oranges, satsumas, figs, hard persimmons, and blueberries to the collection. They didn’t have a blueberry bush or a satsuma tree, but I was happy to find the rest of what I wanted. I decided to get two naval orange trees, because fresh picked citrus in the winter is just SO good!

It’s hard to see, due to the trees in the background, but the fig tree (far left in the pic above) was so healthy and covered with leaves … till we had a freak hail storm that stripped it nearly clean. Only a few leaves on the very top were left. You can see how spindly looking it is in the pic below.

I L.O.V.E. the St. Augustine grass on this property. It has such a nice thick blade, and it is lush even in the heavy shade under the oaks. I wouldn’t dream of wasting a beautiful piece of sod like this, so when I planted the new fruit trees, I carefully dug up the sod and transplanted it in one of the many bare spots where the lawn has been neglected for so long. I’ll write more about that process in a future post.

Keeping it real,