A few weeks ago, when Ray Sher from The Urban Harvest and Heidi Sheesley from Treesearch Farms were on the program talking about all the upcoming Fruit Tree Sale Season, the question came up "Can you grow enough fruit or enough different kinds of fruit in Houston year-round to be harvesting fruit every month of the year? The answer was an overwhelming YES! So, I asked Ray Sher to produce a schedule that you can easily follow to have that year-round fruit in your own backyard.
Year-round Harvesting of Fruit - by Ray Sher
Although Houston is not the tropics where you can see fruit hanging from trees everywhere you look, we are able to harvest fruit in every month of the year. All you need to do is carefully select the types and varieties of trees that can give you fruit every month of the year. Variety selection is important for taste, hardiness and ripening time. For instance, different varieties of satsumas are ripe from September through December, and different varieties of oranges are ripe from early December through February, and different varieties of figs from June through August. We can give you a little help variety selection.
January - Republic of Texas orange, almost all grapefruit, lemons, limequats, Calamondin, kumquats, limes
February - Kumquats, limequats, Valencia, Sanguinelli blood and other late ripening oranges, loquats, Calamondin, lemons
March - Strawberries, loquats, kumquats, limequats, lemonquat, Calamondin
April - Strawberries, blueberries, mayhaws
May - Strawberries, peaches, blueberries, nectarines, plums, apricots
June -Peaches, nectarines, Celeste Fig, Anna and Dorsett Golden apples, cantaloupe
July - LSU Purple fig and Banana Fig, cantaloupe, Mortensen bunch grapes, pears, jujubes
August - Mysteak fig, Mortensen bunch grapes, pears, hybrid muscadine grapes, pomegranates
September - Dobashi-beni, Okitsu and BC2 satsumas, bananas, avocado, papaya, guava
October - persimmons, pineapple guava (feijoa), pecans, bananas, avocados, papaya, guava, satsumas, limes
November - Calamondin, persimmons, Changsha tangerine, Fairchild and Page tangelos, mid season satsumas, limes
December - Calamondin, persimmons, Bloomsweet, Golden and most of the red varieties of grapefruit, Pong Koa mandarin,
Moro blood orange, Marrs orange, Cara Cara orange, lemons, Owari and Vermilion satsumas, limes
As mentioned earlier, it is important to do a little investigation to determine the varieties of fruit that work well in the climate in which you live. There are many good sources of information including the Urban Harvest web site www.urbanharvest.org and the fruit study group that meets at the Harris County Agricultural Extension Service in Bear Creek Park.
You can also drop by the Bayou City Farmers' Market located at 3000 Richmond (in the parking lot behind the building at Eastside) on Sat. from 8 a.m.-noon, and Wed. from 4-7 p.m. to taste some of these freshly picked fruits being sold by local growers during their harvest seasons.
Until then, here's to great gardening from the GardenLine, heard exclusively weekend mornings 6 to 10 on Saturdays and 7 to 10 a.m. Sundays on NewsRadio 740 KTRH.
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| Randy Lemmon is the host of the GardenLine radio program on Newsradio 740 KTRH. Randy has been doing GardenLine in one capacity or another since December of 1995, for all three of the now Clear Channel AM stations - KTRH, KPRC & KBME. When Randy took over GardenLine, he replaced long-time Houston radio veteran and GardenLine originator, Bill Zak. For those who remember that far back, GardenLine was a weekly radio staple on KTRH from 10 a.m. to Noon Mondays through Fridays - along with a Saturday show as well. Now GardenLine is heard exclusively on Newsradio 740 KTRH on weekend mornings. |
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