La Casa Grande Colectiva

Tag: fruit

  • planting pawpaw seeds

    The other day I stopped by the house on Washington St that has pawpaw trees growing in the yard.  A nice lady named Ruth greeted us in her driveway and we spoke for awhile about her trees.  They were planted 45 years ago by her husband who saved a few seedlings from a grove that was about to be bulldozed on campus.
    pawpaw stand on washington

    Happy to share her bounty of fruit, she graciously served us slices of freshly ripe pawpaw and sent us each home with a few fruits.  When I told her I was interested in growing my own, she gave me a container with hundreds of seeds. I also saved all the seeds from the fruits she gave me.

    Eating Ruth’s pawpaws was the first time I’d ever eaten a fully ripe one. I thought they were incredibly delicious.

    Normally people plant the seeds in deep containers and transplant the seedlings after they’ve grown a bit. First, however, the seeds need to experience a period of cold lasting 90-120 days, called stratification. This is achieved by refrigerating the seeds during the winter. Of course this is a lot of work and it requires patience, a quality that I can’t always depend on myself having.

    My plan is to plant all of the seeds in our shady front yard. The grass grows terribly under an old Maple tree, and pawpaws can tolerate a lot of shade. I chose to plant the seeds directly into the soil, allowing them to stratify naturally during the winter. This reduces the overall amount of work. Instead of planting a few seeds and carefully watching them, I planted a lot of seeds and allowed nature to do the rest of the work.

    Using a rebar spike I stabbed the ground and dropped a seed, over and over, until over 100 were planted. The idea to plant this way came from this movie. If none of them come up, no biggie, the whole process took less than an hour. However, if some come up, then a lot will, and the chances of a few surviving are better than slim.
    handful of pawpaw seeds

    After I planted them I received this email back from a paw paw expert: “Maples are difficult trees to plant pawpaws under because the maple roots are so aggressive and out compete the pawpaw roots for water and nutrients. At least that is true in general if not very every situation. Pawpaws grow very often in association with tulip poplar and ash. If your soil is deep and rich, then maple is probably okay.”  So I guess I have to hope our soil is “deep and rich.”

    The seeds will first grow a 10 inch taproot before emerging above ground next Fall. Sometime in August 2010, I’ll be looking for tiny seedlings and hoping that somehow they’ll survive the following Winter and grow into trees.

    I zipped up all my pawpaw research and you can download it here. Also, this page is loaded with info.

  • paw paws, awesome

    The paw paw genus (asimina) contain the largest edible fruit indigenous to this continent (says wikipedia).  They apparently taste like a cross between a banana, a mango, and a pineapple. I’ve just begun learning about paw paws and recently was at a paw paw forest about an hour away.
    Paw paw forest
    The big leaves give the plant away, but the fruit are even more distinguishable.
    Paw paw fruit
    Paw paws a very fascinating, I would recommend the wikipedia entry as a good introduction. Kentucky State University is building a great website for paw paw information and research of which there is surprisingly little. Compared to standard orchard fruits, not a lot of people are working with paw paws because they have a very short shelf life. For the backyard orchardist who doesn’t have to worry about shipping and storage, the paw paw could be an easy delicacy. Due to the fact that they’re indigenous, they are extremely pest resistant.

    There’s one paw paw on the Urbana Fruit Map in someone’s yard and they’re not overhanging the sidewalk (yet), so don’t take any!

    Paw paws grow densely in the understory layer. Next time you take a ride down Washington St stop and take a look at the beautiful trees with the big leaves.

  • Red Currants

    redcurrants1
    From the garden!

    I have too many great memories of eating red currants off bushes in Poland as a little girl. The polish are obsessed with red and black currants. It’s definately a flavor (of jam or juices), much like Americans have grape and cherry. I haven’t come across any red currants while in the states and I was overjoyed when I found these growing in the garden.

  • fruit fruit everywhere

    Today as I biked through Champaign running some errands, I decided to be leisurely and leave room to notice what fruit trees I could.  To my delight I found serviceberry trees in several places, as well as mulberry bushes and trees, two cherry trees I didn’t know about, and even a plum tree!

    I was eager to update the Urbana-Champaign Fruit Map before I forgot the locations.  The UC Fruit Map is a community map on Google Maps, which anyone can add to.  Here’s what we got so far:

    Serviceberries, a.k.a. juneberries, marked with blue circle-dots, are turning purple in some places, seeing as it’s June already.  They are roughly like blueberries but have larger seeds which might taste like almonds.  Some call them even tastier than blueberries, but not me!  We have some in our garden, but they’re also found around town in droves, especially in landscaped areas around town in droves.

    Mulberries, marked in cyan circle-dots, are just coming in now. They tend to grow on the edges of lots, fortunately for sidewalk harvesters. Later in the season you can find them by the dark purple stains of fallen fruit on the sidewalks.

    Urbana-Champaign dwellers past and future, please enjoy the map and add what you know!

    UPDATE: I exported the kml file of the fruit map. KML is way of storing geographic data in XML. I’m trying to find a way to get the Fruit map on my handheld device, and this is a step towards that. Also its a way to get to the data on the fruit map without going through Google’s server each time. Link just tested it and it works!