Yesterday was my most recent trip to an Asian supermarket where I found a variety of interesting melons that I have never eaten. I love melons so I wanted to try some new ones. I asked an Asian shopper who was buying them what they were like. She told me one was very sweet and the other crisp and not so sweet.
Most of the Oriental melons were very small, enough for one person, or for a light eater two could have a little half. So I bought the two different Oriental melons. I liked them, they could be nice serving “dishes” to fill the cavity with sorbets.
Diospyros kaki (Persimmon or Kaki)by Arthur Chapman
I enjoy going to Asian or Indian food markets because of the variety of exotic, to my eyes, fruits and vegetables they carry. I always come home with a new taste treat. Some I love and some I don’t care to try a second time. But the experience is so much fun.
I adore the Japanese or Asian persimmons- called Kaki in Japanese, though they originate in China and Korea, too. I like the non-astringent variety, which you eat when it is hard. The astringent types of persimmons, like the American persimmon, you must wait until the fruit is very, very soft to eat it. You can tell the difference in some of the persimmons because most of the non-astringent varieties are flatter in shape; the astringent ones seem to be shaped like acorns. I am not a connoisseur of Japanese persimmons, so I mostly buy fuyu persimmons which are the most readily available in supermarkets or in Chinatown or even my local food store. Persimmons are sold for a longer time period in Asian food markets. I look for the brightest orange ones I can find. Blemishes don’t seem to affect the taste. To see how to pick persimmons when buying, watch this video:
Someone asked TheGardenLady when is the best time of year to plant raspberries.
The best time to plant raspberry shrubs is early spring as soon as the soil can be properly prepared. You should plant the raspberries in an area that receives 6 to 8 hours of sunlight. If you want good information about planting raspberries, Ohio State University Extension has an excellent fact sheet. Though the raspberry shrubs will grow in many soils, the best soil for raspberries is sandy loam soils well supplied with organic matter. They like a well-draining area of slightly acid soil. Loamy soil is best for growing most plants. If you do not know what loam is check here. Raspberries must be kept free of weeds, watered when necessary, fertilized and pruned. (see here)
When you plant your garden, the first thing you should do is have the soil tested. The test will include the soil pH of the area of your garden where you want to plant. The pH is a scale from 0 through 14. From 0 to below 7, the soil is acidic. Above 7 the soil is alkaline. 7 is the neutral range where most plants will grow. Those soils that fall in the middle range can be changed a bit with soil amendments to make them more acidic or alkaline. To understand pH check out this site.
TheGardenLady gets soil kits that are sold through the Master Gardener office or county agricultural extension office because I believe they do the most comprehensive testing. Of course you can buy soil testing kits and do it yourself. The results of the extension’s test tell you what your soil type is and what amendments you need to get the garden soil ready for the type of plants you want to grow. Soil pH affects the solubility of minerals or nutrients that in turn affects the plant’s growth.
If you use the Master Gardener or extension soil test kits, after you receive your test results you can go to the Master Gardener or extension office to have them explain your test results and they will give you free advice on amending your soil to make your soil meet the soil pH requirements the plants need. You can amend soil that is in the neutral pH range but you should know that there is a limit to how much you can change the soil pH. If your soil is very alkaline, it is expensive and not practical to change the soil pH to make it acidic.
If you know that your soil is acidic below are five fruit-bearing plants that do best in acidic soil:
This photo of canned fruits was taken in the town of Levidi in the Peloponnese.
My daughter and my son with his family visited Greece this August. They spent a week with friends on the island of Santorini, a volcanic island where there are 600 species of plant life. The main edible crops growing on Santorini are grapes and a unique type of tomato called the Santorini tomato. See here. My son and his family then traveled through mainland Greece after my daughter left for Eastern Europe.
The photo of the goat was taken in the village of Elaiochori in the Peleponnese. Elaiochori is where my son’s friend’s father is from. This farm was just down the road from where a US trained architect, is building his retirement home.
This bucolic scene was taken outside a small organic winery we visited in the village of Kapsia in the wine region of Mantinia, Peloponnese.
From Santorini Sempervivum
Before they left for Greece, I asked my children to please take photos of any flora and perhaps fauna in Greece for TheGardenLady blog. Here are some of the photos. A few of the plants TheGardenLady can not identify. Perhaps my readers could help.
TheGardenLady had written a post about exotic fruits found around the world. Today’s post is an update in what is happening in the science of the exotic fruit world.
The cherimoya or custard apple is said to be “the most the most delicious fruit known.” The reason it wasn’t commercial is because it had too many seeds. But plant scientists may be able to get rid of the seeds. They compare the custard apple to the banana. All the bananas in the market are seedless but did you know that in its native state the banana had 100 seeds?
Thanksgiving is over and after all the cooking, that generally means leftovers. I have never been a fan of leftovers, except for one; and that one is my homemade cranberry sauce. I used to buy it in cans until I learned how easy it is to make whole cranberry sauce from scratch. I buy the cranberries when they are on sale. I toss the bag into the freezer. When I am ready to use them, I rinse and cook the cranberries to serve with any type of fowl. In fact, my family thinks cranberry sauce is a necessity whenever I roast a chicken or a turkey -the cranberry sauce and chicken or turkey are a culinary marriage made in a heavenly kitchen. So for me, cranberry sauce is not just for Thanksgiving.
I remember when my father planted a plum tree that was supposed to have 5 different types of plums on one tree. We couldn’t wait for that first year’s harvest. I don’t ever remember 5 different types of plums on the tree, that was a bit of a disappointment. But I do remember that there seemed to be more than one kind of plum on the tree that first year. And they were delicious. After that first year I only remember one type of plum on the tree and the yield was always sparse. But l always loved plums and couldn’t wait for the plum tree to have fruit. And I have always loved plums after that.
Plums were the right sweet tart for my tongue and the skin was smooth, not furry. My mother rarely bought fruit at the market- if we didn’t harvest our own fruit, we didn’t buy fruit because we were so poor. Except for Italian prune plums, which I still buy if I see them. But the bought plums were never as good as the plums on our plum tree.
It is plum season in California where we get so many of our wonderful plums. The season is really just beginning. People refer to plums as stone fruit. I had never heard this expression applied to fruits with pits until my son moved to California.
I try all the different plums as they arrive in my supermarket, but my favorite is one that has smooth and almost black skin and the pulp inside is purple as well. I wish someone would tell me which plum this is.My son in California, who also loves this plum, says it is the Santa Rosa plum. But the information I see is that Santa Rosa plums have amber flesh. See here.  Can anyone tell me what is the name of the plum that has the purple pulp that is so heavenly? Is it a variety of the Santa Rosa plum?
TheGardenLady received this question from Bluelytes:
Would you know where I could obtain seeds of these russian watermelon varieties?:Â Podarck Solatsa or Skorospelyi Sakharnyi
Watermelon is one of my favorite fruits - if you can find them when they are ripe and fully sweet. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days. When shopping for a watermelon if you see the stem end still remaining on the melon, one can tell that the watermelon was harvested early. This is a clue that generally the watermelon will be a disappointment. Hopefully, also, when you buy a watermelon, you will get one harvested locally so that you know the melon could ripen longer on the field.
summer by carrie227
China is the number one producer of watermelons. If Chinese watermelon are sold in US stores, they were probably picked before they ripened.
Your question intrigued me. I imagine that you are requesting a watermelon that you know is super sweet. So I did some research to try to find the seeds you yearn for.
I learned that watermelons are thought to have originated in the Kalahari desert of Africa. That makes sense to me because when I was a child, my parents planted a field of watermelon in a year that had a severe drought. We were surprised to see that even when the plants seemed to be dying we had the best harvest of watermelons we ever had. We had so many watermelons we didn’t know what to do with them; so we children would break them open, eat only the heart and have watermelon fights with the leftover watermelon flesh. Pink snowballs in the hot summer. We had so many we couldn’t give them away fast enough.
Family from Philadelphia drove down to the farm one day and loaded their car with so many watermelons that the car could barely move. Later we learned that just before they reached Philadelphia, their car had broken down from so much weight. It happened on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
Winter is the time when TheGardenLady dreams of delicious freshly harvested fruit. We are lucky to live in an age when we can buy and eat fruit all year long. But between harvesting the fruits in countries like Chile and eating them when one buys them in the Supermarket here in the Northeast during the winter, leaves a lot to be desired, tastewise. Sadly, most fruit sold is tastless.
I recently read a book about people who travel around the world hunting for exotic fruits. The book is called The “Fruit Hunters” by Adam Leith Gollner. The book is filled with fascinating facts about fruits and about people who are obsessed with finding them. Someone said that there are about 2 trillion different types of food in the world on the 7 continents. Even if there aren’t that many fruits and vegetables, there are just a handful of fresh fruits and vegetables sold in our supermarket with very few fruit choices ( with the new Asian food stores popping up around the country, there are a few more fresh fruits offered for sale.)
