From The Santa Cruz Sentinel

September 8, 2005

Spartan and Hudson Golden Gem apples fill a box in Joe Stabile's Hill View Farm barn. (Dan Coyro / Sentinel)

Unique and unusual fruit adds to gardener’s challenge

Abbie Blair: Native Plants

Do your taste buds start dancing at the thought of a homegrown fruit? Are you willing to seek out uncommon plant material and boldly push your garden’s microclimate to produce the unusual? Then rare fruit growing may be for you.

Plan to attend the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) and North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) Festival of Fruit, ‘Eyes on Apples’ this weekend in Santa Cruz.

Approximately 300 rare fruit growers are expected to gather for their annual meeting. Take advantage of this premiere opportunity to find out where to find plants and the secrets of how to grow them successfully in our area. Delight your taste buds at the fruit tasting and purchase plants to grow.

How rare do you dare

Fruit is usually considered rare when it is not native to a region and is not grown commercially for mass market. The list of rare fruit possibilities for this area is almost limitless due to our mild Mediterranean climate and abundant microclimates.

"What’s wonderful in general about this area is that we can grow almost every fruit except for tropical," says Nancy Garrison, a longtime rare fruit grower from San Jose. So, let your taste buds be your guides and consider the possibilities.

If an apple a day is your motto, try it the rare fruit way.

"GRAVENSTEIN apples are one of the best early varieties. They are great for cooking and sauce," says Joe Stabile, owner of Hill View Farm and grower of more than 100 apple varieties in Watsonville. They are aromatic, crisp, juicy and full of old-fashioned tart-sweet flavor.

WOLF RIVER APPLES are the original supersized fruit weighing in at about "three pounds and are great for cooking and making pies," says Stabile. The flesh is firm, cream-colored with a rich sweet flavor.

HONEYCRISP apples will not come back in the lunch box at the end of the day. Developed by the University of Minnesota in 1991 these apples ripen just as school gets into full swing in September. They have a beautiful red-orange blush skin. The flesh is sweet, crisp and wonderfully juicy.

Explore

"MULBERRIES are heavy producers of small seedless fruit ripening "from early July to late August for about a six-week period," says Nancy Garrison. They are so fragile they cannot be marketed. The fruit ranges in flavor depending on variety from a sweet boysenberry flavor to a sweet honey flavor.

MANDARIN MELON BERRY is a member of the mulberry family and rarely grown in our area. It produces 2½ -half inch raspberry-looking berries in late summer that can be eaten fresh and mixed into salads. "It has a taste like watermelon and makes a great landscape plant," says Garrison.

WHITE SAPOTE. If you can imagine eating a fruit that tastes like flan but picked right off a tree, then you can imagine eating a white sapote. "You can’t tell the difference" says Garrison. It has a wonderful "vanilla, banana, pineapple flavor."

PAWPAW produces a delectable large fruit three to five inches long with a custard-like taste, somewhat like a banana or a cherimoya. It can be eaten fresh or used in juices and ice cream.

Rare everywhere

Short on space? Try a citrus plant in half a wine barrel. The flavor of a CALAMONDIN fruit can be described as a cross between a tangerine, lemon and lime. The juice is fragrant and can be blended with water and sugar to make an ade. Try a dwarf BEARSS LIME and harvest the leaves for Thai cooking recipes.

For backyard gardens: "The average back yard of six thousand square feet has enough room for 10 different varieties of fruit trees," says Garrison. If your passion outgrows your space, many fruits can be "espaliered or grafted," offers Garrison to maximize space.

Landscaped areas: "I always liked the concept of the edible landscape. Something that is aesthetic and provides food," says Chuck Rust, President Monterey Bay Chapter, California Rare Fruit Growers. Rust purchased a five-acre parcel in Royal Oaks in 1984. Over the years, Rust has created a landscape of "cacti and roses with edible deciduous fruit trees, avocados and citrus," says Rust "that I can graze through."

"It is always interesting to put seed into the ground and see what comes up," says Joe Moore, a rare fruit grower from Watsonville. On less than an acre, Moore has collected more than 100 varieties since 1972 by finding room for them in just about every location. "Evergreen plants are dotted in the front landscape and deciduous trees are in the back yard," says Moore.

Abbie Blair, a member of the California Native Plant Society, has a degree in horticulture and has spent 25 years in plant and cut flower production, at one point operating a nursery in Gilroy. She lives on Mount Madonna and is waging hand to vine combat against the ivy and vinca displacing the native plants. Contact her at svreeken@santacruzwsentinel.com.

If You Go

WHAT: California Rare Fruit Growers convention. Tours, speakers and other events through Saturday.

WHEN: Friday: 10:30 a.m. registration.

1 p.m. to 4 p.m. welcome and speakers.

4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. fruit tasting.

Saturday: 8 a.m. registration begins.

9 a.m. to 5 p.m. speakers.

5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. fruit tasting.

WHERE: UCSC Inn & Conference Center, 611 Ocean St., Santa Cruz.

COST: Walk in registration, $40 per person.

DETAILS: www.crfg.org