>> thanks for sharing your garden with us. Right now we'll start the new year off by
talking about one of my favorite January topics and that's growing futures fruits in State
of Texas. We're joined by Jim Kamas who is with the
extension service here in Texas, he is a fruit specialist and he works out in the Fredricksburg
area, also assistant professor. Thanks so much for being with us.
>> my pleasure. >> good to have you back to the Central Texas
gardener. People love the idea of growing fruit in their
yard and we're going to be talking about some varieties that don't often pop up on everybody's
radar. And I'm really excited to learn about some
of the new advances and new varieties that you're working with.
We're going to start off by talking about Blackberries.
And this is something that I know produces well in Central Texas.
What are some of the latest varieties that are working for you and what are some of the
things that people can expect from trying to grow blackberries here in Central Texas?
>> Blackberries are a pretty adaptive crop. They do well in Sandy sources, but do well
in the caliche as long as you give them some iron.
Our standard varieties start out with the 1959 A&M release Brazos.
It's a tart berry, a little seedy. We will grow Rossborrow.
Our biggest advance in Blackberry variety has been one that was done at the university
of Arkansas about seven or eight years ago called QIOWA.
It's very vigorous, ripens from the 10th of June to the 10th of July and extends our traditional
season. It's a huge berry.
It averages between nine and 11 grams. It's got exceptional quality.
So that's really been a huge addition to our thorny Blackberry lineup.
>> and it's something good for fresh eating as well as for preserves and things like that?
>> absolutely. It's probably the best quality of any of the
Blackberries we pick over the summer. >> it's hard for me to imagine a Blackberry
the size of a ping pong ball. >> it doesn't take many to fill a pint.
>> or choke a few squirrels. >> these are all the thorny varieties that
you reference. That's an important distinction because some
people are wary about the thorny Blackberries because these are rambunctious shrubs.
>> absolutely. It's very vigorous and it has wicked thorns,
but with that comes some additional benefits. Thorny varieties are usually much higher yielding
than thornless. Also you won't have the problems with birds
and squirrels with thorny varieties that you do on thornless.
But out of the university of Arkansas that's the best breeding program for berries in the
south. We do have a thornless variety that's very
well adapted to Central Texas and it's called Apache, it's about a 700 hour variety, very
vigorous for a thornless variety. Good high quality fruit, just not quite the
big yields you would expect from a thornless variety.
>> you said 700 hour variety. What does that mean?
>> it's interesting because it wasn't until a few years ago I realized that Blackberries
also have chilling requirements. It's how much winter chilling typically to
found is hours at or blow 45 degrees Fahrenheit over a winter.
It's important in breaking down the internal dormant si mechanisms and allowing the fruit
to grow normally in spring. If it's too low a requirement it's too early
and will freeze out. If it's too high it won't perform well.
>> I understand that Blackberries are all candidates for organic growers.
>> absolutely. They're one of our lowest inputs in terms
of insect pests there's really not much. Occasionally stink bugs will bother them,
but for non commercial growers that's not much of an issue.
We do have one fungal disease that gives us problems that is bad in wet years, but dormant
sprays of copper sulfate will do a good job of controlling that.
That and also removing the old Cains after it bears fruit.
>> so Blackberries a great candidate for Central Texas gardeners.
Sounds like really cool new varieties. Let's talk about an experiment that you have
going on right now in the Fredricksburg area. You can set it up for us, but I understand
you're working with a number of different fruit types for organic production.
>> yes. It's actually adjacent to our pierce disease
research facility in Fredricksburg. There was an acre that had nothing on it that
needed to be planted and crops that receive no insecticides.
It gave us the opportunity to put up a small sustainable fruits planting where we have
23 varieties of new pomegranates, 46 varieties of figs, 28 varieties of PEARs and the breeding
lines of the Blackberries. We're very excited about this.
>> that's a lot of varieties of some of these different things.
And some of these are brand new, I understand some of them just having entered the country
for the first time. >> they just came out of plant quarantine.
There was a Russian scientist who spent his career exploring pomegranates.
And this stuff came from his collection in Russia through plant quarantine and there's
been a planting established in brownwood with a private person, but we have a planting in
Fredricksburg for formal evaluation. >> let's take these different plants one at
a time. POMEGRAnates, I think of them as being ornamental
because their blooms are so showy and good screening plant for a lot of people.
>> the old standard is wonderful. That's the one variety we know does perform
fairly well. You don't quite have the yields that you do
in California. POMEGRANATES, they can suffer freeze injury.
Sometimes we have many trucks coming up. That's the one cultural practice you can use
is to try to thin those out so the shoots don't compete for light.
But right now we're still at our first growing season.
We haven't had a chance to look at the fruit so we don't really know what will be best.
We're looking for things that have cold hardiness, exceptional yield and exceptional variety.
>> and this one is called Coronado. >> that's one of the two standards we have
planted to see how this will work. >> very good.
Let's talk about the figs. Which varieties would you recommend?
>> that depends on what you want in a fig. Traditional variety that have very small seed
size that are very creamy are alma and CELESTE. There's another that was collected near Uvalde
called lemon. It's being propagated.
Then there's the old traditional brown turkey or Texas ever bearing that bears well even
when it gets frozen to the ground. But again the figs that we grow really aren't
the true Mediterranean type that are fruit. What we grow are called common figs that are
simply enlarged flowers. So again from the USDA germ plaza repository
we received about 42 selections and varieties from old breeding programs in California and
Hawaii and these are all things we're really interested in giving people more alternatives
than the simple three or four varieties we currently recommend.
>> it's been limited. It's fun to grow figs because they require
so little intervention. >> absolutely.
Even when they freeze to the ground, the same year or the year following they will bear
fruit. Really no insects, no diseases.
Occasionally we will run into fig rust in wet years, but copper is an organic solution
to that that does a fine job. >> another very low impact kind of fruit tree
that a lot of people enjoy growing here are PEARS.
>> absolutely. We are pretty much limited to growing the
fire fly tolerant PAERS. We can grow some fairly sensitive varieties.
My two favorites are Warren and AYERS. We're growing perennial crops here and crops
like Warren could take eight to 10 years to come into production.
The fruit quality really pays off. >> what's the Warren fruit quality like there?
>> it looks like a Bartlett in shape and it typically has a red blush.
This has kind of a lemon brown color with a red blush on it.
It's quite soft melting flesh and to be honest it's better than any Bartlett I've ever eaten.
A little small, but superb eating quality. >> real briefly, a lot of people think of
fruit trees as being problematic. It is true of things peaches, you get the
plum and a lot of the pitted fruits here do require interventions of some sort.
But you can if you're tactical about when you apply you can use organic methods to control
some of the really bad pests. >> for fungal diseases like brown root, good
pruning to increase air circulation does a a lot to alleviate the brown root.
And it doesn't matter if you use an insecticide that is organic or inorganic, timing is a
critical point. You need to apply those off petal fall to
a stage we call shuck split when the flower starts to break away from the enlarging fruit.
That's the time to apply the insecticides. >> the blossoms are off the tree, the bees
have gone away and you can see just the tip of that little baby fruit and you get the
shucks coming off. >> correct.
That's the time to spray. >> and you can use something like a ROTUM
product. >> pie read rums work as well too.
Fairly easy to control. >> it's a great way to stay organic with fruit
tree production here. I hope people with visit the website of the
extension service and learn more about the fruit.
Jim, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show.
This is the time of year. Get out there to the local nurseries and they
will be loaded up with the fruit trees for you.
>> appreciate you having me back. >> coming up is our friend skip Richter.
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