Great Links for Information on Fruits

The California Rare Fruit Growers  (CRFG) has useful information on cultivation and some of the named varieties for a couple of dozen fruits.  This link is direct to these "fruit facts on line", not the CRFG home page.  Two links that may be of particular interest on the home page (besides fruit facts) are "Tidbits of Information" and "Related Web Sites".  The latter contains a link to nurseries, some of which are in the San Diego area.

Fruits of Warm Climates by J. Morton is an out of print book that has been put on line.  You can find information on more fruits that provided by the Calif. Rare Fruit Growers, but it is not as up to date.


"Good" Pesticides

The (nearly) organic gardener has an increasing arsenal of weapons available for dealing with pests.  Here are a few that I know about.


Fig and Passionfruit Cuttings

If you can pick them up from me at UCSD, I can provide the following cuttings.  See CRFG for information on the varieties.  If interested in cuttings, email me.
1. Passionfruit, variety Frederick (a rapidly growing evergreen vine with fruit Aug. to Feb.)
2. Fig, variety Osborne Prolific (a potentially large tree with large brown fruit in the Fall)


Soil Preparation

Soil preparation is essential in much of San Diego since our soil is often either mostly sand or mostly clay. I've no experience with sand, but we moved into a new home in 1995.  The soil had so much clay that the builder had to use specially tensioned slabs because clay expands considerably when wet.  I prepared the backyard soil for under $1 per square foot plus a lot of labor.  Things are growing great.  The unprepared front yard is not doing well.  Below is what I did.  It's just my own experience, so I don't know how it will work for someone else and I don't know if everything I did is essential.

Since then I've been composting and have fertilized.  By the way, if your limited in composting space the way I am, you can use the stuff as mulch long before it's fully broken down.  This halves the turn-around time.  Also if you have a lot of leaves, consider getting an electric leaf blower/vacuum.  Unlike the gasoline powered ones electric leaf blowers can be run as vacuums.  In that mode, leaves are shredded by the fan and deposited into a bag.  They can be added to the compost where they break down more quickly and mat up less.  They can also be used as mulch. If you wet them down after applying them, they seem to blow much less than the unshredded leaves and, of course, they feed the soil more quickly, too.  I chose my blower by looking in Consumer Reports.  They cost about $70-$80.