Thinking about a fruit orchard...

One of the innumerable reasons I complain about living in Central Florida is that I've always wanted a large fruit orchard, and growing fruit trees here in zone 9B is fairly difficult: Most deciduous fruit trees require 800+ chilling hours a year, but here, north of Orlando, we get around 400. And we cannot grow mangos and avocados because of our once or twice yearly frosts. Of course you can grow citrus (my property is at the center of Henry DeLand's original grove from the 1870s); and, if you're lucky, you can eke out a hand of bananas every once an a while. I like an orange now and again, but our one tree usually supplies more oranges than a small family like ours could care to eat.

Coming across the outfit Just Fruits and Exotics has really got me dreaming about what I can do to the rest of the backyard. They appear to specialize in species and cultivars that thrive in our hot, humid growing conditions. I'm already planning a long row of fig trees along the back fence, fronted by several hedgerows of blueberries and pomegranates. Maybe I'll mix a dwarf jujuba and into my large, eclectic bed in the center of the backyard. Perhaps I'll fill in the partly shady side lot (where our old grapefruit grew until some fungus felled it last year) with some persimons, bananas and mayhaws.

I doubt I'll have a hard time convincing the wife and kids to rent a trailer for the MINI Cooper and head out to Just Fruit in Crawfordville, FL at the beginning of November, just in time to enjoy the Florida Seafood Festival in nearby Apalachicola.