Yes, We Will Have No Bananas!

Having lived in Russia during the early 1990s, when bananas were a novel rarity that merited standing in line for hours, I enjoyed this article and its focus on the strange ubiquity of bananas in the United States. The article doesn't mention the parthenocarpy (sterility) of the (cultivated) banana, which makes it very difficult to breed new cultivars that are resistant to a given disease.

Op-Ed Contributor - Yes, We Will Have No Bananas - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com: "Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening...The final piece of the banana pricing equation is genetics. Unlike apple and orange growers, banana importers sell only a single variety of their fruit, the Cavendish. There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas — most of them in Africa and Asia — but except for an occasional exotic, the Cavendish is the only banana we see in our markets. It is the only kind that is shipped and eaten everywhere from Beijing to Berlin, Moscow to Minneapolis.

I guess I never knew that we ate Cavendish. It kind of bums me out, since I have a huge Cavendish with tons of fruit ripening out in my garden now. I agree that Cavendish is less tasty than other kinds of bananas I've tried. I have a NOID banana growing on the side of my house that every year and a half produces forty or fifty pounds of really tasty, custardy, half-size bananas.

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

Well, let's leave aside the obvious geographism here, in the Deep South, where we're far closer to banana growing conditions than to apple land. (Ignoring, for the moment, the tropical apples growing in my grove.) $150 a barrel oil will surely change the way we eat as much as it changes the way we commute.

Fruits in early spring

Flordaprince peach tree, leafing out. I pruned this tree back heavily in December.

A breba fig from what I'm pretty sure is an 'Alma' fig. There are about a dozen ripening fruit on the tree. It's my only fig in the ground (the rest are in pots). Last season, it's first in the garden, it produced a couple of handfuls of fruit. I prunded it back very hard, to about thirty-two inches, which I'm sure cost me a bunch of early figs, but was necessary because the fig was growing out of bounds. On the fig forum, I've read how many growers cut their figs down to as little as eighteen inches every year -- sacrificing the brebi crop, but keeping the trees very productive in the fall. (This would obviously only work in hot climates like here.)

'Dorsett' apple, breaking dormancy. Anna is still sleeping...

Sambokan lemon blooms. I have five citrus in my yard, and they're blooming in a series, perfuming the whole courtyard.

Blooms on my new 'Sri Kambangum' carambola (from ECHO's fruit nursery). It's in a three-gallon pot; I might move it to a seven-gallon, or put it in the ground. I haven't decided... It's grafted, so it might even produce some fruit this season. It's technically out of its zone here, but I have a Brazilian friend up the street growing several largish ones with only minor frost damage this year. She harvested hundreds of fruits.

My espalier system

I built this espalier frame during December, using three-quarter inch electrical conduit and fittings from chainlink fences. I've planted two kinds of tropical apples (Dorsett and two Annas) and one pear tree (Hood). The length of the trellis is about thirty-five feet.

On either end, I have grapes (Black Spanish and Nesbitt). Along the privacy fence behind the trellis, I have planted Bababerry raspberries and a Fry Scuppernong grapes.

That's four trees and two grape vines in a space that's about one-hundred square feet, or the space that's typically recommended for one tree in a commercial orchard.

You can't see it in this picture, but I've started to run heavy wire every couple of feet to trellis the limbs of the fruit trees, starting at one foot from ground level (for the micro-sprinkler irrigation line) and then about two feet, four feet, and six feet. (I've only run the first two wires so far.) The trellis is seven feet high, which is more or less the exact height of my comfortable reach. (I didn't use a tape measurer when building it, instead relying on my body to tell me how high the trellis should be built and how low the first wire should be strung. The first wire for the tree limbs is exactly as high as I can comfortably reach down, about two feet.)

The whole idea is a system of "human-sized" plants: I won't get on my knees nor will I climb a ladder. It's a rejection of the commercial orchard ethos -- I don't want to maximize production: Instead, I want to minimize inputs and maximize long and varied harvest -- the "backyard orchard culture" promoted by Dave Wilson. What's more, all my reading about tropical apples and pears indicates that horizontal growth and aggressive pruning is the way to maximize production.


Here is my inspiration...

Low-chill apples for the tropics and subtropics

An interesting overview (click for full-sized version) of the lineage and history of various low-chill apples from this excellent book.

Apples in the subtropics

I read most of Biology of Apples and Pears, and though much of it went way over my head, I learned a lot about apples and pears in the subtropics. The passage (click on it for a full-sized version) above sums up the techniques: 1) Horizontal training of branches to release lateral buds from apical dominance; 2) Leaf stripping to prevent return to deep dormancy; 3) Depriving the trees of water. All these mechanical treatments cause the trees to enter dormancy, undergoing essentially the same physiological changes that cold weather causes up north.

Dormancy, according to this book, is a very poorly understood phenomenon, a result of multiple causes that include, but are not limited to, cold weather.

My Willis Orchard order has arrived!

My order from Willis arrived yesterday, waiting for me on the front porch when I got back from New York City last night. The plants were well-packed, and as advertised, if not a bit bigger. Those are the Anna apples on the left, mulberry and pomegranate center left and right. Mixed in there are the FlordaPrince peach, Dorsett apples, Hood pear (still need to get another pear for cross-fertilization), and Bababerry raspberries. Let's see... a Fry Scuppernong and a Black Spanish grape.
I'll have to whack a full foot off the pears and apples to put them on my trellis (pictures forthcoming!).
They all look like sticks now, but give them a nine-month growing season (March through mid-November), lots of water, judicious fertilizer... they'll be huge next October.

Double-cropping of apples and peaches in the tropics

This is the stuff I'm thinking of...

DOUBLE CROPPING OF TEMPERATE FRUITS IN THE TROPICS Apples and peaches are also grown in several locations in the tropics where no chilling is received. The culture depends on defoliation to induce the next growth cycle after flower initiation has occurred but before cold-requiring dormancy arises. Extensive commercial apple production occurs in East Java, Indonesia, 8°S latitude and bi-annual cropping of peaches occurs in Venezuela, 10°N. No winter chilling occurs under those conditions. Two crops are harvested each year and cropping is staggered so that fruit may be harvested every day of the year. Success is dependent on relatively uniform temperatures, favourable for tree growth and
fruit development all year round. Successive growth cycles are induced by artificial defoliation after flower initiation occurs but before cold-requiring dormancy develops. There are some important requirements for successful apple culture in the tropics (Notodimedjo et al., 1981). These include: (1) a moderate temperature regime conducive to episodic growth; (2) many growing points on each tree; (3) cessation of shoot growth by terminal bud formation; (4) adequate time for flower initiation to occur; and (5) synchronous bud burst after flower initiation. In Java, the basic system to produce double cropping of apple involves leaf stripping to stimu- late flowering (Janick, 1974). There are regularly two crops per year, typically one in April and the second in October. Notodimedjo et al. (1981) demonstrated that bud burst and flower emergence could be induced at any time of the year by hand defoliation. At the time of defoliation there are high levels of gibberellins and cytokinins in the apices and ABA and other inhibitors in the subtending leaves. Cessation of shoot growth by terminal bud formation depends on competition between a large number of growing points. Flower initiation follows terminal bud for- mation but subsequent flower development is slow until after harvest and defoliation. Physiological dormancy of terminal buds is avoided by defoliation within a month of harvest. No chilling requirement is apparent and no chilling temperatures
occur. Dormancy of most lateral buds is not broken by defoliation. Burst of lateral buds is increased dramatically by bud slicing, partially by branch bending and, under some conditions, by ethephon treatment. There is no evidence for growth control mechanisms that differ from those known in the temperate zone. The requirements for flowering are not met naturally in the tropics but are achieved by manipu- lative treatments notably branch bending and hand defoliation. Although the growth cycle of apples in the tropics is visually quite different from that in the temperate zone, the endogenous mechanisms of growth regulation do not differ appreciably. This has consequences for research. Whereas in the temperate zone each stage of growth occurs only once a year, in the tropics growth control mechanisms may be studied throughout the year as each stage of growth may be found at any time on different trees and bi-annually on any one tree.

My final order from Willis Orchard

• Southern Bababerry Raspberry Plant - 2 Year (6 plants)
• Anna Apple Tree - 2-3' Seedling (2 plants)
• Dorsett Golden Apple Tree - 2-3' Seedling
• Hood Pear Tree - 2-3'
• Seedling Black Beauty Mulberry Tree
• Grenada Pomegranate Tree - 2-3' (3 year Fruiting Size)
• FlordaPrince Peach Tree - 3-4'

About $130 total. I like the fact that their shipping is straight-up 25% of the total order. I got small seedlings in case I decide to espalier these... I'm still waffling.

My 3' tall peach tree hit 12' after one season this past year, so I decided to go inexpensive and get seedlings. I might have to wait an additional year, but the small trees will give me the chance to decide on initial pruning schemes.