aPieceOfGarden

The UF Sun Peach that I planted is doing incredibly great.  Just a few months ago the tree was planted and now its full of almost-ready beautiful red-yellow colored peaches:

We have a tenant using the Screech Owl Box:

Honey Bee pollinating SweetHeart Lychee:

In a previous post, I mentioned a new low-chill Peach tree variety called UF Sun.  I was able to obtain one from Just Fruits and Exotics.  Here is the tree planted in the front yard where it will receive the most cool wind from the North.  Right behind it you can see a small Atemoya tree planted:

This year I thought I would try to make a Canistel Pie from all the Canistel.  It was delicious!

Recently, the University of Florida developed a peach tree variety with even less chill hour requirements than the “Florida Prince”.  The new variety is called “UF Sun”.  It would be nice to hear if anyone is growing this new variety in the deep south of Florida such as Homestead.  Also, it will be interesting to see how it compares to the one of the best varieties for South Florida known as the “Florida Prince” since this new variety seems to require even less chill hours and produces bigger peaches than the “Florida Prince” according to some.

When you think of Bananas in South Florida, the name William O. Lessard will come up.  In the November/December 2010 article of “Tropical Fruit News” a magazine published by the Rare Fruit Council International, William talks about his plans to print a second edition of his book The Complete Book of Bananas.  According to William, the second edition will have a few more varieties and recipes on how to cook Bananas.  The first edition of the book is out of print and is very expensive to purchase.  I can’t wait to get a copy of the second edition of his book and learn from one of the experts in this field.  Here is a picture of the cover of the first edition:

On a recent trip to Peru, I stumbled upon a very interesting fruit.  It is known in Peru as Aguaje:

I received my order of Ladybugs from Growquest Growers.  I took some pictures of how I released them.  It was very easy, I just opened the bag a little and layed it on top of the trees.  They slowly start to crawl out. Ladybugs take care of getting rid of some of the bad pests on fruit trees and vegetables.  I highly recommend Growquest Growers because of their quality and fast shipping.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my garden.  It is the pitaya flower blooming.  Each flower fully blooms only one time a year at night from sunset to sunrise.  I also used the ocation to hand pollinate the flower, lets see if we get some fruit…