I really like Shinsui, Hosui, Drippin Honey, Shin Li, and Korean Giant in terms of Asian pears (listed in ripening order here). I get a spread out harvest over about 2 months with those varieties.
Any good Mt Etna fig will do for productive in ground culture. Some tasty examples I grow are Hardy Chicago, Malta Black, Norella, Kesariani, Red Lebanese, Black Bethlehem, and Navid’s Unknown Dark Greek. You are in zone 6b like I, but perhaps you could have warmer summers or a slightly longer growing season being farther south.
Sorry, I didn’t actually answer your question about which is my favorite. I can’t just pick 1 so I have many.
I started growing veggies as a kid with my parents. I later became a seasonal gardener at a amusement park which reintroduced me to gardening. I really like fruits more than veggies though so I started growing fruits. Plus I was able to grow fruit that would be expensive otherwise. A donut peach at the store is around 60 cents a peach here, comice pears come in a box of 8-11 and you pay 24 dollars for it and 13 in shipping, warren pears cost 34 dollars and 10 in shipping. All of those are super good for that will cost a arm and a leg but you can grow them at home and get a decent amount. I bought some donut peaches at the end of this year and have Warren and Comice trees on order for next year.
Once a friend showed me how to graft I was hooked 20+ years ago, but I’ve kept some kind of truck garden going since the middle seventies; tried a little gardening as a kid, as Dad encouraged it and the neighbors tended to serious gardening. And grocery store tomatoes just don’t compare, as a rule.
Now I just grow tomatoes, garlic, basil, lettuce and spinach, green beans, snap peas,leeks or shallots. Grocery store spuds and onions are fine and cheap so I buy those. I tend to avoid space hogs like squash and heavy feeders like corn.
What got you all into growing fruit/food?
My grandmas on both side especially, but also my parents always grew stuff… So when i was like 5 my grandma were bringing me guineas and chickens and plants etc… When i was 8 i picked my first pumpkins from a patch my grandma showed me how to plant and helped me hoe.
What’s your favorite fruit to grow?
Persimmons! That was my first thing to graft too, as a teen. In Louisiana where i grew up, i had lots of citrus and picked bananas too.
How many years have you been growing?
Hmm so i just turned 36 so i can brag of 30 years experience lol… Though im sure an adult could learn everything i know in more like 15 years especially with this site!(im still not an adult )
What’s something you’d like to try or planning to plant/purchase/add to your collection the upcoming year?
More Persimmons!! More cherries! And add a greenhouse next summer to grow Citrus and the dark rich mexican type avocadoes and my potted ginger etc.
And most importantly, why grow fruit? Well, its in my blood like eating ice cream… I cant not do it… The funnest thing is to get down in the dirt all dirty tending to things yeah its cheaper and less back pain to buy walmart stuff i have ankylising spondelytis so i do suffer from my digging but theres a satisfaction in growing fruit that even eating fruit doesnt quench!! I guess really its a crazy endeaver but yeah…
Also some of what i grow i couldnt get otherwise… Like persimmons, figs, satsumas, even home raised peach or tomato tastes better than walmart etc…
Plus it spreads genetic diversity and helps preserve rare fruits… Like pawpaws and hybrid persimmons when my orchard has buckets of fruit one day I plan to drive across kansas and throw seeds in every creek bottom one day this state will have wild pawpaw and hybrid persimmon like its never had…
That’s amazing! You’re blessed to have such great grandmas to guide your green thumb.
And I love that you spread the seeds. Every batch of wild persimmon and pawpaw I always save back whatever seeds I don’t plan to use or plant and sprinkle them in certain spots. There’s a huge area where I live in eastern Kentucky with an elk population so I mostly just spread them around that area like a fruit tree fairy haha!
There! Steve said it all for me. I, too, grow fruits because I hate the lawn. I do not like mowing it; I will not water it; I want it to be gone; I want stuff I can eat to overgrow and kill it, kill it forever! If a grass doesn’t make grain, can’t be used as a cover crop, or can’t be made into a sweet syrup, I’ve got no use for it!
I like figs. I like pears, both Euro and Asian. I like persimmons; I’m trying to get more into those. Watermelons are awfully good. I also like pie, and things that can be made into pie; but I really shouldn’t eat so much pie.
I grew up around gardening and some fruit trees—mostly apples. I didn’t really start getting into growing plants myself until college, and I started gardening in earnest during my graduate school years, which would’ve been a score of years ago. I started out with practical stuff like carrots and cabbage. I’ve only been doing fruit trees proper for a few years. I’m just now trying to figure out grafting, and I’m still awful at pruning/training. (Wonder why I never post my trees? I’m ashamed to!) I like both the practical—like Kieffer pears—and the merely fun and impractical like potted pineapples and citrus.
Probably more 'simmons. I’m thinking about getting into hardy prickly pears, too—just for fun.
I have grown something as long as I can remember. Carrot tops as a kid avocado from pits when a little older. Started in earnest with fruit trees about 20 years ago but my circumstance prevented any real harvest.
Fast forward to ten years ago when I bought a house in rural Brownsburg Virginia. I dug up every fruit tree I could take with me and jumped headlong into growing. Now I have about 50 trees, pears, peaches, plums, apples, nectarines. I learned tons through trial and error and thankfully ended up here. I’m almost 65 so I could easily say 55 years of planting something and 20 years at fruit trees.
I have really enjoyed my first decent apple harvest–finally–on my MM 111 root stocks. Somehow, though, a sweet juicy white peach is probably my favorite.
I absolutely love grafting and I’m looking forward to adding new varieties. My whip and tongue leaves a lot to be desired, as well as my placement of grafts so I have a lot to learn and to look forward to. I am particularly thankful at finding this site. If you walk around my orchard you see poor crotch angles and scaffolds too close and all those things that I wish I knew earlier. It’s the learning and experimenting and successes that keeps me going. I hope to do this as long as I am able.
)
those figs look amazing!
too !!