Houston Chronicle by Lisa Gray Feb. 7, 2020
On Saturday, Feb. 15, it’s likely that more than a thousand Houstonians will line up not for a concert or a limited-edition sneaker, but for fruit trees. Urban Harvest’s annual fruit tree sale, now in its 20th year, is the largest one-day fruit-tree sale in the nation, a Black Friday dressed in leaves. It is also a surprisingly spiritual exercise.
You may not realize it yet, but you need a fruit tree in your life. Here’s why:
1. You need fruit: It’s a food group. Fresh-picked homegrown fruit is more nutritious and often far better-tasting than the stuff you buy at the grocery store. (Compare a homegrown Blue Java banana to a standard grocery-store banana. I dare you.) Home-grown fruit varieties don’t have to be tough enough to ship, don’t have to play well with mechanized pickers, don’t have to withstand long periods in a produce aisle. Loquats are hard to find in grocery stores but easy to love.
2. A fruit tree will focus your attention on the world in front of you, right here, right now. Here in Houston, you can’t move to the planting and harvest times of New England or even Austin. Our climate is subtropical, moving toward tropical; our soil is mostly gumbo clay. Your yard is different than your neighbor’s. And inside your yard, some spots have better drainage, get more sun, are more exposed to wind. Maybe you only have a sunny balcony: Fine. If you have room for a large container, you can grow Nules clementines or Little Ruby figs.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/gardening/article/Growing-fruit-in-Houston-is-easy-Cheap-And-good-15034885.php
