It’s the middle of November, and in central Alabama, that means it’s time to plan your fruit tree planting for December and January. That’s why when our friend and extension agent Mallory Kelley asked us to speak about fruit, we chose this time of year.

Today’s podcast is our presentation on “Growing Fruit at Home” to the gardening class at the AUM Center for Lifelong Learning. It’s longer than usual for a podcast but shorter than the version we delivered in class. It includes a listing of fruits in central Alabama in descending order of how easy they are to grow in central Alabama.

Listen – 36:24

We harvested all but two of our persimmons today ahead of a 27 degree freeze, marking the end of our 2014 fruit season. The reason for leaving those two is just to see if they can stand 27 degrees. We work to stretch the fresh fruit season, and we’re proud to say it now runs 8 1/2 months.

• Here’s the IPM article Amanda promised us on trap cropping.
• Here’s the product my brother uses to protect against plum curculio, Surround WP.
• Here’s the ACES publication that has that nice chart showing the overlapping harvest seasons of the various fruits, ANR-0053-B.

The Longleaf Breeze Perennial Farm Calendar