
My birthday was last week, and as a special treat I took a long lunch one day to visit JRN nursery. JRN is located off of Breen Road in northwest Houston, and is a truly amazing place. I knew they had tons of unique tropical plants, but I was unprepared for the huge inventory of fruit trees they had in stock. Usually nurseries don't keep many fruit trees in stock until the peak season in late winter and early spring, and typically all you can find in August are the leftovers. JRN was packed with citrus, persimmons, peaches, pears, peaches, and so on. They also seemed to have a really good varietal selection of each kind of fruit. I walked around for awhile, checked out the miracle fruit plants, and then got busy looking for some new additions for the greenhouse. After much deliberation I finally decided on Sri Kembangan and Fwang Tung starfruit trees, and a Cogshall mango. The Cogshall is called a 'condo mango', a dwarf tree that can be grown in a container, and kept short with regular pruning. I've wanted to try growing both of these fruits for a long time, but without a greenhouse I didn't have much of a chance. I'm going to plant them all in big pots in the greenhouse to keep the pineapple plants company. I'm kind of worried about there being enough room for everything once they get bigger, but I guess I'll just have to be diligent about pruning.
I also picked up a Chandler pummelo while I was there, which I'm planning to plant next to the 300-gallon rain tank. You just can't have too many pummelos. This week I noticed that my Hirado Butan pummelo tree was really leaning under the weight of the massive fruit. I didn't want to do it, but I decided to trim out a few more fruit, even after thinning out 12-14 fruits earlier this spring. The fruits were as big as canteloupes. I cut into one, and was rewarded by the most wonderful pummelo aroma and pink flesh. The fruit wasn't sweet, but its only August after all. There are two fruit left on the tree, and I can't wait to taste them later this fall.