The Inevitable Intro

(feijoa: acca sellowiana)
october 2009
carrboro, north carolina

I've never been a plant guy. Once, as a wee lad, I killed a cactus. Upon my arrival in some semblance of adulthood, I subsequently killed tomatoes, basil, peppers, yellow squash, and kiwano melons.

And then, one day, to my utter shock and surprise, I looked on my North Carolina back porch, and found a small pot, filled with bad North Carolina clay, with not one, but several tiny eureka lemon seedlings, making their presence known. Some years before, a former roommate had moved out, leaving behind a number of pots of widely varying sizes, and - as I was cooking one evening - I tossed the lemon seeds into one of those pots, with virtually no premeditation whatsoever.

This turned into quite an unanticipated learning experience, as multiple lemon seedlings drowned, dried up, or were set upon by nefarious slugs, seeking some sort of citrus fix, under cover of darkness. However two lemons - siamese twins, the product of a polyembryonic seed, developed into two determined little guys, with a plucky ability to shake off everything a North Carolina summer could dish out.

Excited by this turn of events, I set about an ever-weirder trip into gardening. I was able to sprout tangelos, and though I continued to make mistakes (months later, they remain small, but apparently healthy) - pots too big, pots too small, soil too heavy, soil too light. As the learning curve continued, I decided to make a great leap. I was ready for grafted nursery plants.

After doing some diligent research, I was able to purchase two additional citrus trees: a year-old calamondin (a wild mandarin + kumquat hybrid), and a yuzu (a wild mandarin + papeda hybrid). This move had some ups and downs - neither plant was particularly happy with some near-100-degree days in summer, and they responded by entering some degree of dormancy - healthy and green, but zero growth.

With the first cool front of September, the yuzu burst to life, quickly developing a handful of new branches, each graced with the arrowhead-shaped, powerfully-scented leaves typical of the papeda side of the citrus genus. Yuzus are a big, big deal in Japanese and Korean cuisine, acquiring a gourmet reputation elsewhere, and are reportedly far more cold tolerant (when mature) than other citrus.

The calmondin took a bit longer to acclimate to my Chapel Hill porch, perhaps due to what appeared to be a slight aphid issue. This I managed to conquer - another small victory! And as winter approached - plants now indoors - the calamondin exploded to life, two weeks before Christmas, sprouting new branches and leaves, and covered in tiny buds.

Along the way, I managed to acquire a few other nursery plants: malabathrum (malabar cinnamon), along with two feijoas (erroneously known as pineapple guavas). And the experiment with sprouting things on my own has continued: guavas, honey locust beans, culinary ginger, kumquats, pummelo, cherimoya, sugar apple, custard apple, biriba, pacay (ice cream beans).