Are you going to eat that?

When I drive around town, I am always on the lookout for fruit trees. San Marcos has tons of Loquats, Pecans, Pomegranates, Pears, Asian Persimmons, Jujube and Mulberry trees growing downtown. If you approach the owner, I have found that they almost never eat the fruit, know of the name of the tree or that it is edible. These same people that go to the store to buy fruit twice a week, let it rot on the ground outside their house. Do not rule this out as being a legit urban farming technique!! Once you establish a relationship with these home owners, they will even pick the fruit for you. They get excited about contributing. If you play your cards right, you could literally not grow anything yourself. You arent a bum. You are eco-friendly.

MULBERRY:
Here we are shaking down a Mulberry tree in a field near our house. The owners didnt even know it was there. We had full permission to take what we wanted.

It literally fell down in gallons. We wait every spring to get as much as we can eat. They taste very similar to Blackberries.

LOQUATS:
Our Loquat trees came with the house and we have seedlings coming up every Fall. If you have a Loquat near your house, you will have seedlings coming up soon. They are evergreen well below 10F but the flowers can freeze around 23F. They taste like a cross of an Apricot and Citrus. One tree gives us about 70 pounds of fruit. I would say that about 70 percent of all the fruit goes to waste around town. People dont even know they can eat it.



POMEGRANATES:

If I go to the local grocery store, the Pomegranates cost 2.99 each. However, they just rot on the side of the road about 2 blocks away. I think local kids use them for fights. When will the madness end??

FIGS:

Everyone has a Fig tree here in town. It is almost a requirement. I think people hoard these a bit more than the other fruits.

PEARS:
Two houses down we have an older lady that has a 70+ year old Pear tree. They are hard as a rock but could be used for cooking. She doesnt want anything to do with them.
The local coffee shop has a Bartlett Pear tree that probably had 150 pounds of fruit on it this year. I think that the majority of it fell and rotted. I couldnt understand that one. I guess that if it fruits again next year, I am going to show up with a ladder and a bucket.

Persimmons:
This is a interesting fruit. Many people arent familiar with the Asian Persimmon. You have two kinds of fruit. Some are astringent and some are non-astringent. The astringent fruits can only be eaten when soft. If you eat them early, it tastes like someone sprayed cotton in your mouth and teeth. It is not good. If you wait until they are soft and ripe, they taste so rich and wonderful that you are caught in a moment of bliss.
The non-astringent fruits allow you to eat them when they are still hard. They have a crunch to them still but that superior rich aftertaste is incredible. They are truly one of the best tasting fruits in the world. The American Persimmon is smaller and not as good in taste. The Texas Persimmon even more so.

We have multiple Tamopan Persimmons at the Catholic church and in other varieties in area yards. I talked to one of the owners and he never eats any of it. In addition, they want you to take it so they dont have to clean up afterwards. What a deal!!!!

PECANS:
San Marcos has a lot of pecans. I mean ALOT. They are everywhere. Once they start to fall, you will see people walking the streets with bags. Strangers are lurking in your driveway grabbing fast. If so inclined, you could easily gather a few hundred pounds over the course of a month or two. That goes a long way in the winter.

JUJUBE:
I had never heard of this fruit a few years ago and now I have over 200 trees at my land. It is incredible. It is tolerant of cold, heat, drought, neglect, bad soil and whatever you throw at it. It wasnt until later that I found that they were growing nearby. The first one I found was at a house for sale about 6 blocks away. They had about 5 large trees. I dug up some of the smaller trees before the house sold and they cut them all down and poisoned the stump. Here is a picture of the long gone tree. It was producing fruit in the second worst drought in history in Central Texas even though no one had lived at the house in a long time.

My friend Karen said she had a fruit tree in her yard she couldnt identify. It turned out to be another Jujube. It turns out that the U.S. government released these fruit trees all over the South during the 1930's so people would start producing the fruit. Well, large scale delivery of the Apple squashed that but the trees are still around. In fact, they were completely sold out of them at the wholesale distributors this year.

The fruit is different from variety to variety. Some are dry, sweet, good for drying, fresh eating and so on. New varieties started hitting the market last year. You will probably see them popping up in stores in the next few years. The newer varieties are juicy and sweet as candy.