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Gardening - Dig This

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 17, 2008

Updated: 10/17/2008 02:12 pm

If she's not quilting while watching the telly, Roshen Jagan is downing bowls of fruit.

Little olive-sized dunks, Surinam cherries, tangerines.

"I never met a fruit I didn't like," she says.

Roshen, who lives in northwest Hillsborough, is from British Guyana in South America. When she came to the United States in the 1980s, she brought with her a gardening tradition: In the front yard, pretty ornamentals. In the back, stuff you can eat.

"Things are so plentiful there, you don't need to plant. But everyone does," she says.

Aside from the front yard-backyard tradition, Roshen doesn't stay within a comfort zone. She plants what she loves, and she finds new loves to plant. She samples mystery fruits; Asian and Hispanic markets are a great source. If she likes the taste, she saves the seeds and grows it.

Patience is a necessity, she warns. Most fruit-tree starts won't bear fruit until they're at least 5 years old. She plants them in her sandy yard, amending with bags and bags of Miracle-Gro Garden Soil. (Scott's is cheaper, but not as good, she notes.) She also feeds the dirt all her nonmeat kitchen scraps, straight into holes in the ground, and the occasional bag of compost and cow manure.

Granular bloom-boosting fertilizer in June, and a once-in-a-while shot of liquid fertilizer help. Most important, she says, is to give baby plants lots of TLC.

Dunks (Indian jujube)

They look like olives - same size and color - but the fruit is sweet. Roshen's plant is a small tree that thrives in full sun and doesn't demand a lot of water. It fruits in December and January, and is easily grown from seed.

Sugar apples

When they get a little paler green than pictured, these sweet fruits are ready to eat. Cut them open and scoop out the pulp with a spoon. Roshen loved sugar apples as a child, which is why she still grows them. It's a little difficult here, she says, because frost will zap the tree, which takes a long time to come back. Plant in full sun and prepare to do battle with squirrels.

West Indian cherry

Roshen eats these by the bowlful - she says they're sweet, I thought them a little tart, but delicious. Another sun lover, the tree blooms in mid to late summer (and looks beautiful), and fruits in September. Roshen bought this one five or six years ago at a tropical plant nursery in St. Pete.

Tamarind

The finger-length pods add a nice flavor to fish and chutney, and when it's not producing fruit, a tamarind tree adds beautiful foliage to the garden. Roshen got hers at a flea market seven years ago. She keeps it pruned and cuts back the top to keep it from getting too big.

Penny Carnathan

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