Summer Is WILD in My Food Forest

With it being summer here in the food forest, there is quite a lot of different fruits that are ripening at the moment, and some other cool things to show you guys, so I thought we'd just walk around today, see what's happening, taste some fruits, and have a nice chill time in the food forest. Let's start by seeing what fruits are ripe. So the first one is these, which are Louisa plums, and they grow on this tree here behind me. These are the fruits here, they're quite a large plum, they're beautiful. Usually this side that's facing the sun goes more red, and then the other side stays sort of a more yellowy colour. But sometimes when they get like this red, they get a little bit softer, especially on the tip of them, but still really good. So I kind of like to eat them at that stage to be honest, it's my favourite. Mmm, look at that, oh that's delicious. These are one of my favourite plums to grow, because you just get so much flesh, and then just a tiny seed in the middle. They're very common here in New Zealand, especially in home gardens, you can get them in some other countries as well. So good, so juicy, and just so yum. Just before I show you the other plums, I just saw below the Louisa plum tree, is this that is flowering now. Check out the cute little flowers on here, this is a ricotta chili, so a perennial chili pepper, and this is just growing in the understory of this tree, so that's cool. I'll probably do a follow-up video and show you guys these at some point. This one here is my enormous hawera plum tree, it's gotten so big because I didn't prune it last year unfortunately, so it's definitely gonna have a big heavy prune very soon actually. It's just finished fruiting, I do have a fruit to show you that I just chucked in the fridge the other week. This is the fruit, and this one is actually a red-fleshed variety, let's give it a try. It's this one is self-pollinating too by the way, much like the Louisa plum, and plums do usually do better if there are multiple trees, but some of them like definitely need another tree, these ones do pretty good just on their own. So good, crumb stays tight. This one has more bite and crunch to it, as opposed to the ones we just saw, the Louisa plums, that are much more soft and juicy. A little more tart than the other ones as well, but more of a punchy sort of a flavour. While we're over here guys, look at this tree behind me here. This is one of my fig trees, this one I grew from a cutting, most of my fig trees I also grew from cuttings, but they are doing extremely well this year with the amount of fruit on them. This one as well didn't get pruned, I didn't prune a lot of things last year because reasons, and this year is going to be the time where I catch up once everything is fruited, but the rain has definitely helped them stay really healthy and just continue pumping out so much growth and so many figs. Get it girl! This video is kind of full of side quests, but this one here is actually something that I'm so excited about, because this is the first time that this tree has flowered, and the first time I've ever had one of these trees flower. Plus, I grew this from a seed a few years ago, I think maybe in 2021 or two, so it's probably three or four years old, and look at the flowers, do you guys know what that is? It has these tiny little white flowers growing in clusters. This is a Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia Dulcis, crumb! Mr. Interrupting Chicken. These create like little tiny green berry things, which you don't eat, they just have a couple of seeds, and those are the technical fruits of it, but what attaches to the fruit are the kind of stems of the flower, so these parts here, it's kind of like a swollen flower stem. These will actually all swell, and they turn into something that resembles the flavour of raisins. They will hopefully be ripe in the next couple of months. I'm getting distracted by my chicken! So looking forward to tasting some raisins, Japanese raisins, again from my own tree this time, and I'll bring you along when that happens. I have also seen that my chile and guavas are all ripening up at the moment. They are loaded this year, and the rain has again really helped with these ones as well, because it tends to be a little bit dryish along here if I don't water it much in the summer. There's still quite a few that are not ripe, but you can tell when they're ripe because they sort of swell up and they go slightly softer, and what's a bit weird about these is they actually start off as a darker colour when they're small and unripe, and as they ripen they actually lighten and go a slightly lighter red. These are a very fragrant tasting fruit, they're very sweet as well, but these are quite a nice little fruiting plant to have because they can be grown in containers, they can form a nice sort of bushy shrub that can fit in a smaller gap in your garden, and they are so prolific as well. But if you do want to learn more about them, and like how to grow them from cuttings, things like that, I have covered them in more depth in a different video, and I'll leave it linked below if you want to see that. Let's give some of them a try. A bit of a guava kind of taste, and a very creamy texture, with a bit of the texture from the skin, and from the little part on the bottom there as well. But yeah, tasty tasty little fruit. This tree here is an Italian prune plum, and there are only just a few fruits on this tree this year. They're usually not ripe until early autumn, but I will just pick this off because it is starting to go a little bit soft, so it probably could go riper, but as the name suggests, these are good for drying, so making prunes, or dried plums, and they're also excellent for fresh eating as well, and for bottling. Very nice texture and flavour, but it definitely could have been sweeter had I let this one ripen, so I'll leave the other ones on there to ripen more before I have any more, but that's what they look like. Right guys, this is the other plum tree. This is a damson plum, and oh my gosh, it's such a crazy looking tree with these fruits on it. They almost look like they've been glued on or something. It looks kind of fake because they're just in bunches, almost like grapes. These are a really small plum, that's what they look like, and these ones here are just ripe. The rest of them just need a little bit longer before I pick them, but these are really good for making jams. You can do also like gin. They are quite a tart plum in comparison to the other two, but with a really nice flavour. There we go, it's almost like orangey kind of. When they are properly ripe, like this one here, it is still tart, but it's definitely like good to eat fresh, just like this. That's how I often like to eat them, but because there's so many, I'm going to have to find some good uses for them this year. I might have to try something new this year instead of just jam and fresh eating, so we will see how that goes. And yeah, it's just nice to have a variety of different plums that all have different kind of flavours and sizes and things like that. By the way, just before we continue, just to let you know that if you want to see a bit more around the food forest and me talking about the different plants that I grow and things like that, then check out my Patreon, linked below, where you can get access to extra videos and our members group as well, where we talk all things plants. So thanks very much and let's continue. Check out this cool flower. It's like fuzzy, almost like kangaroo paw, but this is a Mexican sage and I grew this from a little cutting and now it's a nice little plant nestled between some yacon or earth apple and my tangelo tree over there. But yeah, such cool flowers, great for bees and other insects and just such a nice little ornamental. So we've got some of these peaches here too. This is actually the first time that I've had these ones in my garden. This was grown from seed and it's like a heirloom white peach variety. So I got a seedling from my auntie who grows them and they often pop up in her garden. Planted it two years ago now and it's given me so so many peaches this year, so that's awesome. And the good thing about these is that I still don't really want to touch it that much, but the hair is, or the, what do you call it, the fuzz, is not all that bad. If I just give this a rub and try not to think about it... Okay, the goosebumps are here, but let me show you the inside anyway. Holy moly, juicy, so sweet, such a delicious tasting peach. And this is why, you know, tell you guys about growing peaches from seed because they are often really reliable, especially if you can get like an heirloom variety, you know, the types that have been around for like many many years. And you can just keep growing more and more peach trees if you want, like I could take this seed and grow another tree that would produce really great fruit, very much like this one. I love walking past here and just brushing against this to get the smell of lavender. Check out this little bug. Hey little dude, you're very camouflaged. I don't even know what you are. It looks a little bit like a praying mantis, but not. Maybe it's a native version, because usually you see the... Oh yeah, I think it's a praying mantis. Dude, you look different. You're a kiwi, native type, maybe. Right guys, so I've just seen this tree and it really needs some attention. I should have done this actually much earlier, but this is a Fuyu persimmon tree and look how heavy it is with the fruit already. And these still have a good couple of months until they are ripe, so they are meant to get quite a bit bigger still, which is going to cause this tree to snap. I just, I can just see it, like the branches are already going like this and they're going to get double as heavy. So I'm going to have to come through here with some secateurs and cut off many of these fruits. This is the size that they're at right now, so ideally it would have been better to do this much sooner when the fruits were small, so the other fruits could really get all the energy. That's okay, now it's a bit of damage control to make sure this tree stays upright and doesn't snap. Little zebras come to say hello. But what I was going to show you, good girl, is I grew some of these this year. They look a bit weird, right? Can you tell what they are? These are a type of cucumber. The variety is called and they are from India. They're an heirloom variety and they're quite drought and heat tolerant, so they grow really well over there. Yeah, they look almost like a potato or something, quite weird. You guys know I like growing the things that are a little bit outside the norm. They've got really thick skin and the way it's got that sort of interesting pattern on the outside as well, and the thick skin when they're mature means that they store pretty well compared to other types of cucumbers. These actually start off as like a pale green color and then over time they develop a slightly yellowish sort of orange color, and then finally when they're mature they turn into this color here. So quite an interesting one. Here's another big boy over here. Let's cut this open and give it a try because I haven't tried them yet, but they're supposed to, even at this stage, have a nice crispy mild and not bitter taste. So let's see. Very curious. There we go. There's like a bit of hollowness to it. Oh, it smells nice. It's good. Yeah, it's not bitter. It's very crunchy and it's like mild, but it also does have a bit of sharpness to it, a bit of acidity, which is kind of interesting. Try the skin. I actually expected there maybe to be some bitterness, like even in the skin or whatever, but nothing. It's actually good. The skin is, you know, there's a bit of texture there. I would eat that. That's probably good for you as well. Gives a nice crunchy texture. Love it. Here you go. What's this? Oh, she spat it out. She's going back for more guys. Trying to decide if it's tasty. Good girl. Maybe it's just refreshing, is it? So this behind me here is my grapevine structure. It's a tree, because I never built a structure for it. So it is just doing its thing, growing up all the trees that it can. And there's actually quite a lot of fruits in there. And you pretty much have to like bury your face in this little kind of hedge or this tree and find grapes all through it. This variety is called Niagara grape, and they're pretty tasty little grapes. I can actually see a bunch through here as well. These are all coprosma berries. Some of them are ripe too. See those there? These are just something that I grow and have for the birds, but through there is a bunch, which could be a little riper, to be honest. All right, here's a couple of nice little bunches. They could be even a bit more ripe, but that's all good. Give it a try. A few seeds, but nice flavoured grape. These are one of my favourites. It's so good. I saved you this bunch, so you take that one and enjoy. What you doing, Snowy? Chilling under the silverberry tree. And look at all the flowers on this thing. They smell so good. It smells almost like gardenia or something. It's like insanely fragrant. And look how many flowers there are. So there's going to be a lot of fruit this coming winter. And again, I've showed you guys some more about this. Oh, look at the little spiderweb about this plant. So I'll leave a link below if you want to see more about these. You just hear turkeys going off, chickens going off, sky's down in here somewhere. Snowy's underneath. Snowy, give us a meow. Oh, rude. Little Sky. Little Sky. And little Ziva. If you've ever grown at Cape Gooseberries before, which are these plants here. Hello, Ziva. She's bringing me a stick. Leaf, leaf, leaf. You'll know that they are good at self-seeding and spreading themselves through your garden. And I guess that can be, you know, a little bit of a issue in some places. They can be maybe a bit invasive. But for me, they don't come up everywhere or anything, just in the occasional spot. And this one I left and it's gotten so big that I can't even get into my chicken pen. But I was like, you know what? It's probably going to get all of the goodness coming out of the chicken run and chicken area and everything because it's downhill a little bit from where they are. And there's so many fruits on it. And there are some that are ripening up as well. This is what the fruits look like on the inside. Yeah, nice golden color. Cool little fruits. Mmm. Oh, so good when they're perfectly ripe. A little bit orange flavored mixed with pineapple because of that. There's a bit of sharpness there. Maybe the texture of a cherry tomato. But yeah, quite a tropical flavor. Very prolific plant that just does its thing, even though I literally have done zero for this plant its entire life. This little herb that I'm growing here is called stevia. You guys probably heard of it. It's like a natural sweetener where the compounds in the leaves are actually like two to three hundred times sweeter than sugar. But it's kind of a cool thing to grow. This one's actually only pretty small because it's growing under some trees. So it's like a bit too shaded for it. Not really ideal, but still nice and healthy. And you can just like pick off a leaf and chuck it in like a tea to sweeten it. But I kind of find it funny to grow because if people visit, you can like, they're like here, taste this and I'll show you what their reaction usually is like. Oh, it's nice and sweet. It tastes good. Hmm. Oh, why is it so bitter? It's usually something like that. It's definitely followed by a strong bitterness, but the first maybe 10 seconds is like nice and sweet. So yeah, kind of a cool little fun plant to grow I reckon. I've just seen some of these myoga ginger flower buds popping up. So I picked these to make a stir fry tonight. If you want to learn more about these though, check out this video over here where I share these among a bunch of other cool fruits from around the garden. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was heaps of fun and I'll see you in the next one.