Fruit Is Falling Faster Than I Can Pick It!

With it being autumn now, we're at the time of year where there's just fruit everywhere. It's falling off the trees faster than I can pick, birds are going for some of it as well, and it's all feeling a bit chaotic. But I wanted to walk around with you and taste some of the cool things that are ripening up at the moment, and also check out some rare and unusual stuff that I'm really excited about. So let's go check it out and see what's happening. I often get asked if I grow nectarine trees, considering I sometimes talk about how I don't like the fuzz on the outside of peaches. And yes, I do. This is one of my nectarine trees here. It's called Mabel nectarine. And if you didn't know, peaches and nectarines are actually the same species. The only difference is that nectarines have a slight variance in their genetics, which causes them not to grow the fuzz or the trichomes on the outside of the fruits. And this is a very ornamental variety. It has these really cool coloured leaves. In the early spring, the leaves are like deep purple in colour, and then they lighten and go a bit more greenish later in the season. So this is going to drop all its leaves soon since we're in autumn. There we go. Check it out. Smells nice and sweet. Flavour explosion. Oh, so sweet. If you've never tried a nectarine that was straight off the tree and tree ripened, oh the flavour is so much more intense than anything you can buy at the supermarket. So yum. And no fuzz. Now this fruit here has so much fuzz on it you could probably mistake it for a baby rabbit. But this is called a sanguine peach or a blood peach, and wait until I show you inside. It's such a cool variety, and it's also really cool because it is an heirloom peach variety. So basically that means that you can grow them from seed, and the seedlings that you end up turning into trees will produce fruit pretty much the same as the parent plant. Maybe there's a minor bit of variance, but overall you get really good fruits. They also seem to be quite disease resistant, so they don't seem to get leaf curl or brown rot very easily. And they're just such a unique variety, and something that a lot of people have just never seen before when it comes to peaches. Are you ready? Boom. Look at that. That colour is just crazy. It does look like blood coming out of it. If you can, I would still recommend eating the skin, because it has so much good fibre in the skin, and just under the skin there's a lot of good nutrients. So here we go. Didn't even notice it. Hardly. Holy moly. Very peachy and raspberry flavour is kind of the combination of these. And so juicy. So much flavour. I wish I could pass this through the screen to you. Maybe a piece I didn't bite. This tree here is looking so lush and beautiful as well, and this is my cherimoya tree. Recently I shared a tasting of these fruits when they were ripe last season, and they were so delicious. So I'm really looking forward to having lots more fruit this season. And I've actually just seen that this has like a little insect kind of egg sac or maybe cocoon attached to this branch here. Maybe some of you guys know what this might belong to. But I really like seeing things like this happen in the garden, because it's just a really key example that if you provide an environment for life to thrive, life will turn up in all sorts of forms. And I do try and encourage as much life to turn up as possible really, because the more insects you have, the more diversity of insects, the less issues you tend to have when it comes to, you know, one type of insect population skyrocketing and becoming an issue. Because they can kind of create a good ecosystem and sort one another out. So you have the prey and the predators. Things like this are one of the reasons I love being out here. Just stopping for a moment to really notice the small details of things. I find it really helps me slow down and be present. But one thing I've realized is that spending time alone out here in nature and in silence, while it's definitely calming, it can also be really challenging at times. Like especially if you're going through some, you know, hard times or big life changes. Sometimes being in that quiet can actually make your mind a bit louder and emotions can bubble up more easily. And that's actually why this video is in paid partnership with BetterHelp. Because I've personally done therapy with them in the past and it's really helped me to work through some pretty heavy emotions and challenges. Like there's been some times in the last few years where I've felt pretty stuck in my feelings and kind of unsure how to process them. And therapy's really taught me how to accept those emotions and notice them and let them be there but without actually getting stuck in them. And I just feel so much more resilient now because of it and I can move through things in a way that works so much better for me. One thing I like is that BetterHelp makes starting therapy feel really easy and less overwhelming. You just take a quiz, get matched with a therapist, and then you can do your sessions however you like, phone or video or text. And doing it from home as well can make it a lot easier to stick to. If you're feeling stuck or like you need to talk things through, it can make a real difference having someone to help you with that. You can get 10% off your first month of therapy with my link in the description or go to betterhelp.com slash the Kiwi Grower. So this one behind me is one of my fig trees. And there's so many fruits on this one and they're just starting to ripen up now. This is a ripe one here. And I've got quite a few different varieties so we will go around and pick all the different kinds and compare them because they're quite sort of different on the skin but also inside which is quite interesting. But one of the things that I love about growing fig trees is the fruits don't all ripen at once. You usually get a period of over a month where they're just continuously ripening every day. So it is one of those trees that you do need to, you know, check on every day or two and pick the ripe fruits. And a bunch of birds have been munching on them, which I don't mind because I've got such an excess of the fruits. And I've also been able to give heaps away to like neighbours and family and friends and a bunch to my chickens and my other animals too, which love them. I love to be able to, you know, share them with my animals because I'd rather do that and give them a bunch of fresh organic excess produce rather than always buying in their feed. So that's always a win. All right, we've got these four varieties to show you and to give them a taste. And this is the first one. These were the first ones to ripen. They're called brown turkey figs and they're a very common variety of fig. Really nice and sweet, almost like a honey kind of a flavour. And because the skin is quite thin as well, it's easily edible. But it does mean that when it does rain, the fruits absorb moisture really easily, causing them to split and also the trees pull up excess moisture into the fruits. So after some rain, it causes a lot of them to ripen at once. And that's when you want to go out and make sure you pick them before things get into the fruit. These ones here have a much thicker skin in comparison. And of course, also much darker as well. These ones are called brunero black and I quite like these. So the inside is red. Very beautiful. Yeah, that skin gives it kind of a nice sort of bite. And the flavour of these is so good. It's really jammy. It's almost like eating a spoonful of strawberry jam. Yeah, just so good. So all of the trees that these figs came from, I grew from cuttings, which means that these two varieties I actually don't know the name of because I got them from family or friends. And this is one that I really like because on the outside, it's this beautiful green, lime green colour. And then boom, look at that stunning looking fruit. And they almost have kind of a thicker skin that kind of separates from the inner part of the fruit. Maybe some of you can help me identify it. I kind of like that because if you don't want to eat the skin, you can just kind of almost peel it off. Very juicy and sweet. What more can I say? But I usually do eat the skin of these as well. As for this last one, this might mean something to some of you. If you ever watched my YouTube channel back when I was super young, do you remember at the start of my videos, I had a little Rosella bird who would go in the budgie aviary? And he was a rescued Rosella who was found with a broken wing. And he was super cool. I used to feed him sunflower seeds on the channel. Eventually, when he passed away, we planted a fig tree on top of him. And it was this variety here. And since then, I've taken many cuttings from that tree and planted many more fig trees. So we call this a Billy fig tree after him. But if anyone knows the actual name of the variety, do let me know. Isn't that so beautiful? It's the colour of Billy's wings. Oh, yum. They're very sweet, but they're not as like honey intense sweet. They almost have a raspberry jam flavour, I would say. I love these. I don't know why I've just been eating the middle, but I usually eat the skin as well. Just like, just like that. So I was going to keep this one a little bit of a secret until a future video, but I'm going to give you an update because I'm pretty excited about it. And some of you might already recognise the leaf. Are you ready for it? Boom! Check it out. We have these fruits forming. These pods here. So this is a inga bean or an ice cream bean. And you can eat the fleshy stuff that grows inside them. They still probably have a couple of months until they're ripe. Yeah, this is the first time I've actually had them fruit on my own tree before, which is exciting as because I grew this one from seed and I did a tasting review of this, you know, years ago, like over a decade ago. And I did have some trouble in the past with these trees getting knocked back down in the winter from the frost and then coming back from the base in summertime, only to get knocked down again the following winter. But now this tree has a tagassesti or a tree lucerne that I've planted that's growing up above it and that's providing frost protection and wind protection and it's still getting enough sun underneath there as well where it can produce some fruits. So I'm really excited about that and I'll bring you back when they're ripe. So make sure you're subscribed if you haven't already. These same tree lucerne, which are also nitrogen fixing, are also providing shelter to quite a few of my other subtropicals like these tamarillos that are growing underneath here. So you can see that's the tree there and it's kind of getting a nice hug from this lucerne tree protecting it in the winter from too much cold. These are a type that are orange when they're ripe so they're slowly getting there and they are quite a sweet variety. But I've got a full video about these fruits if you want to learn more about them because they are a pretty cool thing to grow. This is one tree that I can't skip because I get asked about it all the time. It has those intensely deep purple leaves like the maple nectarine that I showed you and looks incredible in the garden. This tree produced so many fruits this year. It was really impressive. I was constantly picking them and they were just falling all over the ground before I could get a chance to get them all. So I gave all the damaged ones to the chickens and they loved that and I was also just able to collect basket upon basket of peaches from this one tree and I guess it's much like many of the other peaches that I grew this year. They just all produced really well. I guess it was the year of the peach. So that's been pretty awesome. But this variety is called Hiawatha peach although since I grew this from seed there is I think a bit of variance in the fruit because you can see they have a bit more of an orangey coloured skin but when you read about these online they talked about having a purple skin so I would still grow them from seed even though there's that variance because the fruits are great. That was great. They have this orangey coloured flesh. Cheers. Oh so juicy. That is so good. Almost like peachy apricotty kind of a flavour. A really nice tasting fruit. Love it. All right I want to show you this peach as well for a different reason because I feel a little bit less positive about this variety compared to the other two. So there's a couple of reasons for that. This is called a golden queen peach. I've got two of these trees that were just grown from seed. I found them to get quite a lot of brown rot which is basically when the fruits go brown and they rot before the fruits are ripe or even right as they're ripening up and it's usually like when there's a lot of humid conditions if you have a humid summer it's kind of a fungal disease that ruins your fruit and it's quite common I think in this variety they're not that resistant towards it from what I understand and same with curly leaf as well you can have issues with that. I didn't tend to though this year which is good but the brown rot is kind of an issue because you have all these beautiful fruits and then at the last minute they all just rot in front of your eyes. This is one fruit that was fine and I did get a few fruits off this which were fine but the other thing is that they are cling stone fruits and I'll show you basically what that means. So I did cut to the side but this seed does not come out easily without chopping all around each side of it whereas the other two varieties I've shown you today are free stone peaches so the stone just pops out nice and easily you know makes it a lot easier when you're doing preserving or things like that and those other varieties seem to not have any issues with the brown rot unlike these ones. It's very nice tasting to be honest I quite like it. Some though that I've had in the past were like a little bit more astringent if they're even just slightly not quite right but this one was really good. For me I definitely see the value in going for trees that have good disease resistance especially in your area and maybe these trees would do fine for you but for me I don't want to be spraying my trees with anything in order to stop the fruit from rotting I'd much rather grow a variety that's gonna just grow on its own and produce good fruits without those issues. By the way a big thanks to my Patreon supporters thank you guys so much and for those of you who also want to get access to bonus content from me then I'll leave a link below to my Patreon so thank you so much and let's continue. Okay so I saw this plant the other day oh little chicken what are you doing out here Gladys? You're a escapee but in here this is my pink grapefruit tree there's some grapefruits here but out the back is this plant these are called mountain papaya this is a seedling tree that's a couple of years old now and it's awesome to see that there is a bunch of fruits forming on these and you can see that the fruits do look quite different to the types of papayas most people are used to the tropical papayas these ones are kind of different in that they're way more cold hardy because they are from the Andes in South America but they typically grow up in the highlands so they can handle a little bit of light frost especially once the trees get a bit bigger the trunks are now a bit thicker so they can handle the freeze a little bit more here whereas when the trees are much younger you really have to give them good protection because if they do get frost or get low temperatures those can kind of collapse due to the water content and just fall over but see how the fruits are hanging on these long stalks that's actually a bit of a hint about the tree's sex these are quite different compared to other plants in terms of how they reproduce but we'll dive more into that in a future video because it is pretty fascinating the doggies have come to say hello but I thought I would show you this plant here behind me this is a lemon verbena and yeah it's covered in these beautiful flowers at the moment and just absolutely covered in bees and butterflies and yeah lots of pollinating insects this is such an intensely scented herb just one leaf giving that a bit of a crush will just knock you over with intense citrusy scent and not only can you use these for making tea sheep are saying hello as well which make a really nice tea but you can also like infuse sugar with lemon verbena and then use it in baking like cookies or cakes to give a nice lemony citrusy scent and you can also use the leaves in savoury dishes too as a replacement for things like lemon zest or lemon grass so it's quite a versatile herb this one's been growing for a few years so it's turned into quite a nice big woody shrub and it's a perennial so it will last multiple years as long as it doesn't get too too cold wherever you live let's get out of the sun eh please get out of the sun look at these pineapple sage flowers you suck on the base of it sweet sweet nectar comes out tasty you can eat the flowers too yum so can't get too close to this one with my face as you can see it's a cactus this is called Opuntia robusta or whale cactus or silver dollar prickly pear there's a few different names but as you can see these are the fruits or the tunas and not only are there these big spikes on here watch out sky don't get spiked on the fruits they have these little glockens which are hair-like spines that will get in your skin and in your fingers if you touch them so we don't want to be doing that this one looks like it might be the darkest so there we go and look at this little spider on on the outside i usually just rub these in the grass to get those glockens off yeah see there's uh you can touch those little areas now without it getting in your fingers this is going to make such a mess that color beautiful i swear i didn't cut myself wow intense really hard seeds so you don't want to bite down too hard it's like a mild sweetness a little bit like a dragon fruit maybe a little bit more vegetal in a way but i actually like them they do have enough sweetness that it's um a nice fruit to eat hey snowy and uh yeah really refreshing all right well thanks for coming along if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up i really appreciate that and it does help out so thank you all so much for watching and i hope to see you in the next one