I noticed our tamarillo trees have started to fruit, which was a bit of a surprise as they were only tiny treelings this time last year but did seem to take on rather a growth spurt this year. I had noticed that they had flowered, but when I touched them all the flowers fell off so I have avoided getting too close since!
There are a few tamarillo trees at the end of the road and they have already got quite big fruit so I guess ours won’t come to anything this year – but hopefully next year. Particularly if we move them from pots into the ground. They are also known as tree tomatoes, and we have tried some which while didn’t taste particularly tomatoey, I can see will be useful for winter salads.
The fruit ripen in the winter – same as the chayotes which we have a few vines growing. We also have an angel hair gourd growing but the aim is to pick these when they are young and use them like courgette rather then wait until they are fully ripe and then the skin is hard and the inside is all stringy which is what is used to make the angel hair preserve.
We see a lot (relatively) of angel hair preserve in the supermarkets – it’s either sold in cans like this or ready made into a sort of (extremely sweet) pastry dish.
The angel hair gourd, chayote and tamarillo are (I think) all from south america and we have noticed much stronger roots and connections to south america here than when we were in Extremadura – I guess because of the strong north African influence in southern Spain for so many centuries which never got this far north.