Amy's garden of tropical fruits

The great thing about gardening in Houston is growing tropical fruit.  I was amazed, when I moved here for part of the year ten years ago, how easy it is to grow lemons, tangerines, grapefruit, papayas and even bananas in the yard!

My friend Amy is a really good gardener, and she has a lot of fruit growing in her garden right now.  Citrus is in season. She has Meyer lemons, a really delicious variety of lemons:

Also there are grapefruit, the Ruby kind with red sections inside:

 

I ate one of these and it was delicious.

Papayas sprout everywhere in Amy's garden, probably because she composted a papaya last year and some of its seeds have sprouted.  The papaya tree is well over six feet tall and has a thick trunk maybe four inches in diameter. It's loaded with papayas:

 

Amazingly, Amy even grows bananas!  Banana plants are common in Houston, but it's less common to see the actual fruits on the plant.

 

Banana plants have a really interesting flower, on a long stalk that hangs down.

 

Amy has a knack for garden design, and not just with food plants. I loved her use of an old potty as a planter.