|
The Sarasota Fruit & Nut Society, or SFNS, is a group of people who simply
enjoy growing fruiting plants and meeting with others who are  interested in edible
landscaping. We range from the true "If I can't eat it, why grow it" hardcore
to the homeowner who has an orange tree and would like to try something else.
We have everyone from professional nursery people to the apartment dweller with
container plants on the balcony. There truly is something for everyone.
We meet at 7:00 p.m. on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the Edson Keith
Mansion in Phillippi Estate Park, 5500 S. Tamiami Tr., Sarasota (map to follow).
Our meetings start with coffee, tea and a tasting table comprised of goodies
brought in by our members. We mostly try to bring in samples of fruit currently
in season or recipes made with the fruit we grow. There are 30 minutes allotted
to tasting, socializing and perusing the library and club sales items. Then at
7:30 our meeting begins with about 15 minutes of business and announcements and
then we introduce the speaker of the month.
Over the past 20 years the roster of speakers we have hosted looks like the "Who's
Who" of Florida horticulture. We have enjoyed hearing Chris Rollins of the
Fruit & Spice Park in Homestead, both Carl and Richard Campbell of Fairchild
Tropical Garden, Bill Whitman of Miami, Larry Shokman from The Kampong in Coconut
Grove, Gene Joyner of Palm Beach and hundreds of others. Speakers have come from
as far away as the Philippines and as close as our own members. If it is fruit
related or even close....we want to hear about it. Whether it be about specific
fruits such as lychee, mango, and blueberry, techniques like grafting, air-layering,
and square foot gardening, research facilities such as Chapman Field, ECHO and
University of Florida, or the odd subjects of bee keeping, worm ranching, and
wine making, we want to get together and learn about it. After the speaker, we
close our meetings with the raffling off of plants donated by members.
Our library is made up of over 100 items, including books, pamphlets, videotapes
and CD ROMs. You can pretty much research any fruit subject you want and members
are allowed to check out books for the one month period between meetings. Our
club sales table gives us the opportunity to purchase specialty items, many of
them printed with our society logo. We offer t-shirts, aprons, book bags and
carry-alls, liqueur recipes, cookbooks and Florida Fruit reference books.
Once a year, we sponsor our Annual Rare Fruit Tree Sale in which we gather
vendors from across the state who offer for sale thousands of fruiting plants.
This is a one day sale, generally on the last Sunday of September. We meet new
friends, introduce people to the pleasures of growing fruit, collect new members,
and usually do quite a bit of shopping ourselves.
There are various club activities for our members throughout the year. One
of them is the zip trip in which members open their yards for us to come explore.
This is an excellent way to see what other people are doing and to gather new
ideas. We also go on field trips whenever possible. In past years we have traveled
to Miami to attend Mango Madness at Fairchild Tropical Garden, Fort Meyers to
tour Echo and visited some of our favorite nurseries on Pine Island such as Bob
and Vivian Murray's Treehouse Nursery. We recently caravanned to Lake Alfred
for a guided tour of the Florida Dept. of Agriculture's Citrus Arboretum. Last
summer we toured a local winery and saw how the grapes were grown and how they
were processed into the wine we then tasted.
If this sounds good to you and you live in the Sarasota or neighboring areas,
you are invited to join us as our guest at any meeting. If you are too far away
for that, you can check into our website and see what we have been doing lately.
If you are traveling on I-75, just turn west on either Bee Ridge Rd. or Clark
Rd. and continue on until you come to Tamiami Tr. (US 41). You will find
Phillippi Estate Park on the west side at the intersection of Tamiami Tr. and
Constitution. 5500 Tamiami Tr., Sarasota
For information, please contact Ted Curry, our current President. You may
email him at tedcurry@verizon.net or
call him at 941-484-9229.
|
