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HOME\ Joshua Siskin's column appears every Saturday. He welcomes questions from readers and will answer them in his column once a month. If you have a question, send an e-mail to Joshua(at)garden18.com. Please include your full name and the city you live in. Topics of general interest will be discussed in the column.
It is ironic that when Valley gardeners think of planting a fruit tree, thoughts immediately turn to citrus, avocado, apple, one of the stone fruits (apricot, plum, or peach), or certain exotic tropicals such as guava or papaya. Thanks to water imported from far- away rivers and to the miracles of fertilization, all of these trees can be grown productively in our area.
Yet the two fruit trees most suitable for Valley growing are the olive and the fig, whose Mediterranean habitat is a mirror image of our own. In Sylmar, you can still see the remnants of what, in the 1920s, was the world's largest olive grove, a 2,000-acre spread that yielded thousands of tons of fruit and 50,000 gallons of olive oil annually. Figs were also grown commercially in that locale.
Fast forward to the 21st century. For many people, moving into a house with an olive...