Fruitscaping with Mayhaw Trees

Mayhaw’s grow to be small trees with a glorious spring bloom that has to be seen to be believed. Scatter them in the woods under light shade for March Magic. Use as part of a mixed border combining with smaller berries and flowers. Use instead of dogwoods, so you’ll get fruit and flowers from the same trees.

Recommended Fertilizers for Planting and Maintenance

• Starter Fertilizer:  Plant with Espoma Organic Bio-tone® Starter Plus.  This will increase root mass and help avoid transplant loss in difficult planting conditions.
• Fertilizer to Maintain:  Our varieties of Mayhaw Trees work great with Espoma Organic Citrus-tone Fertilizer.

Growing Guide

Click here to find our Full Mayhaw Trees Planting and Growing Guide

Additional Information on Mayhaw Trees

Deep in the dark water swamps and hammocks of the lower South, down along the sandy riverbanks, grows the wispy, delicate Mayhaw tree. For generations, southerners have made the yearly trek by boat to harvest the floating orange fruit with nets. The fruits are boiled in a kettle until they burst open and release their flavor. The juice is strained to make a beautiful pale coral jelly. The flavor is exquisite, like sweet apple with overtones of mango and an aroma of pineapple. When you can find Mayhaw jelly in elite gift shops or progressive produce stands, it will cost around $6 a pint and is well worth it. The success of modern day Mayhaw growing can be attributed to Sherwood Atkins, famous for “taking the swamp out of the Mayhaw.”

Mr. Atkins spent long days in the Lousiana swamps locating superior varieties of Mayhaw that will survive and thrive in ordinary garden soils.

Mayhaw needs little care, just provide a good vegetable garden soil and fertilizer. You can forget about having to spray or pamper this old swamp treasure. Our trees are grafted on wild Cratageous rootstock. They prefer part sun to shade and moist, well-drained soils. Most Mayhaws need pollinators, so be sure to get at least two for cross pollination.

Enjoy This Fun Mayhaw Recipe

Ralph “T.R.” Barnette was a country farmer from Alabama mistakenly stuck in the modern world of suburban Tallahassee. He crammed his 1/4 acre lot full of fruit trees, organic gardens and edible flowers that he used in salads. He made wine and jelly out of everything.  A visit to his garden left you with a wealth of knowledge and a little tipsy from tasting his funky wines. His most treasured plant, however, was his beloved Mayhaw tree. What follows is his recipe, which has been handed down to friends and family. T.R. didn’t use Surejell and didn’t think too highly of people who did, so it takes a little longer.

T.R. Barnette’s Mayhaw Jelly:

• Wash berries thoroughly. Measure berries to see how much you have. Use a little more than two cups of water to a quart of berries. Bring them to a boil, then cook at lower heat for about 30 minutes or until tender. Let them cool with the lid on.
• Mash up berries. Then strain them, squeezing juice out with a cheesecloth. Refrigerate the juice `cause by then you’re tired. It’ll last a week in the `fridge this way.
• To make jelly (this is the artistic part), pour not more than six cups of juice in a large pot and add a cup of sugar for each cup of juice. Don’t stir after it boils. Boil for about an hour or until it drops off a spoon in two drops instead of one, and then “sheets” together. After it begins to drop off in twos, you watch it very carefully until it sheets. Skim off the foamy stuff on top.
• Pour into sterilized jars. The jars should be hot. Screw on the lids. Let them sit in a cool place until each lid pops. Then you’ll know it has sealed. If one of the jars doesn’t seal, just use that jar first.
• Then clean up the mess you made.

Shipping Restrictions

We’re so sorry… but due to agricultural restrictions we cannot ship any plants outside of the United States, or to the states of California, Hawaii and Alaska. Also, citrus trees cannot be shipped outside of the state of Florida.

Here are some important things to know about your shipments

Unpacking Your Plants Guide:  Prior to receiving our plants, please click this link to read our Unpacking Your Plants Guide to get to know the steps to keeping your plant healthy after receiving it.

We do NOT ship bare root:  Our trees are shipped in the same exact containers they are grown in, for the most healthy transition. The plants are watered well before they are packed and wrapped in a shipping bag to ensure they stay moist during transit.  It’s as if you came and picked them up right from our nursery yourself!

Why do we not offer free shipping? At Just Fruits, we price all of our plants online exactly as we do in the nursery. Therefore, the shipping cost is simply what it costs for us to get your order from the nursery to you. Many competitors may increase the plants’ prices in order to hide shipping costs… we do not do that. We want our customers to see exactly what the plant costs are, separate from what the shipping costs are. That way if you decided to come visit the nursery to pick up your plants instead, you would know how much you save in shipping.

Weather Watching:  We now ship all year round! However, we do watch for extreme weather. If there is extremely cold or hot weather expected around your shipment date and on your path of shipment, we will contact you and notify you that we plan to hold the shipment for the next possible shipping date with better conditions. If you ask us to still ship it, through the conditions, we will not be responsible for any damage caused to the plant & UPS will not refund any claims. We love our plants, and do not want to see them die, so we would rather wait until it’s the right time to ship it, than risk losing a plant in transit.

Click here for more details on our shipping process.