durian

The question lands at my farm stand more than any other about this crop. A visitor picks up a spiky husk, wrinkles their nose, and asks whether the thing

Durian desserts occupy an odd corner of my work. I farm exotic fruit outside San Diego, but I cannot ripen a durian tree reliably in this climate, so nearly

Somebody at my stand last August held up a 2 kg Monthong and asked what he was actually paying for. Fair question, and the answer stings: most of that

Yes. Harder than almost anything else I have put in the ground, and I have been growing tropicals on eleven acres east of San Diego for fifteen years.

The first durian I ever opened cost me a knuckle and forty minutes. I was hacking at the top of the husk like it was a coconut, which is exactly the wrong

A friend in Guadalajara texts me every summer asking where the durian is, and every summer I give him the same disappointing answer with a small piece

A customer once put down a durian at my stand because she saw watermelon in her own basket and remembered something her grandmother told her.

Customers at my stand ask me whether durian is medicine or dessert, and they usually want the answer in one word. I grow Durio zibethinus under glass on

Every few months someone sends me a photo of a durian with a bare, pebbled husk and asks whether China has finally bred the thorns off the king of fruits.

I distinctly remember the first time I hauled a harvest of Durio zibethinus—known affectionately as the King of Fruits—from our groves here in San Diego