Hi! I’m so glad I found you guys! I kind of drifted away from GW after the takeover, and keep trying to go back and be satisfied and have found it unpleasant. I just found a post mentioning this forum and popped on over and immediately saw comforting names of people I consider experts, or at least expert enough!
My schooling and training was as a research scientist, system analyst, and computer programmer, so at times I get a little too obsessed with how things work and what affects the results even more so than actually GETTING to those results. My recent obsession over the last decade has been centered around seeing how self sufficient I can get with the standard 1/3 acre postage stamp of land in the suburbs. It’s long been a fascination of mine with how people can produce enough for their own needs but deem it “worthless” because they don’t generate commercial levels of success.
To that end, I started playing with apple trees to make a living fence on the side of my yard, and crammed an extremely small, way too densely packed “orchard” on the other side, with my veggies in the back in the middle. It’s my goal not to necessarily provide for all my needs, but to come to some kind of a balance point in effort and what fruit is available through out the year. I’m trying to use different varieties, heavy pruning, and tight spacing to stagger my harvest so there’s always a fruit of some kind available in the summer, and greens available all winter.
I don’t want to admit to being addicted, because I resisted buying anything new this year, but the last two years I’ve spent several hundred dollars on a bunch of very promising sticks in my yard, and a handful of peaches and plums. And I’ll be danged if those peaches weren’t some of the most exciting things I’ve eaten recently. I’m up to 37 trees, mostly apple, but also a selection of stone fruit, including peaches, cherries, plums, nectarines, almonds, persimmon, pomegranates, and persimmons. And, of course, a mulberry twig. (Almost tall enough enough to decide what height to pollard).
Most of the trees are less than three years old, and only the peaches and plums have even considered fruiting yet, so essentially, what I’m saying is all my knowledge is theoretical.
