Vegas,
Welcome to GF. I am glad you found Us.
Tony
Welcome! Its such a clever group of people with tons of excellent information. It is how I got my start with fruit trees ten years ago! Great group, welcome!
Welcome Vegas and learn what you can and share your experiences with all of us here.
Remember ā¦Not everything that happens in Vegas needs to stay in Vegas.
Mike
Hello everyone. Iāve been kicking around posts here for a couple months now, and thought Iād put in a more formal introduction.
Iām Drew from the Iowa City, IA area. We are in Zone 5a. My wife, son, and live in a house in what passes for the suburbs here which adjoins some park land. My yard is far from the ideal site for tree fruit, as we are in a low spot on the landscape and part of my yard is taken up by a very small spring-fed creek. With the park land with have high pressure from deer and bunnies.
I have mostly focused on apples (10 trees), and all are in either their 2nd or 3rd year right now. I am planning on making cider as mytrees get older. I am starting to collect traditional American and European cider varieties. I have brewed beer before, and am looking forward to the challenge of cider. I also have two hybrid plums and a Redhaven peach.
I have my Ph.D. in environmental engineering and work as a research scientist in this field at a university. I teach students in and manage the day-to-day operations in an environmental/soil chemistry lab. I can tend towards deep-diving on some topics, and really like to see evidence behind methods. So when I can, I will try to chime in where I can offer a resource or two that comes from the freely-available scientific literature or where studies are being done.
So far, Iām trying to manage disease and pests with evidence-based organic methods. I will try it for a while and see what results I getā¦ But Iām not in any way opposed to conventional and modern IPM management strategies.
Thanks everyone for making such an interesting community! I hope to learn a lot here, and hopefully contribute where possible.
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Welcome fellow Iowegian. Sorry about your Hawks. Enjoy the forum, great knowledge here. Have you ever been to woodyās orchard E of town?
Welcome @Levers101 and @VegasZone9 . As a relative newbie myself, I should warn you that fruit growing is extremely addictive, especially after you pick your first, delicious piece of fruit that you grew yourself. It tastes sooo much better- both literally and figuratively. You should also know that this website is, bar none, the best resource you will ever have for practical, day-to-day advice. You can get answers to the most basic, elementary questions you may have as a beginner, but if you do have an area of special interest and want to get into a highly specialized area (as @Levers101 mentioned he enjoys) then there are folks here who have that kind of in=-depth knowledge as well. Good luck! Welcome to Growingfruit.org.
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Do you mean Wilsonās Orchard east of IC? If so, yes. Since we moved back from Chicagoland I have been out there a couple times. Or is there another I am missing?
I also am a big supporter of Buffalo Ridge Orchard (Central City, IA)ā¦ They sell apple and veggie CSA shares and are at farmersā markets in the IC/CR/Dubuque area. Ha, I talked them into doing a 5 lb apple CSA last year, and it looks like they are doing a larger-scale 3 lb share this coming year.
Chug has his ideas.
Hello, Iāve just joined your forum. It looks great. My name is James Macduff and I live near Aberystwyth, a small town in west Wales in the United Kingdom. Iām a retired scientist, having worked in the field of soil and plant nutrition, mainly grasses, for many years. My main interest these days is apple growing and, more specifically, apple breeding. Iāve started up a small breeding programme, so Iām really interested in the discussions here on this subject. I know a bit about UK varieties but next to nothing about US varieties, so itās all to learn for me.
SkillCult thought I might be interested in your forum and he was right. I hope Iāll be able to contribute to some of your discussions. Talking of which, I noted the mention of Bakerās Delicious, incidentally, in the posts about red fleshed apples. Iām using this old Welsh variety for crossing, mainly on the basis of its fine flavour. Cheers.
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Welcome to our happy group!
I am keenly interested in Bakerās Delicious. I will be grafting it this spring.
Welcome James. You have found a new home here. We have lots of apple growers here.
Tony
Welcome, James, very glad to have you! We very much look forward to your posts, especially about apples and soil.
Patty S.
Yes, good to have you here. Iām wondering how similar your conditions are to the pacific northwest. Your country has centuries of experience with growing fruit in a climate with low heat units and mild winters.
Welcome James. This is a small world, I have a colleague who works at Aberystwyth University, Iāll see him at a conference in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks. He is a mathematician and Iām a physicist, but we work in the same field.
Greetings folks,
Iām āSeedyā Steve (Guardinā Dawg on another site). Iāve already been the recipient of some mighty fine suggestions re: graftingā¦my first timeā¦on this site. Iām just a year and a couple months into orcharding. Last year in February I installed a fence and planted 2 pear, 2 peach, 2 apple, 2 fig, 2 pawpaws, a quad cherry, Kiwi, medlar, jujube, persimmon, lingonberry, 5 full chestnuts and 2 miniās, etc., etc., and transplanted many native hazel trees from elsewhere on the landā¦plus a lot of different berries. I just put in some more stuff and grafted onto some rootstock from an old apple tree that I discovered last year on my land. I have hickory, hearnut, buart, and hican on the way. Warning: I have lots of questions about everything. My motto: Why just do it when you can overdo it? This seems like a really nice group.
W. Orygun, Z-8 or soā¦
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You definitely belong here!
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James M.
Glad youāve joined us.
Seedy,
Love your motto. It is shared by many here 
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Muddyās right, Youāre home!
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Now there is an apt definition of what many of us wind up doingā¦ even if inadvertently.
I vote to make it the unofficial motto of this forum 
Mike
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