Welcome, Brenda - this is the right spot
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Thank you everyone. Canāt wait to get to know you all via your gardening.
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Hello all! My name is Eric. I donāt know how I missed this but I joined a few days ago and have already learned a lot! Looks like a perfect place to be able to have the discussions my family doesnāt really care to hear again. One can only be told so many times about the new berry/fruit treeā¦ Or whatever that I found. 
I grew up on a farm in middle Tennessee and have always enjoyed gardening. My mother is a master gardener and focuses mostly on ornamentals and such. I have always been interested in fruiting plants. On the farm, we had wild blackberries everywhere and I prided myself on finding the best patches and keeping it a secret from my siblings. That way, they never knew why the berries I picked were bigger and juicier. I recall walking around the hills when I was 9 and finding a plant that looked different from blackberries but I recognized it as a berry plant anyway so I dug it up and planted it in the garden. I told my mom that I thought it was a raspberry. Turns out it was a black raspberry and thatās where my true passion for gardening began.
I am a chiropractor but also own a couple of chocolate companies. I get to travel all over the world looking for the best varieties of cocoa and working with farmers on how to process them in a way that is suitable for high quality artisan chocolate. I currently have a little greenhouse dedicated to different cocoa tree varieties that I have collected over the years.
I now live in Utah and gardening is definitely not the same here. I have had to relearn everything. I currently have 34 fruit trees. Figs, peaches, apples, pears, pluots, apricots and cherries. I also have 22 blueberry varieties and have tested more than 30 blackberry, raspberry or crosses and currently have 9 raspberry, 6 blackberry and tayberry. I also have a large vegetable garden mostly dedicated to corn, melons tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, potatoes and pumpkins.
I love gardening and learning about gardening and am excited to learn from you all. One of my favorite things is making jam and I have made 15 gallons this week of the different berries that I have ripe!!! Yummy
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Glad youāre here! Iāve grown citrus in RI for the past 15 years!
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Oh, goody! Iāll be hollering for you to help me learn to raise our baby cacao trees. 
Sounds like youāll fit right in! Welcome! Iāll save my questions about chocolate for next week!
MMM, chocolate! The one treat that may almost override my love of tree ripened fruit. Fortunately, one neednāt choose one over the other, even in the same desert.
Welcome Eric, you will bring experience from a part of the country that hasnāt been well represented here. I look forward to your input.
Welcome Eric! There are other jam-makers here, too
Hey everyone,
My name is David and I was born and raised in Hawaiāi and am currently a student. I canāt accurately express how ecstatic I am about this community, always awesome to meet other fruit fanatics. 
I grew up in a small town by the beach, a place that is warm/hot year-round and gets absolutely no chill hours as the thermometer almost never drops below 60 F. For as far back as I can remember, gardening and in particular edible fruiting plants have been an integral part of my lifeā¦ despite this tropical climate, my botanical and horticultural inclinations (with few exceptions such as native Hawaiian plants) have almost always leaned towards temperate and subtropicals. Seeing pictures of beautiful apple trees of varieties Iād never seen in the grocery store laden with fruit and berries such as those jewel-like currants were sources of inspiration and desire to me in the same way Iām sure many northern gardeners see citrus, mangos and bananas. That being said, thanks to my mother (who is an avid gardener), I have had experience growing tropical fruits- those three, guavas, lychee, papayas and more but my heart is with the non-tropicals. 
Over the years Iāve grown around 200 varieties of apples, apricots, figs, kiwis, peaches, nectarines, plums, pears, pomegranates interspecific prunus and quinces and more with varied success. Since moving to a different part of the island, my focus at the current time is mostly reestablishing with certain pome and stone fruit (apples, plums, pears, etc.) and berries. For the latter I have a few kiwis/Actinidias a number of neotropical blueberry (Cavendishia, Macleania, etc.) species, highbush blueberries, Asiatic blueberry species, gooseberries, 22 species and varieties of strawberry, over a dozen varieties of raspberry, blackberries, and others. I am also partaking in breeding Vacciniumsā¦after trialing over 20 varieties of highbush blueberry and a selection of different species, Iāve severely reduced that number and am hoping some of the crosses from the remaining ones may produce interesting progency. I also grow herbs, roses (about 50 varieties currently) and Burseraceae- frankincense (Boswellia), myrrh (Commiphora) and copal (Bursera).
Looking forward to getting to know you all better, what you have growing and your experiences with fruiting plantsā¦whereas my climate and location is different from many of yours, I hope to contribute as well.
*VacciniumSultan is a joke nickname given by a friend because of my obsession with the Ericaceae.
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Welcome!
Aloha, David! Very glad you found us! Iām the west-coast mod on the list, and probably as close to you as someone on the mainland could be (San Diego county, coastal hills area). I love, love, love Hawaii. It is the only other place I would live besides San Diego. I had the great pleasure of spending about 5 days at the Grand Wailea Resort on Maui for my 35 wedding anniversary, and was given a private tour of their on-ground botanical gardens. It was like I died and went to gardening heaven, omg. That was my very first trip to Hawaii, and Iāve been back twice since, and thatās not nearly enough. I am very impressed with all the sub-tropical and temperate plants youāve grown, thatās incredible, especially all the blueberries! We really look forward to your photos and your stories. Especially me, I have such a soft spot for the Hawaiian islands, just really truly, paradise on earth. Nothing like it anywhere.
Patty S.
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My brother is fruit obsessed and living in Kapaa Kauai where he grows avocados, bananas, mangoes, papayas, breadfruit, tangerines, cherimoya, star fruit, passion fruit and things I canāt name at the moment. I havenāt visited him there in years but I used to go there for months at at time and help with the planting when we werenāt surfing. It is a long flight from NY where I live now. We were raised in S. CA where we first got started with our romance with all things fruitā¦ ,
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Good day allā¦ Reading everyoneās stories leaves mine looking extremely unremarkable. I own a house in Central NJ and condo in Ocean City, MD. I work as a union electrician and also have my own electrical contracting company. Iām 38, and married with two daughters, 2 and 5. I graduated from Rowan University with a B.S. in Business Administration with a specialization in MIS. I used to barely water my lawn, I hired a landscaper to maintain my property, until one day last fall, I had to cut down a few dying maples on the sunny side of my property. At that point I asked my landscaper to transplant a quite healthy Japanese maple to the sunny side where it would receive more light. After some e-mails back and forth, he finally transplanted it at a highly unrecommended time of year, second week of June, even though I requested the service to be performed in the fall. After the transplant, it started to wilt, even with me watering it as per his instructions. I sought help elsewhere at a local nursery. We came up with a workable solution and I kept at it. Here we are in August, the Japanese maple is still hanging in there. I decided to expand. After seeing a homeowner in Outer Banks transplant some tall grass from his home in MD to his beach house. I decided to add some tall grass on each side of my walkway, and some English boxwood, all from the same nursery that helped me with my Japanese Maple. Well, on my last visit there to pick up the boxwoods, the owner showed me a peach tree he was growing next to the parking lot. It was small, had some small fruit on it, and he said I could grow the same thing for a $20 tree. I was intrigued, I could grow a fruit tree??? That thought turned into, I can grow a fruit tree! So, I am now the proud owner of a 3ā tall white lady peach tree that I have been babying beyond belief. I searched all over the Internet to find the proper care methods for this addition to my home, and your forum plopped in my lap. You all seem like an incredible bunch of highly knowledgeable, more importantly highly passionate fruit growers and I am extremely lucky to have found you. Thank you for creating this space.
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Welcome Rob. You will like it here and folks here will help you with your new passion of growing fruits.
Tony
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Welcome aboard! Good solid info here! Enjoy!
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Rob,
Welcome aboard. You have been quite accomplished professionally at a young age (yes, 38 is quite young, to me) 
Keep reading and asking questions, you will be successful with fruit trees, too.
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Chocolate, I heard someone once opine that chocolate is THE proof that there is a G-d.
Welcome.
Mike
Nice! In most native american cultures, it was a gift given to them by a God as well!! It sure is heavenly.
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Hah, hah, this is how it starts, Rob. Just warning you, lol! In 5 years, youāll have a small orchard. Very glad you found us, and youāll find lots of experts on this forum, many from your neck of the woods or close by. Feel free to ask any questions you need to, weāll all guide you along with your new addiction, errrā¦ love of gardening. 
Patty S.
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Wow guys, what a warm group of responses 
I am now actually looking for the most basic, beginner info on getting a small peach tree started in central NJ. This includes a watering schedule, and should I fertilize in the fall? Is it possible for a member with experience on this topic to PM me links to any articles so we donāt clog up the āIntroā thread on this forum?
Thank youā:hugs:
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