I just bought a whole bunch of woodland strawberries under the excuse of them being sold by a nursery specializing in native plants. Most of them are flowers and such (which I buy regularly too) but there are berries as well.
Pretty much this!
This year we’ve added a handful of apple varieties, two raspberry varieties, two strawberry varieties, starting about 8 more new different tomatoes and maybe 10 more new different peppers, plus lettuce varieties, squash, garlic, beans, etc.
We have our staples that we grow every year. Then there are those varieties mentioned above that get added because the seed catalog or packets look interesting.
I thought systemics weren’t supposed to be used on stuff you are going to eat? (At least for a year.)
I -always- want to try something new and I cannot resist if it comes in purple!!
I swore this year I was just gonna grow old seed unless I got special request from Mom or MIL …
The little pull out said a month or so if i recall correctly. I calculated by the time i could eat the fruit, it would be okay.
They killed my cuttings so no fruit anyways
Heart for the month time soan. No heart for your preciousess being killed. D:
Sprinkle cinnamon on top of the soil it kills the fungus that attract the gnats and rumor has it may help rooting. Helped me!
That’s actually created a ton more fungus for me when I’ve done it in the past
And here i sit with sales provacatively enticing me from every front with must haves, but im moving out of state and have already given away about forty potted trees, all my dahlias some floral exotics and Im just sitting in a corner shaking thinking about that multi plum tree that I NEED… living vicariously through y’all. Has anybody ever died from lack of dirt under their nails? Just crious. Checking my vitals…
Hazelnuts can be grown as a shrub. I have 5 named varieties and a few unnamed varieties. I have somewhere around 15 shrub stands in various maturely levels. If you aren’t growing them already, you should totally consider them.
Besides having a real desire to grow my own food/fruit, I try to plant a lot of different varieties of lots of different fruit so that:
- I can have a continuous harvest of more than one type of fruit.
- I can extend my harvest of any one given fruit.
- I can enjoy different varieties of the same fruit with different flavor profiles.
Also, the weather can effect the flavor of the fruit. For example, I noticed a few years ago that Mara des Bois strawberry (everbearing) fruit tastes amazing during the spring and the fall and is only so-so during the summer. Seascape (everbearing), on the other hand tastes great during the summer and only so-so during the spring and the fall. Another great reason to have more than one variety of the same type of fruit.
We may also be building a resilient, dependable food system for ourselves. Adults who were children during the depression era and grew up on farms repeatedly report that they did not know that there was a depression. They report having plenty of food to eat.
We do not have a problem. People who are not growing their own food and/or fruit… and lots of it, they have the problem. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
theoretically I was done buying scions in December from 39th Parallel and Maple Valley, but then I ordered from Skilcult. mean, where do I think I am going to put them? And then tonight I saw Queener (in Portland) is having a 10% off sale, so I just now ordered another 9 scions. Again… where am I putting them? I already ordered some restoration natives (Big
Leaf maple, mostly) from Burnt Ridge, some mixed permaculture plants and 3 sea berries from Planting Justice, some transplants from Territorial, and some seeds from Siskiyou Seeds. Then I decided I needed some more 5 gallon buckets to start grafts in and got a pallet of buckets. Who buys a pallet of buckets? In case you want to know, that’s 60.
I have probably about 80 trees already, maybe 30 berried, and a bunch of 4x8’ raised beds for strawberries and various veggies. I work more than full time. I must be bonkers!
That said, the trees are my sanity. I work with a lot of dementia patients, and some of their family members are difficult to put it nicely. I can’t retire for another 6 years. So is it crazy to buy a pallet of buckets and I didn’t count, but probably 45 scions and to do it all again next year, and the year after, until I retire? Cheaper than quitting my job! Cheaper than therapy!
I’ve not had gnats, but I wonder if one of those tennis racket-shaped bug zappers would be helpful. There is a certain satisfaction to waving one around and zapping fruit flies with it.
POP! POP! POOPIPOOOPIPOPOPOP!
Yes, very satisfying on fruit flies.
They only seem to stun them and nothing else since they’re too small to get caught in the zapper
This year I’m sprouting more perennial and tree seeds than I can probably handle, more cuttings than I ever have before, and I’m primed to start grafting. I told myself, “no more plants until the fall.” Then yesterday my friend texted me asking if I wanted anything from a not-so-local nursery and I couldn’t resist adding 7 more perennials to the queue.
I remember when my first Burnt Ridge order of 10 plants arrived 3 years ago and I told my husband that the food forest was almost complete. 50+ trees and shrubs later, I laugh at how naive I was. It’ll never be complete!
Moral of the story: DON’T TELL ME NOT TO GET THAT PLANT! I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT!
See this is the problem with a thread like this. A person like me will read it and think “Sale, what sale? I better go over to the website and check it out” and “Oh yeah, I meant to place an order with Burnt Ridge this year” and also “I should really order something from Planting Justice, I’ve heard that they have a really nice selection.” And then, instead of this being maybe an intervention thread, it becomes a feeding-into-the-issue thread.