I have this book coming in as i’m pooped out with 2 locations of home orchard spray schedules. Im happy to graze on random berry and fruit production for me and my family. The idea of planting edible landacape with low pest pressure and disease issues. Anyone else read anything from this author or have any thoughts?
Currently caring for zone 4 apples, pears, peaches, plums, sweet and sour cherries with not much success. Always learning.
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I have read and enjoyed most of Lee Reich’s books. Much of my backyard renovation was driven by what he had to say. Some of the things he recommended strongly have basically not worked at all for me, but I like his outlook in general and his climate is not too different from mine.
I have not had to spray my strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, goumi, autumn olive, gooseberries, currants, jostaberries, or grapes. I spray the apples on and off with organic stuff but I have not had a whole lot of production yet so I suspect the challenges still lie mostly in the future.
Suspect I’ll have to start spraying the grapes at some point for fungus. And this year I planted peach, apricot, and plum, which as I understand it in this climate is basically signing up for rigorous spraying if you want to get anything out of them.
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Please mention specifics that he recommended that didnt work for you if you get a chance. We have a site to clear, small shed cabin to build, then i can get planting probably spring of 2022.
Thanks for your response!
In particular, nanking cherry and cornelian cherry have not been fruitful for me.
Knowing what I know now, I would plant different bush cherries (Juliet, Romeo, Carmine Jewel, etc.). Nanking flowers a lot earlier and hence is often frozen out. My two bushes have made one cherry in 6 years. They are huge now, and they are very pretty when they bloom. But I wanted fruit!! My wife doesn’t want me to replace them or even top work them because they do look nice in early spring. I’m pretty sure they are lousy with brown rot fungus, which kills a lot of shoots right after flowering. Next year I’ll try spraying a synthetic fungicide maybe.
Even if they do fruit at some point, from what I understand there are better tasting bush cherries. Though in the east at least the chances are high you would have to spray them to get decent fruit.
On Cornus Mas, I have also waited 6 years for only a couple handfuls of fruit from the two that I have (Pioneer and Elegance). There was recently some material posted on this forum describing varieties from eastern europe and russia and these two (they were renamed for the US market) don’t rank especially high in flavor, fruit size, etc. The fruits we have gotten off the trees were ok but not great. They do make nice flowers in very early spring, but I prefer the look of a Cornus florida if what you want is flowers. All in all with my small yard I’d rather use the space for something else. I am hesitant to cut them down since the look ok and have 6 years growth on them. Maybe they will get more productive.