Thanks for the welcome. I’ll have to post more pictures when things are blooming; plants are looking scraggly right now.
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Hi everyone! Really excited to have found this forum, even though I’m located ‘overseas’ (I live in Europe)!
I grow fruit trees and I’ve been interested for a few years in the Rubus genus, especially blackberries and related hybrids. Following you will be a fantastic adventure!
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Hey everybody! I’ve been on here for a bit and thought I would say hi on this thread.
I’m Rachael and I live in NW Iowa, zone 4b/5a. My family has a small acreage and we’re working on turning part of it into an orchard (mostly apples, but also plums, pears, apricots). I’m fascinated by the apple breeding process as well as trying to test the limits of several experimental varieties (I have plenty of cold here to do so!).
Given I used to live in Florida, I have a bit of an obsession with my turmeric and ginger collection. I’m in the process of building a greenhouse in the snow to try to re-expand it, as well as to be able to grow citrus and some cold-hardy bananas.
I dabble in a few other projects too; I like growing edible mushrooms, and hope to someday have a cacao pod from my indoor seedlings.
I’m thankful for the immense knowledge on here and have enjoyed engaging with many of you already.
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Hello!
Lately I have been reading a lot on this forum. I haven’t been that much into growing fruit trees before, I have been into gardening and plants in general though since I was a little kid. Especially cacti, of which I have an ever growing collection.
Since early this year I am living on a beautiful plot of land in Central Portugal. Beautiful, but totally overgrown with brambles, at some places 4 or 5 meters high. And littered with tons of plastic, fridges, washing machines, and other waste. I have been working a lot here to recover the land, it’s an ongoing war against brambles.
Underneath the brambles there are some nice surprises as well. I found about six or seven peach trees, I guess around 30 years old. They had a lot of dead branches, so I pruned them quite drastically. Despite their age they had some fruit this year, so I will at least keep them to see if the pruning and the removal of all the brambles does them good. This land is almost 2 hectares (5 acres), so I don’t mind leaving these possibly not so productive trees for another year.
There are also some apple trees. Their fruit is not so great, they are mealy. But maybe I can use them as rootstock to make multi-variety trees of them.
We also have some giant cherry trees, with edible but very small cherries. Maybe some non-domesticated cherry. They form root suckers which I plan to use as rootstock.
There is a big kiwi with around 1000 fruits ripening right now. We also had a lot of grapes this summer. They were a bit small, but unlike any other grape I ate. Best grapes ever! And they are growing like weeds here. Actually a lot of them were sacrificed during the war against brambles.
I planted 40 spineless fig cacti (Opuntia) from cuttings, with amazing sweet bright pink fruits.
A few weeks ago I started buying some fruit trees after I cleared another piece of land. That’s when I found this forum. The more I read here, the more enthousiastic I became about growing fruit trees, and the more trees I bought. So now I planted five different plum varieties, two cherries, a red fleshed apple, two apricots, a grapefruit, a blood orange and an almond, along with some berries. As I want to spray as little as possible I don’t plan to plant new peaches or nectarines.
I never grafted anything. This forum is very useful for learning the basics, so I feel confident trying it when spring arrives.
Right next to our land is a fruit orchard of the neighbour that died 10 years ago. His family visits here once a year to clear the grass and brambles, but besides that nothing happens there. With their permission we have been picking a lot of fruit which would otherwise just rot away. It’s very interesting to see how different fruit trees grow after being neglected for 10 years. Among them is a big apple tree with grapefruit sized red apples which are juicy and have an amazing flavour. Best apples ever! This tree alone yielded at least 30 kilos. So I will be using this tree for scions this spring. Unfortunately there is a metal wire all around its stem which is already buried a few inches. I want to find a way to remove it without damaging the stem too much. That’s the least I can do for this tree as a thank you for all the delicious fruit it gave us this summer. Free the tree!
I still have a big to-do list here. Planting more fruit trees, experiment a lot with grafting, experiment with creating hybrids, build a greenhouse for my cacti, build some houses from clay, build a swimming pool and a sauna, gather scrap building materials, get my tree nursery going, grow vegetables, build a bigger chicken coop, plant a lot of native and wildlife friendly plants (cork oaks, wild privet, arbutus, viburnum, sambucus, hawthorn), and of course: the war on brambles. After some time our tree nursery, vegetables and eggs will generate some income, but for now everything has to be very low-budget. I didn’t even manage to gather firewood before the rainy season started, so this will be a cold winter. But thinking about what a paradise this is going to be, and partially already is, warms me up more than enough.
I am looking forward to learn a lot more about fruit growing here.
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Do you have any pictures? Your adventures sound exciting! And I don’t know about anyone else, but fig cacti sound interesting to me! It would also be fun to find out if any of our members, especially those near you, can help you identify some of your fruit.
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I love those Opuntias. Especially since it’s a spineless variety. Only the fruits have glochids, so you need to carefully wash the fruits before eating. You will regret it when you don’t. 
Kiwi’s in the sun.
Mandarin. Small fruits but they taste really good.
I also found a big citrus rootstock. Whatever citrus was grafted on it has died, so I can think about what to graft on it next spring. Probably a blood orange.
(Something goes wrong with the photos. I do see photos in other’s posts, but in my own post I only see colored rectangles.)
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I only see the rectangles, too.
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To help this particular thread short and relevant, I would like to ask that all new members and greeters keep this thread for introduction and welcome ONLY, please.
Anything you would like to discuss or post, please move it to other categories appropriate to your interest. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
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Hello, I’m Juan, from Spain. We have some land where my family grows stone fruits (apricot, peach, plum, cherry) and citrus with difficulty. The land is not good, more suited to grow our old rainfed almond trees, carob, olives… But that’s our land, so in our family we make our best to grow successfully all of them.
I joined this forum to learn about everything related to fruit tree growing and caring, focusing on ecological points of view.
Thank you!
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Beginning in 1999 there have been several gardening sites I have taken part in. A friend from one of the sites still frequented suggested giving this one a try. After a couple of weeks looking around it is time to introduce myself.
My name is PaulF and we live in southeast Nebraska, USA. Formerly from south-central Iowa, my wife and I retired to her childhood home 21 years ago. We have gardened since our marriage in 1971 so you can tell we are a couple of mature folks.
I am the tomato and pepper grower, she does flowers, shrubs, green beans and cucumbers. Anything the soil grows we try. I would love to grow melons but have horrible luck. My tomato inventory has numbered in the upper hundreds but I am slowly reducing that number.
I will spend a lot of time learning about Scott’s forum but I am always available for discussions and especially opinions. I still learn something new every day and appreciate that part of gardening forums. Thank you being here and allowing a new voice.
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Welcome, @gcm88! Nice to meet you!
It would be fun to see a couple pictures of your land and trees, and to know about your general weather patterns when you post. Most of our members are in the USA, but we have quite a few Europeans, too. Our growing conditions are all quite different, but many of the techniques, and our addiction to fruit, even when our land isn’t well suited for it, are the same.
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Welcome to the forum. Your growing conditions are probably similar to ours. Today it is ice!