Introducing myself to Scott's forum

[Thistleberry]

Hello! I’ve been a long time lurker and finally decided to join this community. The information that I’ve gleaned from here the last couple of years has been wonderful.

I am in the PNW with enough property to get myself into a bit of trouble (there’s always room for one more plant, only limited by how far I want to drag a watering can in the summer and how much deer fencing I have to wrap a plant). I am particularly interested in growing things that are less common/traditional to our area. My favorite thing to grow is kiwi. I have quite a few arguta, I’ve had kolomitka, I’ve killed a few deliciosa and I really want to try some chinensis. Also growing currants, jostaberry, raspberry, tayberry, loganberry, boysenberry, goji berry, hops, figs, quince, plum, haskaps and Asian pear. This year I’m adding a few chestnuts, almonds, elderberry, pomegranates a medlar and more Feijoa (have some seedlings that have never bloomed).

Aside from growing things (and killing them) I really enjoy propagating. Maybe even more than growing! When I’m not playing with fruit vines/shrubs then I’m propagating roses, hydrangeas and random shrubs.

[SoxPNW]

Hiya, fellow fruit loversss! My name is Soknou (pronounced like Sock-New) and I go by “Sox” for short. I’m a container gardener in zone 8b just south of Seattle in the PNW, where I grow veggies and kinda push the envelope on growing things like citrus, mangoes, lychees, longan, etc. Actually, I began gardening 5 years ago when my sister in Olympia told me I can’t grow citrus in Washington, lol. Welp, I now have over 20 varieties… so I guess I proved her wrong. My Cara Cara gave me 30 fruits this year, and she’s just in a container like all my other plants. Harvested all my Washington navel oranges already and my Kishu mandarins, so am just waiting for my Rio Red grapefruits to ripen, as well as my first blood orange. They’re about to move out of the unheated poly tunnel this weekend.

In my winter tent (just a gazebo frame covered with plastic mesh, greenhouse plastic, and frost cloth) are my 5 avocados, 2 lychee, 2 longan, 3 guava, Rio of the Grande cherry, surinam cherry, red banana, and a couple figs. Outside, I got a persimmon, 2 Asian pears, Pakistan mulberry, Thai Dwarf mulberry, White mulberry, Utah Sweet and Parfianka pomegranate, a donut peach tree, 2 nectarine trees, 3 column apples, a few multi-grafted cocktail trees (bought, not grafted by me, and never done very well), a bunch or raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries… and a bunch of other stuff, lol. No, I do not have acreage. Just a small fenced backyard with a lot of stuff in it, all in containers, lol.

I actually stumbled onto this website while researching loquats, because I have 4 varieties growing that haven’t fruited, so I was looking into whether or not anyone in WA grows any. I found the Loquat in the PNW thread and spent 2 hours yesterday reading each post from 2022 to current, lol, then did a loquat tasting video for my youtube channel where I mentioned Growing Fruit, and that I apparently wasn’t the only one in the PNW trying to fruit them here. So, now I’m here, hoping to connect with others in the PNW pushing the boundaries for what we can grow here, and of course everyone who loves growing fruit in general. Pleased to meecha all!

[Noddykitty]

Welcome and nice to meet you Sox.

[SoxPNW]

Thank you, Noddykitty!

[Bob]

Hello there! Introductions set off my anxiety (also I’m AuDHD) but plant people usually get me so here goes:
I grew up in a small SMALL little farm community in Ohio (my graduating class was 31 people), and we were NOT farmers unlike a lot of the other folks there. I hated farmers and farming and so on because it was a stiflingly small place for me. So I just assumed I want nothing to do with anything in that realm. Then I got out of there, spent most of my life in urban settings. Then came the pandemic and I was so bored and I was just watching dumb video and I saw someone mention that it’s pretty easy to get the seeds from a store-bought pepper to grow. And we go through a LOT of peppers in our household. And it worked. So I tried it with some tomato seeds. And it also worked. I had always assumed I had a black thumb and that plants and I could never be friends (it can be hard for me to stick to a routine when it doesn’t stimulate my brain). I killed a lot of plants in various accidental ways and I’m sensitive and I hate that part. BUT ALSO I was using what at that time would’ve simply been trash and helping LIFE.
At the time we were renting a small place in the city BUT we had some minor yard space and I got permission to make our pandemic project a little garden bed. It wasn’t much and I didn’t really research I just did what we always did growing up (reluctantly) and I dug some dirt and tossed some seeds in. It worked but like… not great. However I got interested in companion planting and some other gardening ideas. I like to cook so everything I grew was edible. Alas, eventually life got in the way and we were unable to maintain the garden but I then learned about grow lights and seed starting and started doing a lot indoors. Then we got a new crappy landlord and we decided we needed to move. Cost of living in Ohio is very low, and they were pirates! Anyway…
During this time my nesting partner was driving from Ohio to New York every week for a new job while I tried to pack us up to get out of the place before a new lease had to be signed. We purchased our first house (sadly we overpaid the market suicked) and like most first time homeowners I think we are still reeling for all the things wrong. Plus the cost of living transition to this part of new york is a lot. Our house was (intentionally) purchased with as little lawn as possible. This is the house I intend to die in, so I better like it. But I digress. I got really lucky that just down the road from us is a little nursery, the first new person I met here being the owner. And then my brain erupted. I got REALLY interested in permaculture, grow tents for controlled environments, heirloom seed acquisition and propagation/seed saving. I spent last summer designing, digging by hand, and irrigating six in-ground “raised beds’, built with frames that I treated using yakisugi (Shou Sugi Ban**).** I tried to build a garden space elsewhere only to find this giant boulder taking up the majority of the space just a few inches down (to be fair we have no back yard, our deck just goes onto the mountain,so I should not have been surprised).
We have a whole herd of deer (I counted 14 at the biggest grouping) who ate well, everything in my garden. We weren’t mad. So then I researched deer and how to barrier against them using plants, but also found that the hunting people had some great idea for building deer spaces (them to hunt, me to provide them with some tasty alternatives). With what little time I had left, I fall planted garlic and onions and they popped up here a few days ago.
That brings me to Now. Finally. And I sat down like…okay what do I want to grow. What do I like. So aside from staple veg for our household (most of which I’m trying to grow high Anthocyanin varieties of - doing the goth garden things as long as it’s tasty), the thing I’ve always loved the most is fruit. I like it tart, I like it right off the plant, I like it until my stomach hurts. So I started researching all the fruit, got my spreadsheets all set up researching varieties, native species, etc. I have always loved berries. In fact, when I was a kid my dad’s best friend’s mom Mrs. Street took me to her garden where I first learned that the food we eat can just be like…growing in the ground. My mind was blown then. We were pretty poor and blueberries were a luxury. She pointed at her bush and let me go ham. So yeah. I want to grow berries… all of them that I can. I love that we moved from 6a to 7a which adds just a little more leeway on a lot of things.
My other partner is from Maui, so long-term goal I want to grow some things from there in my tents, especially the “local bananas” (which seem to be some kind of apple banana) while systematically replacing/adding to our landscaping as many berries (and other fruits) as I can. I want my house to just be a veritable forest of edibles. So I am at this exact moment going through and shopping berry seeds/cuttings/etc. and I ended up here mainly because I was trying to find cloudberries, but also because I’ve found it appears in most search results any time I search via scientific name for a fruit of any type. But I should get back to that. I don’t have much to share or trade yet but I’m not going anywhere so I’ll just keep on improving little by little.

[SoxPNW]

Hiya, Bob, nice to meet ya! Lol, growing up in a poor Cambodian family, gardens are normal, even just outside an apartment. (My mom like literally butchered chickens on the front porch - of our apartment… ) Anyway, I fully understand what you mean about lack of mental interest in it, lol. If anybody had told me that in my later years I’d have the kind of garden I have now, I’d never have believed it. I am forever RUNNING OUT OF SPACE, so my husband and I are putting out there to the Universe that we’d love to manifest a nifty 5 acres somewhere that’s super affordable, and I could grow the fruit forest of my dreams, In the meantime, I just keep growing whatever I can, enjoying every small harvest with complete satisfaction. Welcome to the fruit fold, my friend!

[Bob]

Thanks for the welcome! Socks is a cute nickname, I love that you’re in the same boat I’m in… pushing the boundaries of our zones to try and eek some things out, especially things we’re told can’t grow here. Though I’m Hella envious of your citruses! Still I’m really thankful that moving from 6a to 7a opened up so many more options for me.

[SoxPNW]

Thanks, Bob! Pushing boundaries is right, lol. I lost a gazillion mangoes in the Jan & Feb freezes, but am trying round 2 with five new ones. I’m aiming for bragging rights when I get my first mango fruit in a couple years! Citrus was the starter challenge, but I got so many of them it’s not really a challenge anymore. My immediate challenge is avocados, guavas, starfruit, and of course my mangoes.

[Miniforests]

Hello! I live in SW Virginia, midatlantic USA. I’m interested in a growing and trialling different things, and particularly doing interspecies hybridization. This year I did some Korean giant x Callery pear pollinations, and also Taiwan long x wild alba mulberry crosses. Also been doing interspecies hybridization with sweet potato and physalis.

[KS_razerback]

Welcome!
Interesting cross ideas, what are the goals you hope to achieve with the crosses? New flavors? Improved hardiness? The physalis sweet potato cross sounds unlikely, because they are in seperate families, one in the nightshades and one in the morning glory.

[Miniforests]

The main reason I do crosses is to look for novel traits and increase vigor / ease of cultivation. Adaptation is the general goal, so yea a lot of it comes down to crossing species for improved hardiness. Even when hybridizing two weakly adapted species here, say Lycium barbarum and ruthenicum, their crosses actually grow much better than either parent does, so the possibilities for new crops are higher than many people realize. The sweet potato and physalis hybrids I’m working with are interspecific within their genus.

[KS_razerback]

I am planning on doing a bunch of different crosses/hybridization of my own too!
We probably aught to move it to a different thread such as this https://growingfruit.org/t/anybody-have-any-ongoing-or-successful-breeding-projects/
Or start a new thread, so we don’t clutter the introduction thread

[Miniforests]

Thanks ! I’ll start a new thread, and look forward to hearing more about what you’ve got planned.

[SoxPNW]

Welcome, Miniforests! Interesting projects you got going on there.

[resonanteye]

welcome to everyone, i haven’t looked at this thread in so long that i see people i think of as regulars introducing themselves!

[DIY_Energy_Drink]

Hello everyone.

Long time lurker here, based in Dublin, Ireland. Just trying to create a backyard berry patch. I’ve limited space (for now) so I really want to try to optimise everything. I’ve been quietly benefitting from all of the really great info on this site. Just joined because I finally have something (small) to contribute.