And I forgot the ‘Martin’ saskatoon/serviceberry. And my plans to plant some seeds of Streptopus amplexifolius and Manchurian apricot (so I might at least try to graft something on it).
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Hi everyone — I grow citrus outside the U.S. and am interested in practical, temperature-based growing and pest-timing questions. Glad to join and learn from the community.
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O good. First off, willkommen. I’m in southern Jersey myself. Not a mountain for miles, terribly flat and sandy here but a mild climate. No castle, though there is a large elephant that used to be a hotel relatively nearby.
Ich habe eine lose Verbindung zu einer Familie in der Schweiz und hoffe, Süddeutschland und die Schweiz in ein paar Jahren wieder zu besuchen. Deshalb muss ich vorerst mein Deutsch üben. Mein Schwerpunkt liegt auf Äpfeln. Ich würde sehr gerne die Obstplantagen von Lubera in Buchs besuchen.
Viel Glück, wir schreiben später.
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Hi everyone! I don’t know how I’ve not discovered this excellent forum until very recently, but I’m glad to be here now!
I was previously hobby-farming four acres in zone 10b for ~10 years. My focus there was bananas, citrus, and dual-purpose heritage chickens.
I’m 18 months in Richmond, VA now, working with 0.25 acres on a consistent 12° slope from horizontal.
My focus thus far has been on soil health, removing established English ivy and poison ivy patches, and obsessively planning a Formally-designed Ultra-high-density Wildlife-integrated Urban Food Forest or FUWUFF, as I abbreviate it in my notes. My dream vision combines the rigid structure and deliberate geometry of Jacques Wirtz’s landscapes with the unchecked productivity and self-sustaining ecosystem of the Amazon rainforest. I’m planning to start a new thread to catalog the odyssey; with plant lists and lots of pictures.
So far I have planted:
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35 food trees in the ground (including 3 being grown as multi-stem shrubs), 21 of 35 are espaliered. Only 6 of 35 were planted in year 1 (Spring '25), the rest in year 2 (Spring '26).
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83 evergreen trees and shrubs forming a multi-layered windbreak around the property with 40% porosity projected at full maturity. 64 of these are (ultra-)columnar nativars. The other 19 are Camellia Sasanqua varieties providing Oct-Dec bloom/nectar support which would otherwise be gapped.
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400 flowering native herbaceous perennial plugs, planted in geometric drifts to provide continuous bloom and nectar support from March through October.
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250 native herbaceous perennial groundcover plugs, selectively chosen to complement and correct what is already established.
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26 perennial berries, mostly a diversity of blueberries and thornless blackberry (trained on perimeter fence). I’m happy to pick and eat them, but also fine if wildlife gets most of these- except the strawberries, those are my fav lol; they are also in towers, right next to the kitchen door which helps.
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4 songbird houses with 125% occupancy in 2026 (one group of Eastern Bluebirds raised a second brood, observation suggests they may be preparing for a third, but its late so they could just be territorial of that house now.
~200 sq ft asparagus patch (split), planted as perennial drifts -
Pre-ordered for planting in Spring 2027:
62 fruit trees (mostly a diversity of apples). 58 of 62 will be either on espalier or incorporated into fruiting walls. As much as I want to do Belgian fences, the maintenance commitment and variation of vigor across selections concerns me, so planning Tall Spindles with 3’ spacing for fruiting walls instead.
Pruning is one of my favorite hobbies, although if I could go back- I would do candelabra form on my existing espaliers instead of a mixture of three tier, fan, and semi-formal.
My IPM routine is now strictly biological. I’ll go into this in more detail later, but my approach is proactive, iterative, and continues to evolve. Ongoing adjustments and biological introductions have resulted in lower pest impacts in 2026 compared with 2025. However, because the majority of trees were planted only this past spring, it is still too early to meaningfully evaluate overall efficacy. I’m continuing to refine for observed and anticipated pests and will further tune my approach for 2027.
I’m currently a student at Soil Food Web School. I’ve completed the Foundation Curriculum and am now working with a mentor through the Advanced Practicum (AP). I’m preparing for my final assessment to earn the Certified Soil Food Web Lab Technician credential, focused on microscopy-based soil biology analysis. In parallel, I’m continuing through the full AP toward becoming a Certified Soil Food Web Consultant.
As part of that work, I’m currently on my second iteration of BioComplete Compost production, adjusting the recipe with each batch to move toward the desired levels, diversity, and ratios of soil microbiology. Without going too far down the wormhole, I’m essentially trying to “speedrun” ecological succession, with the goal of developing soils around a 100:1 fungal-to-bacterial (F:B) ratio. There’s still a long way to go, but each iteration gives me more information to work with.
I’m also midway through Oregon State University’s Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Professional Track and am on pace to complete it in December 2026. I had previously worked through the free version on YouTube, but the full OSU program is forcing me to slow down and consider more deeply how each internal and external element or force affects the system as a whole, or doesn’t, and under what conditions does that happen.
Lastly, I recently submitted my final exam for the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Accredited Organic Land Care Professional (NOFA AOLCP) certification.
My intent with these programs isn’t simply to collect credentials. I’m trying to learn as much as possible from different approaches and disciplines: how they define best practices, how they evaluate whether a system is functioning as intended, and which key performance and threat indicators are worth monitoring throughout production.
Beyond design aesthetics, my FUWUFF goals are to produce an abundance of delicious, nutritious food for my family, friends, neighbors, and local food banks. My fiancee, Spider, is an excellent chef and I am blessed to have the opportunity to stock our pantry/fridge with harvests and then enjoy her delicious home cooked meals using those ingredients.
I’ve been making fruit wines for many years but I’m excited to branch out into ciders, perrys, and mixed-fruit ciders. My best breakthrough for banana wine, in case anyone else is doing that, is- Roast the bananas (with peels) before bulk fermentation (without peels), it changed the end product from a generic white wine flavor to a richer, more complex, slightly fruity, white wine with clear notes of caramel.
Oh, forget to mention I’m also (informally) experimenting with some tropical fruit trees as houseplants in 15 and 25 gallon pots. That’s just a side quest though- FUWUFF is my primary focus.
-Dove
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Wow welcome! I’m looking forward to following your project.
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Hello! Longtime gardener, new to fruit trees. Been pretty disappointed with grocery store fruit in the past few years so trying my hand at growing my own.
Recently moved about 45 minutes north of Richmond and very excited to have a huge (to me) garden on the property and a bit of forested area (7/8s acre total). This spring I planted 3 peaches and 4 apples, and 1 chicago hardy fig, (the fig seems to be struggling with juglone, it’s about 15 feet from a black walnut and barely grew a foot, which surprised me, the fig I grew in Atlanta and shot up much faster).
The soil is pretty poor and compacted and the previous owners were not gardeners, so I’m currently focused dumping organic matter everywhere to get some life into the soil
Definitely interested in advice for managing what feels like a whole new world of pests on the peach and apple trees, ideally with less chemicals/impact on local wildlife and insects, but also I want to harvest these fruits.
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Welcome aboard @coorain, you have come to a great place to learn, share, teach, and brag everything “fruit”. Lots of great people here.
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