MES111 āMikeā is correct!
I started out with a few pomegranates and now have 28. Heard about everyone growing figs . . . 'got 3. Apples? Now we have 4. And on and on and on!
Not only is āgetting more fruitā addictive . . . but so is chatting on this forum!
But - Iāve learned more here than I did in college, I think! Itās great.
Hi! I was on GardenWeb, too. But not for long and it was a few years ago. I had a kid and an upholstery business and they won out over the internet. I still have the kid and the business, but I have various questions about things like plum curculios, apple rust, peach ooze, and a non-flowering kiwi that is definitely not the variety i ordered.
My family grew up(and is again) in central NJ at the base of the first foothill of the Appalachians, just starting the coastal plain. Iām close to New York City, but thoroughly in the suburbs much to my dismay. Our almost quarter of an acre is THOROUGHLY used. We have 2 peaches, 2 apples, 1 cherry, 2 elderberries, 4 blueberries that count and 3 that arenāt quite dead. A bunch of (not)āthornlessā canby raspberries and actually thornless triple crown blackberries (so good), a WONDERFUL Shiro plum (yellow, just harvested), a good for nothing starking delicious red plum, a couple of volunteers, plum and a peach, a stanley prune plum, some red currants, a hardy kiwi -lame-, and a wonderful Mango pawpaw. Strawberries. And a concord grape. And lots of medicinal herbs.
I grew up gardening, playing in the stream, and hauling garbage out of āourā floodplain woods. And raking an acre of leaves. We had lots of lawn with 2 hills and giant oak trees and a 100 year old house. There are entire radio stations that are āwashing wallpaper paste musicā to me.
I was more interested in animals than plants until my late teens. I had ducks and a parakeet and 2 fish, my brothers and sisters had a squirrel, a litter of skunks (briefly), sparrows, and we had anoles. Occasionally we got to keep a stray dog for a while. Then we had cats. The year my dad sprayed the peach tree, we got lots of peaches. We ran around barefoot and my neighbor had a huge chestnut tree. I used to live on the swing on the apple tree in his front yard, and i spent lots of time up in his plum trees eating warm yellow plums. We had the run of our other neighborās yard, too, and she had a good mulberry. I had grape vines, but they didnt get going until after I left. My dad died and everything fell apart. At some point I got more interested in wild edible plants, and then in medicinal plants. I really studied them (plant books by Michael Moore are awesome!) for a few years. I had a big garden in Oregon and found out that wells can run dry. It didnāt, but my landlady was really worried so I stopped watering. I thought they were an endless source of water!
Back here in wet NJ, (my plant-loving Mom calls it a temperate rainforest) I moved into my momās little white house that had azaleas and grass. And proceeded to beg a square foot for a tomato plant. Then 5 square feet for a flower bed. Etc etc. Little by little Iāve carved that grass down. Iāve been here 15ish years, switched from medicinal plants to Bible, gotten married, and had a kid (9 years old.) Heās more into minecraft than plants but i have hope yet. Because gardening is hoping. I always think Iāll get it right next year. And i do keep learning. But Iām about ready to whack a couple of trees because they donāt really contribute.
Iām not into chemical sprays, but I need to figure out what to do for these apple trees. Pretty sure I can figure some of it out here.
Welcome aboard, Laura. Hope you will start posting your questions in the Fruit Growing category soon. The creator of this site, Scott Smith is our organic fruit growing guru in our ātemperate rain forestā.
You will need a cat to help with your organic fruit growing. Get a feral one or a domestic one that enjoys hunting.
Re. Minecraft, my daughter is 21, she still spends a lot of time playing some version of Minecraft games. I hope your son grows out of it sooner .
Thanks for the encouragement. I know a young man who says minecraft is actually what got him interested in farming, forestry, building, and animal husbandry. Mmmm. Mayyyybe. Hope my son turns out to have some similar interests with me.
Iāve seriously considered a hunter cat. I also have 2 chickens and a rabbit, so adding a predator is a gamble. Squirrels are harder to catch. A dog might help, too.
Iāll have to figure out where to post a question
On the top right corner of the page, there are a couple of symbols.
The looking glass is a search engine. If you want to look for topic of your interest, type in key words. For example, āplum problemā.
the three short line symbol, click on it. Several items will show up. One of them is Categories. Click on the Categories. Then you can choose a category you want to post your question in by clicking on that category.
Hello All, My fruit background goes back over 40 years ago but really took off in 1980 when I worked as a research technician for the two Extension Specialist in tree fruit and small fruit upon graduation at North Carolina State University. NCSU has a strong Peach, Strawberry, Blueberry and Grape breeding program and many growers willing to try cutting edge techniques to grow their crops. We put in trials for the then new way of planting strawberries in the fall and harvest just one crop in the spring and do it all over again in the fall for the next year.
My favorite part of my job was trying out all the crosses made by our plant breeders. Sadly we were developing fruit for commercial production and some truly great flavored fruit were passed over as their other qualities were lacking. Other perks were my colleagues in the vegetable end of things bringing back tomatoes and watermelons from their variety trials.
After 3 years there, I had the chance to come back home and take over my fatherās peanut farm. But I kept up my fruit background by planting a 400 tree peach orchard for direct marketing from the farm. I had a full season of peaches from Redhaven to late season Monroe peaches. Of course I had all the NCSU releases like Norman, Clayton, Ellerbe, Winblo and Biscoe. I also planted some of the numbered selections I liked that were later released such as Contender. I also had Nectar, Jefferson and Redskin. By the end of August I tired of dealing with the public and was always glad the season was over.
Unfortunately the seasons changed and late frost became the norm over the years. Even though I was selling every peach we could pick in the later years as I had built up a waiting list of customers, three years of total crop failure in a row and I decided to to get out of the peach business after 12 years when it was time to decide to start a new orchard or quit and just concentrate on raising the field crops which now included cotton.
Fast forward to today. I still grow a few Winblo and Blushingstar peaches for family and friends. Still battle Scab and Brown Rot but with a backpack sprayer instead of the orchard sprayer parked under the barn. I use to sell peaches for 50 cent a pound back in the 80ās and 90ās. With the price of brown rot control chemicals today and the price of labor, I would have to increase that quit a bit if I was a commercial grower today.
Currently I farm part time and work full time as an Agricultural Inspector certifying field crops grown for seed. Nice to have the benefits of a state job and not worry so much over droughts and low prices. Although I never have a free weekend unless its raining from early spring until after Thanksgiving.
Jerry,
Welcome. Happy to have someone with extensive fruit (and other crops) growing experience to join us. One of our admins and a valuable contributor here is Mark @Olpea who has a commercial peach farm in Kansas.
I think Mark will truly understand what you went true with your peach farming experience. Again, welcome aboard.
I agree NCSU has a strong peach program (donāt know much about their other fruit crops). I grow several of their releases - Clayton, Winblo, Biscoe, Contender, Carolina Gold, Intrepid, Challenger.
Welcome to @GardenHope Laura and @jerryrva Jerry!
Ditto on my message above to all the recent ānewbiesā. I still feel like a newbie, as well . . . especially since I tend to know so much less about growing fruit, than many others here on the forum.
Are you living in VA, now, Jerry? If so - āwhereaboutsā? Just curious.
Hi, Iām Dennis and Iām excited to have found this forum! Thanks for sharing so much amazing knowledge!
Growing on a small 1/3 ac in Hendersonville NC, a traditional apple growing region. Iām (trying) to grow: apples, pears, peach, mulberries, figs, hazelnuts, persimmons, pawpaw, etc. Successfully grafted a couple apple seedlings (from skillcult/Steven) onto semi dwarf rootstock this year. Looking to graft a lot more, such as Japanese persimmons onto American. Maybe on the hot grafting pipe!? (That thread alone is mind blowing). Just ordered more seedlings from Missouri State forestry today, mainly to share with others and try grafting onto, as I am running out of roomā¦
Topics Iām working on this fall and before next bare root season: hardy peaches, pawpaw grafting, storage pears, pruning techniques, improved American hazelnut seed, and always moreā¦
Not great at coming out of the lurking zone, but itās great to read about everyoneās background and current love for cultivating the plants and trees that feed us, so hereās a bit of my story. Grew up in Colorado where dad enjoyed mostly ornamental gardens. He grew rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries and we had a pear and peach trees with almost no production. Remained fascinated though by the prospect of nurturing a plant from seed; tried to grow a single corn plant in a pot but it never did get taller than my knees. I remember saving seeds from apples and going out to scatter them around like Johnny Appleseed. I went house-to-house as a 8 or 10 yr old selling seed packets for school fundraisers, back when a kid could do that all by their lonesome. Went to PA for college and tried to grow a blue rose outside my dorm. Guess it didnāt align with the campus groundskeepers - they mowed it down in favor of the grass!
Life got busy after that and I only recently started scraping out time to plant and care for some trees and a veggie garden after we moved from Anchorage to Olympia Washington. I have to admit that I didnāt even know that Olympia existed or was the capitol city. Just shows you how much I paid attention to my geography in 8th grade! however, weāve grown to love the area and how trees grow so incredibly with all the rain.
Last summer I planted two multigraft trees from Costco: apple and Asian pear. Got a lot of baby Asian pears this summer but only one Honeycrisp apple, which was large and beautiful but had a hole in it that I didnāt notice (next to the stem). It was otherwise extraordinarily crisp and refreshing. Since my adult daughter helped me plant the apple tree, I sent her a celebratory replica (sheās in school in PA).
My latest project is bamboo. I just planted 14 plants of 7 varieties for screening, for lumber, and for edible shoots. Very excited.
Welcome George, youāre in the right placeā¦you canāt come here and not eventually learn to graft. The pressure is great! Sounds like youāre where you need to be!
I came across this forum today and have been wanting to find a forum for the past couple months. I am just going to get into fruit growing so I donāt know too much just yet. My grandma has been growing fruit for a while now and I may have gotten an interest from her. I personally donāt have any fruit trees growing yet, but my mom has a couple growing in our yard. Off the top of my head I believe we have 1 orange, 1 peach, 1 lime, 2 banana, 1 pineapple, and others I canāt remember right now.
Iāll be 18 years old in November. My parents had 3 boys and Iām the middle child. I donāt really know what else to say; Iām not too great at talking about myself.
I hope to get to know you all and be able to contribute!
Welcome aboard. You probably is the youngest fruit grower we have.
No need to rush into growing anyhting yet. You have plenty of time, literally . Keep reading to accumulate knowledge and to form your idea.
On the top upper left corner of the page, you will see a looking glass symbol. That is our search function. You can look up any topic you want to learn using that search engine.
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