I joined recently after lurking for almost a year when I started to have more time at work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife has always enjoyed gardening and having flowers around, I caught the fruit growing bug when we bought our first house a few years ago in a Seattle suburb and felt like we finally had a place where we had the space and time for things to grow. Started out with an italian plum and a 3.5 in one apple tree (0.5 is a small, finger-long Braeburn stub) the fall after we bought the house. I built 2 trellises (one for raspberries/tayberries and one for hops) the following spring. Last year was when I really got bit by the bug hard when I added a Puget Gold apricot, a pair of gooseberries, and some huckleberries and knew that long term I wanted to add more trees. I came across this site when I was looking for plum varieties to plant this year and found @scottfsmith stone fruit review, @Stan harvest diary, and other posts to be of great help to figure out what Iād like to try and what might grow well in the PNW. Iām adding a green gage, satsuma, and shiro plums this year. The site has also been helpful with tips on grafting and info on pear varieties that Iām going to try adding to a red bartlett seedling my son grew out after a visit to my parents. Iāve been teasing my wife for years about planting a quince because I love the smell of them. Over the last year Iām now at the point where my wife is shaking her head when I throw out the next idea (serviceberries! kiwi!), although she was excited to hear about the new genetic dwarf white peach. The next experiment to try is container fruit trees as the rest of our grassy yard is off limits for planting to keep a good area for my two kids to play outside and our front yard is large paver patio. Thank you all for your contributions to this great and unique resource
Thank you very much, I wrote varieties in the summary, yesterday I tried but I donāt know why copy/paste didnāt work. Yes, perfect definition, Iām just a grape enthusiast!
when I go back to Sicily in holiday time (I was born there), I go aroung in the villages looking for forgotten ancient vines
So interesting! Welcome, Luca!
Iām sure there are many āgrape peopleā here, who will share your interest and excitement! You will find that many of the members āgo crazy with joyā over their particular favorites . . . so you are among friends, here on the Fruit Forum.
Karen AKA Pomgranny, A Little Crazy - in Virginia.
@mamuang
I will āsecondā that statement . . . AND second that emotion, as they say in the song! Itās great having someone who is willing to help with the digging, too!
Brian . . . I have a lot of āhead shakersā in my family. However - Itās funny how they all quit shaking once they have that first blueberry pie or their kids get SO excited to be able to go out and pick a real pomegranate off a tree in our backyard! LOL
My wife definitely helps, sheās the one who got the raspberries, tayberry, and the strawberries we have from neighbors. Whenever I do suggest something sheās not familiar she does suspect me of considering it because we can eat something off it. Sheās leaving the trees to me and I enjoy teasing her about planting a quince tree because I love the aroma of them.
My family is definitely in on eating anything thatās grown. I rarely get any blueberries off our 2 bushes because the kids hit them first. I wanted to make jam out of our tayberries last year and the kids were grumpy about not getting any for a couple days so I get enough for jam. I was bummed to find out we donāt get hot enough for pomegranates and a few other things to ripen well. I would love to try one of the pomegranates with the softer arils and I know my son would like that too, heāll eat pretty much any fruit you put in front of him.
Iām growing a lot of what you are. Iāve got just over 5 acres to play with in Arlington, wa and am trialling things like Ubijay, 4 cultivars of Chilean guava, Chilean wineberry, 10 cultivars of feijoa. 12 cultivate of pawpaw, Chilean wine palm, jelly palm, Brazilian mountain strawberry guava, Chilean hazelnut, yellow horn, and many others. Iām approaching 500 edible crops in my orchard. Some are high density to mimic a forest and some are being added to an existing deciduous forest if mostly alders to transition to a more desired long term over and understory. Weāll have to compare notes as to how they do in our climate.
Very envious of the space! Iāll be squeezing just a few of them into our little ~6600 sq ft lot, with most of the space dedicated to trying to find a cold-hardy avocado that can survive here. I expect most of the avocados to die, so Iāll be able to rotate new ones into those spaces over time, but Iām trying to keep the other stuff (feijoa, chilean guava, ubajay, guabiju, Psidium longipetiolatum, chilean wine palm, etc) to just one or two specimens planted probably a little too densely. Definitely look forward to hearing about any cultivars/specimens you find that do particularly well here!
Yep: I only have 5000 square feet and my house, walk, driveway, garage, porch, and totally shaded north side of my house take 3000 squat feet of it up.
Hmm, I overlooked this introduction area when I first signed up two weeks ago. My name is Rick, but here I go by āYodaā cuz my three grandkids call me Grampa Yoda. Iām a semi-retired editor/researcher and live in the northwest corner of Chester County, PA - zone 6b/7a (hopefully the latter!). I got hooked on trying to grow persimmons the last time I visited two of my kids in San Diego. Not that the two 'simmons I tasted impressed me much - one rather bland, the other a mushy mess with so-so flavor. The descriptions of other varieties I read while I lurked here awhile made me wonder what I was missing. So I now have six persimmon trees, two scions and five D. virginiana rootstocks on order for delivery this spring! I have one country acre to experiment on in my retirement, that over the 27 years my wife and I have lived here Iāve tried to turn into a mini-Longwood Garden (two pecan trees, a Cedar of Lebanon, a Copper Beech, several magnolias, and an assortment of fragrant shrubs). Now I am concentrating on adding tree fruits to augment the productive blueberry and raspberry patches and a plain-jane Concord grape vine. Glad to get to know you folks!
Welcome, I love your handle name!!! Your mini-Longwood garden must be beautiful. I still remember how beautiful Longwood Garden was after all these years.
If you stick with persimmons, jujubes (fragrant flowers, too) and pawpaws, you wonāt need to spray chemicals for these fruit trees.
@mamuang - Truth to tell, I have no idea what jujubes and pawpaws taste like (and my wife might not want me to find out, either, at least until I partly recover from my current persimmon obsession!). But yes, the no-spray idea has a strong appeal. I guess that is why I have past failures with peaches and cherries under my belt.
Hi all - I have been lurking around on the site for a while now to find information about what I might want to add to our little bit of space in the world and other related info, but have not really posted anything until today. Thank you to all for the information you have posted on this site, it has been really helpful! We bought land in middle TN back in 2015, but did not get into planting our garden and fruit trees until we were able to move in and get settledā¦ We have just under 52 acres - south exposure; nearly half of that is useless rocky hillside. A neighbor keeps cattle on a significant portion of the rest, leaving us with a few acres to play with around our house/shop. Cedar trees are everywhere in this region. My husband is in charge of mowing, pruning and digging holes. I have been deciding what to plant and take care of monitoring in the spring and spraying. Up until this last year, we have been trying to follow Michael Phillips holistic management approach (only the 4 spring sprays)ā¦ work has kept me busy so I have not spent the time we should with spraying going into the summerā¦ Last year we got our first peaches (saved them from the frosts) only to be able to eat just a couple for a variety of reasons. I have come to terms with the face that if we want to be able to eat fruit beyond strawberries and blueberries, I am going to have to be willing to be more aggressive about spraying and that the holistic approach may not really be enough. Planning on using Scottās low impact spray schedule this year. As the obsession has grown, we are now up to 14 apple trees (thanks in part to Lee Calhounās book), 9 peaches, 6 pears, 1 sweet cherry, 2 sour cherry (one is an old tree on the property that my husband has been pruning to get it to set fruit again), 2 pecans and way more blueberries than 2 people need. I am about out of space unless I expand into where the cattle roam and at the at fringes of what I want to deal with using a backpack sprayer. No one warns you about pollination groups, CAR, triploid vs diploid, chill hours, various poisonous catepillars, big and little ābambies,ā etc. when you get started down this pathā¦ next up is to learn how to graft!
Nice to meet you! There are several folks here in middle TN.
I know your landscape - east of Nashville is indeed rocks and cedars!
Good luck! I donāt know anything about what youāre growing.
