I am Jason from Northeast Alabama. I love to grow all kinds of fruit. I have been lurking on the site for several years, but never really contributed anything. This site has given me a wealth of knowledge that has helped in trying to grow fruit. If someone knows how to beat spring freezes and leaf footed bugs I’ll be glad to hear it 
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Please keep this thread about Introducing oneself to the forum.
Any questions, comments, etc. anyone may have, please post them on the relevant categories.
Thank you.
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Hello, in East Central Saskatchewan, helping daughter with a market garden orchard venture. Have always gardened and played with fruit trees. Techincally in zone 3b but I describe as being a lot closer to zone 2 than 4a.
Very happy to come across a fruit growing forum. We are growing fruit from zone 2 to 4a(with a LOT of winter protection.)
Always looking to learn and am willing to share both our successes and our failures, as I hope to from other members.
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Welcome @ECSask . Given your very rare locale for fruit growing, I think many members would be interested in hearing about your setup. I encourage you to start a topic if you’d like to share more!
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I’m JB. I live in Zone 8 in north/central Alabama.
Plants/trees in my yard in suburbia:
A few rabbit eye blueberries in my yard (already in place when I bought my house)
2 triple crown blackberry bushes
2 Dunstan chestnuts
4 hazelnuts (2 beast, 2 grand traverse) that I planted on a whim as a privacy screen to see if they’ll fruit here
3 dwarf apple trees (Pink Lady, Fuji, Gala)
I’ve been lurking and reading for a couple years, but I finally decided to join and start contributing. My long term goal is to buy a piece of land in north Alabama and plant a you-pick chestnut orchard. I hope to plant other fruits and nut trees as well, but my primary focus is chestnuts.
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Hello, welcome @Jblack. Chestnut seedlings are pretty tall from what I recall. It may be a challenge for a pedestrian u-pick operation. I recommend starting a thread on it if you would like feedback on your journey. Thanks for sharing.
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JBlack
There was another post and discussion not too long ago about someone wanting to start something similar. I picked 50# of chestnuts at the Route 9 co-operative ( https://route9cooperative.com/ ) last fall. These are all ground falls not picked off the tree.
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Hi @sockworth , I appreciate the feedback. Chestnuts do get tall, 40-60’ at maturity for most orchard trees. The idea would be to keep the orchard floor mowed and to let people pick them up off the ground, either by hand or with specially designed “nut wizard” tools. From my reading, most smaller chestnut orchards use this method like @ansayre said. Depending on how ambitious one is with planting, larger operations can use mechanical vacuum harvesters, but I would think I would need 15-20 acres at maturity to make it worth the cost of the equipment.
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If you have a good response, then you may “crowd source” the harvest. Sell upick chestnuts for say $2.50/# and pay $1/# for chestnuts that pickers don’t want (price points will vary). Then retail for $4.50/#. Not to be discouraging but my understanding it takes a number of years to be profitable. It may be worth while in the long run to visit the R9 co-op.
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HI,
Thanks for this great resource!
I have enjoyed lurking here for some time. So much collaborative knowledge in one spot is hard to beat.
I’m in zone 8a.
I have a driveway full of containerized citrus, a cpl bananas and some grocery store pineapples.
In the yard we have apples (blight resistant,learned the hard way), pears, lots of figs, gazillion blueberries, hazelnuts, kiwis, grapes, muscadines.
In the garden we grow typical deep south veg (okra, string beans, blackeyed peas, corn, maters, peppers, squash…)
I save seed from lots of different stuff and have learned to reproduce stuff from cuttings (citrus, blueberries, figs, grapes). Hubby grafts, we plan to start a stool bed so I can learn this nifty skill at some point.
Love to read all the ideas and interesting stuff people grow.
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Golden Delicious.
They looked so yummy in the catalog.
Never shop for groceries or look at nursery catalogs when hungry.
And I totally misread that.
The one that died was a golden delicious.
The ones I have are Liberty, Enterprise, Pixie Crunch, Empire and in containers (grafted this spring) Dolgo, Shell of Alabama, Red Limbertwig, and some others, I really need a list.
Lots of great nursery suggestions when I still lurked led me to great places for rootstock and scion. Thanks y’all BTW.
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I’m called Bizzlebin, and here are 5 facts about me:
• I’m in a Cfa (humid subtropical) climate in (USDA) zone 7/8 (was 7, then 7b, and now 8a based on the rapidly-warming climate).
• I’m interested in both traditional and technological approaches to problems, especially solutions that can scale up and down across different levels of development, effort, and population.
• I planted 150 labeled plants (ie, excluding bulk seedings, native starts, etc) in the past year, mostly perennials, and about 50 of which are woody perennials.
• I like growing both native and not-yet-native plants and learning about their evidence-based uses, having IDed about 300 natives (from c 2008) already.
• I have a wide multitude of hobbies, interests, and pursuits, from theology to computer science, and believe that every topic is connected to every other topic in some way.
I’ve read and lurked for some years now and hope to get more involved in the community; thanks for keeping this non-social-media place going!
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Welcome Bizzlebin… so do you grow fruit? I have to admit that almost all the useful info I’ve received on this forum about fruit plants has come from people growing them. My son is a brilliant computer engineer, but doesn’t contribute much to diagnosing and solving problems in my orchard.
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Interesting—I’ve found my degree in computer science to be very helpful in my growing. Programming has helped me to quickly solve problems like getting my updated hardiness zone while we continue to wait for new maps (eg, input all the years and temps as a dictionary, select any needed 30-year window, and let the computer do the math in milliseconds), work with advanced GIS tools for siting and feedback, and consistently organize, filter, and update hundreds of plant species of interest (including their growth characteristics, their non-food uses, and their unique requirements). Systems thinking has helped me to reduce workloads, improve the flow of input and waste materials, and better view everything as an interconnected whole. Project management has helped me create durable methods of labeling and tracking (thus reducing the “bus factor”), schedule my seasons around critical paths (like chainsawing old pine and hardwood to make room for new species), and strengthen accountability. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
But back to the plants, yes: most of the 50 woody perennials I mentioned (being mostly-named cultivars I’ve planted just this year, which excludes all the previous years’s plantings, self-propagating natives I’ve got for extra harvests and breeding, etc) are fruiting. I’ve got everything from ericaceous species like rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium virgatum) and Asian persimmon (Diospyros kaki) to moraceous species like white mulberry (Morus alba) and fig (Ficus carica), old-world standbys like pomegranate (Punica granatum) and peach (Prunus persica) to new-world exotics like possumhaw (Viburnum nudum) and American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), and nuts (or “nuts”, in some cases) like common hazel (Corylus avellana) and almond (Prunus amygdalus) to berries like blackberry (Rubus subg Rubus) and raspberry (Rubus subg Idaeobatus). I don’t think that necessarily translates to useful info directly—some of the worst advice I’ve ever received about growing fruit has come from fellow growers—but hopefully that answers your question.
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Hi Alan, it was suggested that I seek you out and find your guides as you likely have a lot of information that will be helpful for me.
From my intro post:
Hi all, after many years in NYC, I have landed in Hudson Valley and find my self on property that has a number of young fruit trees (3 apple, 2 pear, 2 peach, 2 cherry and 2 apricot), all 2 to 3 years old. We arrived in late summer and found the trees in varying stages of health. The original owner had to sell due to family reasons and planted these in hopes of enjoying them for years to come.
According to her, the trees were likely a little stunted due to the drought conditions of summer '22, but certainly had ample water this very rainy summer and fall.
I think we have have lost an apricot, and the cherry trees are very small and thin. I know I won’t be baking a lot of pies any time soon, but I want to try and set myself up for the future.
I’m still trying to sort through forum navigation, but if you could point me to any of your best guides, I’d be very grateful.
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Since you are asking Alan for help, could you please post your question in the Fruit Growing category?
This thread is for an Introduction only.
Other fruit -related question should be posted in relevant category.
Thank you very much for your understanding and cooperation.
My gosh, I’m so deeply sorry. Truly didn’t mean to screw up on my first day. Ugh. 
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No worry. Just create a new thread and choose Fruit Growing category.
On the top of a page, there is a + symbol with the word New Topic, click on it. that’s how you create a new topic. Then, choose a category from a drop down menu.
Look forward to seeing your new thread
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