I have enjoyed amelanchier, growing 24 different cultivars. Now paired down to 5 and and having shy bearing on a new site. Smokey and Pembina (alnifolia) were a favorite.
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Hello, my name is Dave. I am located in SE WI zone 5b.
Long time reader, itās great to finally be an actual member. Iāve read this forum so many times, I feel like I know a good handful of you all already. Thanks for all the invaluable information.
Bought my first property (with enough space to grow anything on) about 4 years ago. I am utilizing my south facing backyard for growing veggies, apple, pear, stone fruit, fig, and pretty wide variety of berries.
Everything planted on my property is 4 years old or less. So fruit bearing should be starting to take place a little more regularly in the coming years.
Happy to have such a great community moving through the journey. Thank you.
Dave
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Since we live just east of St. Paul, I will be interested to see how your more tender items like persimmons and paw paws do. Maybe you are in a sheltered urban area. Keep us posted on your progress. Welcome to the forum.
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Howdy Everyone my name is Benjamin. Iām in Northern California zone 9b.
Iāve been growing and gardening for about 3 decades but consider myself an amateur when it comes to trees with 3 seasons with multiple citrus, almond, persimmon, and a fig.
Now I have a bunch more trees so I figure Iām going to need some wisdom from more experienced growers. Thanks and Happy New Year in 2024!
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Welcome to this wild bunch. I like your profile pic. Do you have your own horse?
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Hi Thanks Noddykitty. I owned a few horses but not any more.
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Werenāt you on Gardenweb? This was going way back when I first started with trees.
Iāve been growing fruit trees since 2008. Over the years I have had experience with +/- 50 fruit trees. Lots of heartbreaks and learning from hard knocks over the years. Iām limited on land. Maybe 2/3 acre. Have about 31 trees as of now. I always dream about getting a few acres where the trees can be free and not be jammed up so much and could plant 100+ trees. And maybe have a dog roam around freely. But things work out doable here with the land I have and I enjoy petting other people dog when I run into them.
I donāt like gardening or growing treesā¦I just want the output. I am an archivist and my work is very interesting and time consuming, so not much time to do other things. The job I have is one I canāt look forward to retiring from either. So not counting down the days until I have more time. It is just how it will be until I kick off or would happen to hit a lotto to hire people to do the work.
I used to garden, but after 10 years I pulled out the garden and put in a few more trees. If you donāt weed the garden regularly, at least here, it gets overtaken with weeds. If you donāt rotate the crops enough you get overridden with bugs. If you donāt water on schedule your crops donāt do well. In other words, you gotta be a slave to the garden unless you are luckyā¦and I was not lucky. Iām the type of gardener that would pick the string beans late and they would be beans and not string beans. Anyway, no regrets, I am happy I replaced the garden with trees that work out for me. I tried guerrilla gardening but had zero luck with it. I spent a lot of time on it. Even planting a few fruit trees guerrilla style.
I like all the trees I have, except the ones that I get little fruit from like a couple of cherries and a few European pears. The Asian pears are generally big producers, although some are not. The apricots have all been pulled out or destroyed by nature and replaced with peach trees, mostly white peaches. And Reliance and the donut peach were pulled out as well. Reliance is a low end peach. Apricots just donāt grow well in zone 6 unless you are lucky with the late frost. Iād get some apricots every few years, but not enough to justify the space. A Green Gage plum took a decade to produce fruit. Then it got black knot and was finished. Same with all the other plums.
The apricots in the stores are garbage. I grew up in L.A. and would pick apricots from overhanging apricot branches in the alley and they had taste even when green. If I had excess land Iād still plant apricots, I would not care if I got a crop every 4 or 5 years. It is better than nothing. But as I said, land is at a premium with me. In the old days, in L.A., we always looked for the seasonās first apricots, maybe late May or so, then it was peaches. Not like today with peaches all year in the store and no matter what the season the peaches are garbage, have no fuzz or fragrance and rot before they ever ripen. That is what got me into fruit trees. Trying to get some honest fruit.
Now, Iām old now, my teeth are shot. So I canāt eat the Asian pears any more. I juice them or use in a smoothy. They make good fresh pear cider. Same with apples. I still can eat the peaches, especially the soft whites. Plums are all gone. Lost 7 varieties to black knot. Nowadays fire blight is hitting pear and other trees here. There is always something. Well that is about it.
Here is a Korean Giant that the wind blew down.
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Welcome to Growing Fruit! Sounds like you can have a lot to offer.
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Hey everyone so happy to be here! My nameās Ross down in Tucson by way of Central NY. One of the young ones here at 28, Geologist/geochemist by trade. Both sides of my family did lots of gardening, grandfather grew orchids obsessively, grandmother on the other side retired early to landscape for local business and tend her own beautiful gardens, dad bred water lilies. I grew up in the outdoors hunting/fly fishing and am an eagle scout, I wanted to be a āmountain manā all through my teenaged years.
In grad school I really got into botanical taxonomy (crime pays but botany doesnāt on YouTube!) Which only caused my immense respect for plants to grow (pun intended). In the last few years Iāve become obsessed with permaculture/agroforestry whatever you want to call it. Growing food that is mostly well adapted to local conditions, edible wild/uncultivated plants, and doing habitat restoration at the same time.
I have several family members and family friends looking for property to do this in several areas across the country and I am planning for every possibility. I came to this forum over a month ago and started stealing all of everyoneās great intel and figured Iād better make an account! Please if anyone needs any help from a geologist just PM me and Iāll help as best I can, itās the least I can do for you all.
THANK YOU!
Ross
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great channel! welcome
great perspective to bring to growing fruit. i look forward to your insights
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Hi all - Iām Paul and live in central VA (7b now). Been gardening for years and have gotten very excited about fruit trees the past decade. However, Iāve only recently come to owning property to really start planting. Most excited about pawpaw and persimmon, with a plan to graft some of the latter next year. Iām also working on learning more about fungal/tree interactions and trying to do some projects with that. I have an ecology and soils background, so hopefully can be useful to others here as I know I"ll owe plenty of karma soon enough.
Cheers!
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Welcome new members. Glad you found us.
May I suggest (if you have not done it yet) that you include the state you live in in your profile? A zone alone does not tell us much. Zone 6 in NM is likely to be quite different from zone 6 in KS or zone 6 in MA.
People usually will take where you live, together with your zone, into consideration when answering your questions.
Hope to see your posts in the categories that catch your interest.
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Welcome fellow geo nerd! Iām an engineering geologist. Geochem is a weak point for me but Iāve been getting re-exposed to it recently to learn about rock weathering.
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the next step is biogeochem like my friend from undergrad does over at Kent state. You throw in soil bacteria and mycorrhizial fungi to enhanced the weathering of specific minerals that contain the nutrients the soil is limited in to complicate things
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Hello all. My name is Robert from Northwest Ohio, USA in zone 6b and I have been growing a few varieties each of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries in whiskey barrel containers for the past 3 years. This upcoming growing season Iām looking to transplant a few blackberry varieties from the containers into the ground in my backyard. I amended the soil last summer with compost and currently have a cover crop of annual rye grass which will be green fertilizer in spring. I have experimented with propagating plants and have made some extra money doing it, although I have simply given away plants for free as well.
This spring Iām looking to try varieties Caddo blackberry, Triple Crown blackberry, Crimson Night raspberry, Fall Gold raspberry and Raspberry Shortcake raspberry.
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Hello Robert, Sounds like you get some great berries. I only have one BB I planted from seed a few years back. Itās actually flowering like crazy right now kind of weird. Great berries but kind of shy on producing so far. Iām sure youāll find a few of those around here. Welcome to the forum.
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Hello Im >Coconuttree< . As these nuts are not growing in Germany, Im but a German with connection to USA,as my daughter is married in New Jersey. I was a teacher in the subjects Math., Ch., Phy., Bio. and Tech. Im living near Heidelberg on a Southslope of a mountain with an old castle on top. What brought me here in this forum is my passion for growing trees, now the speciality of growing Pecan. But also Kaki, Figs, Chinese Dates. Pines.... Im open for every kind of question about Germany, because I found out that there are many wrong ideas in US about Germany, when I was there. As I have 2 locations in Germany I can grow different plants. In Mannheim is climate zone 8b-, in Sinsheim is 7b. In Mannheim Pecan trees can grow. My grapes there are ripe in beginning of August. Whereas the same grapes are ripe in Sinsheim in beginning of September
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Hi everyone, my name is John and I live in the North Carolina piedmont, zone 8a (7b as was). Iām most interested in disease-resistant and/or native fruit and nut tree varieties compatible with a low-spray organic-style approach, especially pawpaws, persimmons, and pears.
One of my projects has been top-working some mature Bradford pear trees with various fireblight-resistant varieties. So far so good, and has provided a chance to meet some curious neighbors.
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