Hi All! I’m in SE PA, near Reading, zone 6b. Last fall, I moved from a typical small suburban yard to an almost 3 acre property and took many of my fruit bushes/trees with me. The vegetable garden is my passion, but it is presently in parts in the shed. I also have a flowering salvia collection for the hummingbirds that is up to around 40 varieties.
Fruits will be expanded, but for now I have 3 plums (prune plum type) in the ground, dwarf apples in pots with a variety of heirloom grafts, currants, gooseberry, blueberry, jostaberry, goumi, goji, haksaps, seaberry, and 5 potted figs. I have 4 hazelnuts in the ground and just ordered a bunch more. I went a little nuts ordering for this spring and have strawberries, raspberries, blackberry, elderberries, and some others on their way.
I am in northern Chester county, PA. I see some Chester, Lancaster county neighbors here.
I have 2 grapes, 2 blueberry, 2 figs(1 in ground, 1 in pot), 2 plums, 3 pears and 4 peaches.
This works very well. I’d definitely suggest this if you try figs again. All of mine are planted next to the house to shield them from winter wind, and maybe offer some radiated heat. My fig trees are very productive. Planting somewhere with good drainage is also very helpful for figs. There are a lot of fig growers in NJ with trees in the ground that produce.
Dom, that is an impressive effort. What is the purpose of the pipe? It made me think of pumping the waste heat from the dryer outlet to keep things warm. You would have to run through a lot of laundry on a cold night though…
Hi Ryan the pipe is just to allow for venting, it removes extra heat/ condensation without causing cold damage. Many years of trial and error to perfect it’s height and placement.
Good Morning! My first post here😊I’m very happy to see this group of fellow gardeners in zones 6B-7A.I’m in the western suburbs of Philly. Would love to swap plants with those nearby!
Central NJ here. Not much to add that hasn’t been said. My zone pushes doing OK are Jiro persimmon, a fig, some gooseberries and honey berries. Then all the usual; blueberries and pears do best, apples and peaches are edible but gnarly.
With some 6 foot deer fencing I could put figs on the south side of the house. The place where the fig was did not have very good drainage. The part of the back yard with good drainage is quire shaded and the sunny part a bit wet. I have taken to planting in raise mounds the trees I put in the wet/sunny part. hmmmmm… food for thought…
Someone I know in NJ plants his fig trees on mounds too. Additionally, he surrounds their base with bricks and rocks to help warm them up. One tree is on an enormous raised bed of sorts. It appears to be a solid method. Good sunlight is definitely a benefit for figs. Some fig varieties won’t even form figs if shaded too much.
I’m Geri in Baltimore just south of Towson. I think I had seen this forum in its earlier location, but found it again last year, signed up and never got to really interact. I remembered yesterday while getting to my seed orders LATE and have been bumping around.
Looking forward to learning from and sharing regional wisdom.
Howdy neighbor! I’m not far from you, in Mt. Washington. You have an open invitation to stop by for an orchard visit.
Speaking of my orchard, I never made a proper introduction to what I am growing on this thread. Along with the usual apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, grapes I am growing a few semi-tropicals, figs pomegranates and fuzzy kiwis, as well as a few less common things that don’t need spraying, jujubes, figs, persimmons, mulberries. I’ve been at it for about 20 years through various ups and downs. I started trying to be 100% organic but after about ten years decided that was too painful so now I do a few synthetic disease sprays. Currently things are doing well other than the deer who are eating most of my fruit.
@Dom I also spent several years working on fig covers. I used aluminum bubble insulation, it worked great. I just made a big “bag” out of it and put on top and weighed the bottom down. Then wrapped with rope for insurance. Maybe I should have kept it up but I had too many other projects so stopped covering them as they got too big. I see you pruned yours way back, I could have done that. I still have the covers so maybe I will use them again.
Same here. Some of my trees really got shredded, I was looking for scionwood on some of them and it was very hard to find any non-chewed bits. I am looking forward to nature healing over all of those wounds.
The more I read in this forum, the more I’m convinced I must live in some weird but good microclimate?
So far, a few people in this regional chat have talked about fig failures, or their fig protection methods. I have 3 figs (1 Chicago Hardy, and 2 mystery figs from my uncle’s barber in Bronxville, NY), and I have never protected them at all. I just plopped them in the ground and they’ve been growing like weeds. Definitely the easiest thing for me to grow, so far.
The Chicago Hardy was a 1 gallon potted plant, maybe 18" tall when I planted it about 5 years ago. It died back to the roots after it’s very first winter, but grew back and never had any winter die-back after that first winter. I think it’s maybe maybe 8-10 feet tall now? I didn’t protect it at all this winter, and the branches are alive with green growing tips/buds ready for spring.
The Bronxville Barber figs were rooted cuttings, also about 18" tall when I planted them about 3 years ago. They were much more vigorous than the Chicago Hardy, they never died back to the roots. I think they grew to four or five feet their first summer, then lost maybe a foot of branch length after their first winter, but never had any subsequent winter die-back. They are now about 12-15’ high, with green bud tips ready for spring.
I never realized figs were hard to grow in this general area!
I also mentioned earlier my neighbor’s unicorn peaches, about a block from my house, which i now know are very unusual.
Anyone else here near the northern Philly suburbs experience the same?
On Cliff England’s “England’s Orchard Nursery” Facebook page, look for his December 29, 2021 post, “Worm-free apples without chemicals.” It’s for a coddling moth bait mixture that you put in a milk jug and hang it on a tree limb to entice and drown them.
I’m also a Philly-area gardener. I’ve done OK bringing several figs through without protection (some years have been great and others a lot of die back), and raspberries and black raspberries do well for me. I have a large muscadine that has fruited heavily (made my first batch of wine two years ago) and recently started some table grapes from cuttings. Also trialing some kiwi raised from seed - the first bloomed last year (male) and so I have high hopes for more this season. It’s great to hear what others are growing in the area, so thanks for starting this thread.
This would not give worm-free apples in my orchard though, nearly all the marks in my harvest are from the plum curculio worms not the codling moth. We have some friends that had an apple they did nothing to and they were completely gnarled in shape due to all the curculios.
I wonder if these traps could be rigged to also catch wasps … just make the entrance(s) more of a one-way kind of thing. I wouldn’t mind having some really big wasp traps as all my little ones fill up very fast.
Note that I get “chemical free” moth (and curculio) protection, but it requires Surround sprays. It is an edible clay, not a chemical.
That construction looks sturdier than my house!
