I thought this article interesting. They did some focus groups to determine what people think about gardening.
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I have found that customers with young children respond very positively to the idea of having fruit trees so their children can experience picking fruit off their own trees.
It is a concept I promote, not just for sales, but because I sincerely believe that the experience of harvesting luscious fruit off trees when one is young enforces the likelihood of adopting healthy eating habits throughout ones life.
Obviously a vegetable garden that a child invests time and effort in will likely have double the impact, or at least would if the results were as tasty as tree fruit (but garden fresh veggies are tasty enough).
I recently had a new customer accept some synthetic intervention on their orchard because they believed the positive trumped the negative in terms of overall benefit to their children. I suggested that the children refrain from playing in the orchard during the spray season (1 month) if they want to exercise the near maximum of caution.
I have to admit that the strategy is not fool-proof as my own son eats a rather poor diet. Heās 23 and at least beginning to consider the consequences of a diet based on short term convenience and possible long term disaster.
Unfortunately, the neighborhood I raised him in has a bad culture for diet and there is no parental override of peer influence. We did steer him from McDonald food- his weakness is pizza and higher end burger joints.
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Hey, 23 thereās plenty of time for improvement. If heās thinking about it his habits will likely improve with time.
Well, in the words of Homer Simpson, āit is every parents dream to outlive their childrenā.
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just heard it on the news, that surveys say-- majority of people nowadaysā they say they can do away with daylight, as long as they have their smartphones/pcās and wi-fi.
am a geek in many ways, but i canāt possibly sacrifice daylight, NO wayā¦
the long nights and short days of winter are excruciating for me already
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I know a lot of kids who do not enjoy being in a garden getting their hands dirty. I am glad my 11 year old son does. He enjoys planting and improving the soil by composting. He also enjoys grafting and plugging trees with mushroom plugs. Anytime I tell him Iām going out to check on the trees or plants he usually comes along with me. Itās such a pleasure to have him along and to know he is learning more at his age than many people his senior.
Yup, my son never liked getting dirty much, but his 4 year old son follows me around the orchard all day when he can and wants to plant blueberries where he lives now in El Paso. Do rabbiteyes flourish there?
Heās stuck like the rest of us westerners with blueberries in pots. The soil around El Paso is all alkaline. The SHB would be the way to go. But I find bb the most difficult plants I grow even in pots. El Paso would be much better for figs.
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your son is a natural. It is likely he may be the only one in his class, or perhaps in his school, who is delving into it
and he is probably a little lonely with regards to finding peers who might want to talk or share experiences with, since everyone is busy with their cellphones, updating oneās facebook status, etc
know exactly how it feels to be gardening-lonely when i was a kid, and just like him, i was first tagging along with my mom, and became more obsessed than she, lol!
from what have noticed, boys usually wait until they are in their 60ās to realize they want to try itā¦
prior to that, most of us get preoccupied with fast cars, motorbikes, guns, sports, computers, and all other man-cave stuff.
Iād say that the people in the focus group have a pretty good grasp of things. My kid never had an interest in my hobby. I canāt remember encouraging it, although I probably did.
A considerable effort is irreducible, but we do a lot to make things more difficult than they should be. I like the āOne Yard Revolutionā site on YouTube. The guy actually did impromptu tests and dispensed with several common gardening practices.
Heās grown up with it. Between my fig obsession and growing fruit trees from seeds, he has learned it is beneficial to grow your own fruit and vegetables because you get a much better product than what you can buy. He has also been encouraged through his school who also has a garden that is tended to by the elementary students. Although he is now a middle schooler he still remembers helping in their garden. They also started a small fruit orchard on their campas so they also get the pleasure of picking the fruit in the fall. I also teach my son the art of foraging. Here in the state of Maine we will start in the spring picking fiddleheads and finish in the fall collecting black walnuts and apples. In between is a bounty of goodies that nature provides.
My daughter started a flower garden in middle school and kept it all through high school and college. My son has no interest in gardening. In his defense, Iāve made him work in the orchard since he was very young, so he only knows growing food from the perspective of work, work, work. Hobbies are supposed to be fun.
When I was young, we had a huge garden, which we depended on for food. I remember all the hot summer days weeding, hoeing, harvesting, shucking corn, podding peas, snapping beans. I hated gardening. It took me a lot of years to start enjoying it.
Now, even though I enjoy gardening, I donāt have much time for it (just like the people in the focus groups 
). Iāll probably only plant a few melons this year.
My grand kids love to help me plant and harvest stuff, weeding not so muchā¦
A few years ago the elementary school in the neighboring town where three of my grand kids go to school started a greenhouse/garden. They are always VERY excited to bring something they grew from a seed over here to plant. Kudos to the school!!!
Iām wondering hereā¦ am I the only Millennial here? That said, Iām an older Millennial since the cutoff is around 1981 or 82 (I was born in 83).
I do know significant number of folks my age that garden, but I grew up in the rural midwest, and have mostly middle to upper middle class friends. Many have advanced degrees, and many are well-off enough to own their own home. Though not many of them are so into fruit treesā¦
The broad brush strokes would be that fewer Millennials are expected to own their own homes at an age comparable to their parents, and there just arenāt the opportunities for a renter to garden.
I am worried to turn my whole yard over to garden/orchard space considering my wife and I arenāt sure we will be in this house forever. I suspect if we do move it wonāt make much sense to leave more than a couple apple trees in the yard, and certainly not the bittersharp/sweet cider varieties. So this is one thing that one should consider tooā¦ at my income/social level, Iām not sure that everyone has fully settled in their long-term home as kids are still coming along and most arenāt in school yet. I also think that some of the effort that people would put into gardening is going into some folksā trying to keep up with the HGTV home culture with granite everywhere and immaculate tile showers etcā¦
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My 5 year old daughter loves to tag along and help me out with my trees. Sheās not much of a dirt dog however. I encourage her to play in the dirt as much as possible. Last week I was adding some compost/manure to my trees and she wouldnāt touch it. Kept saying poop was yucky. haha. But once it came to mulching the trees she enjoyed burying her hands in the hardwood bark mulch. She said it was warm in there. She only contributed to putting about 5% of the mulch down but she sure did think she was helping a lot. Makes me smile to see her smile.
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Mine too, 60+ and diabetic. Remind him of that.[quote=ājujubemulberry, post:9, topic:4960ā]
prior to that, most of us get preoccupied with fast cars, motorbikes, guns, sports, computers, and all other man-cave stuff
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You forgot fast women to sit in the fast car. (I know, not correct:grin:)
Iāve always tried to make it fun for my son. We often gather plants when we are on our fishing trips. There are a lot of wild raspberry and blackberry plant in the areas where we fish so we usually will gather cuttings or seedlings. We usually wait until they are fruiting to know which ones have the largest and sweetest fruit. I will usually take root cuttings so I can leave the plant unharmed. These are also the plants bears like the most. So I donāt want to be too selfish. I try to teach him it is okay to take some plants but only a couple from each patch. We also find wild apple and beach plums. We may pick the apples but I donāt grow any. We pick beach plums every year to make jam and syrup. Mother Nature provides a bounty of food if you know what you can eat. I want my son to know that there is never a need to go hungry. There is always food available if you know how to grow your own or know what to look for.
A long time in a dorm and an apartment is what made a passing interest for me a hobby. I expect that I am not alone.
I would not hesitate to plant even if you are not in your definitive house. For one thing, you never know. You might be there longer than you think. For another itās just good fruit karma. Lord knows Iāve eaten plenty of stuff that thoughtful people before me planted. If you go out of your way to plant something appropriate instead of some mindless Home Depot planting you have performed a particular service.
I went back to visit my old town last fall. I had planted an orange tree at our house there almost twenty years ago. A āMoroā blood orange. The house was for sale, empty, newly renovated and priced for nearly twice what we sold it for 15 years ago. An aggressive price, I thought, as the neighborhood had not improved at all.
That orange tree was still there even though it wasnāt planted in a very good place. Why? The sellers knew that having mature orange tree was a selling point. The place got itās price, too, about the time the fruit would have changed color. Who knows if it made a difference, but a well-tended fruit tree is a better inducement than baking cookies whenever any potential buyer drops by to visit the house, thatās for sure.
PS. A toddler is a strong reason to plant a tree. With a little luck, it will bear fruit for little hands before you move. If you plant, prune the tree and bend the branches so a little kid can pick without help.
certainly has a negative impact when the hobby becomes a chore.
quite certain though that when youāre gone, the fruit trees/flowers youāve planted will be regarded quite fondly by your son, and perhaps some day by his son, and so on and so forth. Photo/video/audio files are priceless, but mementos and memories seem to have an entirely different dimension when represented by perennials-- which grow/bloom/bear fruits like clockwork, especially the long-lived ones which will transcend several generations.
and in the words of this jujube and mulberry fanatic(who happens to be a parent), it is his dream for trees heād planted to outlive his childrenās children, and in turn, their childrenās children, ad infinitum 
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I enjoy that also and have planted hundreds and hundreds of fruit trees in my life so far and they are dispersed in Hawaii, Ca and the northeast. The pears and apples should last up to 2 centuries or even longer after I am compost (I would like my body planted in a burlap sack under one of my apple trees, but please be careful of major roots).
I plant trees on long lived rootstocks so kids can climb them for several generations to come.
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