Ten year anniversary of GF, how many of the OG are still here?

General Fruit Growing
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A lot has changed in the last ten years, for me anyways. When I joined nine years ago, I was all gung ho about planting my fruit trees. From 2016-18, I think I had planted 17 apples, 5 pears, 4 peaches and 3 pluots, so 29 in total. Bush cherries and gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries soon followed.

I was expecting in a just a few years to be harvesting bushels and bushels of fresh apples, peaches, pears, along with cherries and berries. I did what I could to take care of my trees, like weeding, fertilizing, pruning, mulching, and even fenced them in to keep deer off them. I thought, yeah, I’ll be swimming in fruit in no time. Boy was I naive…

So what has happened since then? I’ve lost 11 of the apple trees, one pear, and all my blueberries. We’ve not been able to harvest more than a bushel of fruit off all those trees in 9 years. Sometimes because of freezes, but mostly because of varmits, mostly squirrels. A handful of apples and pears, and no peaches. Birds steal my cherries and gooseberries, but we do get quite a bit of blackberries and raspberries.

Three years ago I planted out 9 apples in the front yard, 5 survived, and all but one of them fruited this year, mostly on my Goldrush and Suncrisp trees. Well most of the GR are gone, only the SC has a decent crop still on it. And that’s because it’s the closest to the house, and our dog, so squirrels and deer aren’t going to try hard to getting that fruit.

So all those years of effort has been an exercise in futility. We grow a big garden every year and have pretty good success with it, but fruit, not so much.

If I could give any advice to those out there considering putting in fruit trees or bushes, it’s way more than sticking a tree or bush in the ground and watering it. It’ll take a lot of effort to maintain them, and even if they grow and start fruiting, a lot more effort keeping varmits, pests and disease off them to even harvest anything. So consider that before starting on this adventure.

Saying all that, I do want to say thank you to all those on here for their valuable advice and taking time to respond to my questions, and putting up with me. I have had some not so proud of moments on this forum, and I’m sorry for that, but I do appreciate the companionship of so many generous and thoughtful people on here. I can’t count how many on here who have sent me scions, seeds or cuttings to try out for nothing in return, and I really appreciate it.

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As someone here once said, the price of the plant is just the down payment.

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43

Before GW, I was on Dave’s Garden.

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I joined February 14th, 2015.

So became my love affair with the fruit forum on Valentine’s Day.

I remember Houzz had just taken over Gardenweb and lots of folks were none too happy with the changes (i.e. negative changes)

Scott decided to do start a new fruit forum. I remember asking him how I could join, and he said, you just join. So I did, and deleted my Houzz account.

He immediately made me, Fruitnut, and Alan mods, probably because of our participation in the Gardenweb fruit forum.

It was really kind of nice to participate in setting up forum policy from the get go. Scott didn’t have to listen to us, because it was his creation, but he did really listen to us new mods. Everything was new then. It required a lot of time, but it was fun. I’m sure Scott put in way more time.

It’s pretty cool to see this forum is the number one fruit growing forum on the Internet.

Even before Gardenweb, Scott, Alan and I participated in the listserv Nafex (Lucky did too, among others).

So lots of us have never met each other officially, but we’ve been sharing each other’s thoughts for literally decades.

Also, I’d be remiss not to mention Tippy, who was also was involved at the very first. She encouraged a lot of people to migrate from Houzz to Growingfruit, which honestly was the better platform, in many ways.

For years Tippy (Mamuang) was monitoring growingfruit.org more than most mods, and continually suggesting mod action from me, when I was a mod and she wasn’t. When a spot in the admin/mod opened up, I suggested her and all other admins agreed. It substantially reduced my workload to have her join the mods, lol.

In all seriousness, she is a great mod and still watches the fruit forum more than any other mod, I think.

She participated strongly from the very beginning.

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March 1, 2015…

I think I still have my old GardenWeb shirt one got when they became a paid member.

I was sent to Disneyland once or twice and becoming a paid member meant you were immune to being banished.

I was in NAFEX once upon a time as well.

I didn’t realize that I had joined so early on…

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I was in MIDFEX for a while.

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:raised_back_of_hand: does Jul 2015 counts as OG?

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I wasn’t sure what OG means.AI gave the definition as Original Gangster.So,is that like,fruit gangsters?

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You broke the code!

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I’m a latecomer at 21 Nov 2015.

My migration pattern was “Spike” (he moderated a fruit forum by 2003) >> iVillage (Spike sold to corporation) >> GardenWeb (bigger corporation) >> GrowingFruit

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Yes it means Original Gangster, but basically it means the Old Guard, or Old School folks, basically folks who’ve been around from the beginning, who have a wealth of experience and knowledge. But I like your definition, guess you could say OFG…

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I subscribed to various Usenet news groups but I don’t remember participating in a gardening forum.

BTW, is there an easy way to see my join date. I didn’t find it in a few minutes of looking.

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The easiest ways are to check your profile after logging out or get someone else to check.

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@murky @Audi_o_phile
It is true that the pop-up profile is abbreviated, but click on it again for full details.

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Funny my 4 year old did the same thing this spring. Little patch of beans right in the middle of some strawberries. She loves that she planted them and goes over to them often to check up on them.

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@DaveW-wi5b

That makes my heart warm to hear that.

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OFG definitely has a different meaning elsewhere on the interwebs

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Happy anniversary, still here and thanks Scott!

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Yes, I know :grin:

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Thanks. There is an “expand” button I was overlooking, so the stuff was collapsed. My brain doesn’t work like many people apparently, because things like that in plain sight I may never find.

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