We dont always choose what we grow. Aronia do well here. My philosphy has always been to do years of test crops before a main planting. As many of you are aware i have always been known for the pears and blackberries i grow. There are apples named after me for my efforts in growing those in Kansas. I’m having some success now with jujube and pawpaw. Autumn olives are rebuilding my soil in places nothing else will grow. Mulberries grow like weeds here and i have around 100 trees of my own type. Persimmons are having limited success and im now up to around 30 or 40 trees total.
My next remote orchard i will try to focus on nuts. That said i should mention originally plums, peaches, and apples were my main focus. Curcullio is bad here, apples are very hard to grow here and i can grow only 3 types of peaches reliance,contender, and flat wonderful. I thought more hardy trees were right around the corner but here we are 45 years later. The apple trees i grew in grade school from seeds were as good as many i grow now. The next generation, my sisters children already knew how to graft in high school. They picked fruit with us here often, and they are avid gardeners. My favorite project of theirs is they are growing seedlings of early golden persimmon. The reason i bring this up is because if your new to orchards i advise planting a variety of things and find out what you will be known for. Who knows maybe you will wind up like i did with apples named after you. That certainly was not my intention.
Having decades of experience, I feel like I can grow most anything - if I’m willing to put in the effort some things may require.
But, trying to raise simple things like tomatoes and carrots in Highlands County
Florida came close to shaking my faith in my abilities. Snakes, geckos, worms, NEMATODES, heat, cold, rabbits, armadillos…
Just like here…lol This is near the Okefenokee Swamp. Our pond is part of another little swamp. We have all or the creepy crawlers here. I love snakes for the most part; even the poisonous ones are not that scary.
But!But! People hate “Water Moccassins” a perfectly useless name. Eastern Cotton Mouths are curious; but rarely aggressive. Why do they earn the bad reputation? People mistake them for the very pissy, angry, foul members of the many variations of non-poisonous “Water Snakes”. Here it’s mostly Banded Water Snakes. Fat and dark like actual Cottonmouths but without the viper head. I have handled many very docile Cottonmouths over the years. Just leave them alone and let them control your rodents please.
I lived in Central America for a couple years in the peace corps. Made a little garden bed in front of my porch. First thing I did was plant some squash and herb seeds that I brought down with me from the states. They came up and then got destroyed so fast and hard by pests it made my jaw drop. Like one day there were plants and the next day there was bare earth and a little skull and crossbones emoji over my garden. There were at least 3 or 4 different kinds of bugs going at them simultaneously. Only used local seeds after that.
When the notion first hit me, I got heirloom fever in a big way. Well, my region is a far cry from nearly anywhere in Europe, so many of the apples I chose languished (Queen Cox up & died) or couldn’t make a good fruit. I also tried a couple sour cherries, which were hammered with fruit fly maggots or succumbed quickly to canker.
15 years later I have two plums & mostly American apples, although two of those are recently recovered from extinction. Shackleford & Orange Colorado both grew well Out West, so they are likely to supply plenty of good food.
I wanted to gain some of the experience & attitudes of our forebears. The dominant theme to my thinking now? “Grow what works where you live.” “If you don’t know what works, plant way too many types & they’ll sort themselves out.”