I agree it is harsh to ask starvation on someone. A guy hit and totaled my mother’s car and I thought he hits our car and walks away with just a ticket. He needs more punishment. I then totaled my car myself and was glad it was a ticket and a court date instead of something like jail. Something to consider is if all of these people cutting down fruit trees and bushes start to starve are they going to make it their problem? I think not. They will make it our problem. I remember a coworker once told me the customer creates a problem and makes it your problem. It is the same situation here. They will steal or force it out of you before they die.
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Mine (~60 persimmon trees) got leveled. Learned at that point the value of making sure to share scion with like-minded compatriots.
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I know someone who took their plants with them! It’s probably easier to take scionwood though. I know a lot of people say " I would love to have a garden and fruit trees!" But when you give them plants, they don’t water or feed them. Unless you know the buyer is a gardenista like yourself, just rip them out and take them with you if you really like them.
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I think people think they know more than what they actually know. Many people come from buying seeds like squash that are easy to grow and then they get a fruit tree because they hear about the yields they can get. What they underestimate is that there is more to know than seeds or annual starts from the garden centre. It is overwhelming. You really have to read and even with reading or knowing what you are doing stuff still happens. I got a pear last year and the leaves turned black. I got 2 or 3 different answers to what it could have been. The first year I read to water the trees before frost and I ended up killing them for doing what I read online. Trees sucker and sometimes people grow out the tree sucker not even realizing the tree they wanted is dead.
If I don’t have to leave the country then that is what I might do. This makes me wonder about how old a tree needs to be to be successfully transplanted.
In our area (and I assume in others) there are land trusts that work to preserve historical farm and forest land. For example:
https://www.kestreltrust.org/conserve/lands/farms/
Not the right choice for everyone, of course, but for some people who want to ensure that an orchard is preserved, working with a land trust might be one option to consider.
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I think part of the problem is a lot of the people with the desire to take over and manage an existing orchard can’t afford to buy it in the first place.
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I have several friends that have found out months after buying their homes that there are fruit trees planted on the property. I don’t understand why sellers don’t disclose this information along with the detailed descriptions of the house and property. Unless they don’t know or remember what was planted. I can’t even count how many times I’ve asked people what cultivars they are growing, and they say something like “oh I don’t know. It’s just an apple (or pear, or plum, or peach etc).”
I would think that having fruiting trees, shrubs, established garden areas and such would be a selling point for a property. But maybe some people think of it as a liability.
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I agree.
When we bought our house, it didn’t have any fruit trees, just some skinny bushes & skinny plants in very poor soil. I had them identified & read up on how to care for them. I kept all the original foundation shrubs & plants because they can take a while to establish! I did pull out some of the lawn to plant roses & peonies though. And I mulched every inch of soil.
Here are a before & after- 4 years apart. I never felt the need to “tear everything down to make it my own”. I can understand others might need to change things but I can’t fathom people pulling out perennial edibles. That might be because I grew up at a time in a developing country when sugar had a high premium.
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I love the deck. What a lovely home.
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Yes, I see the advantages of having trees you can get a tractor through the orchard…but there’s something to be said for the ‘food forest’ that looks like a forest, too. Spies from the sky can’t find it nearly as easy for instance.
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i looked at it on google earth. it barely shows as the rows have grown in quite a bit. unless you zoom right in,its hard to see. hopefully once everything matures it will look like a forest.
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Wonderful peony, do you know its name?
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It could be Coral Sunset or Pink Hawaiian Coral, but I’m guessing.
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Thank you! It’s spectacular for the 2 weeks that it blooms. The label said “Coral charm”.
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Believe it or not, I have all 3 varieties, lol. But 2 weeks is amazing, mine may last a week at most. The sun here is too strong.
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Don’t peach trees only have average lifespans of like a dozen years?
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The PNW is great for peonies but not that great for roses because of our cool nights. Way too much black spot.
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Nah, that comes from commercial orchards replacing them every 12 years or so because while they will continue to produce, they become less productive. As such they are better off replacing their trees.
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Must have!
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