The most rewarding that i have done is being able to graft just-about anything with excellent results.I have gotten budwood from forum members,friends,nurseries and manage to create a small orchard in no time.
The second thing is pruning,I just like small tree’s with a lot of fruit through pruning know-how. What is yours?
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I really enjoy grafting, pruning and caring for my fruit trees. I like to eat the fruit also but sometimes I think the harvest is a little anticlimactic. I really like watching them grow and anticipating that first bite of perfect fruit.
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Watching my family relish what I grew. My favorite this past year was my toddler eating blueberries in her pajamas in the front yard.
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I like the idea of being self sufficient. Controlling the food we grow and eat seems like a basic need to me. When we grow fruit we are walking in the foot steps of great people that passed those trees down to us at great expense to them through often times hundreds of years. We literally can grow and eat the same fruits the founding fathers of our country did. The fruits we have available are a great priveledge and luxury.
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The most rewarding gardening project that I have done is fruit breeding.
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I am not one of these extreme survivalists or “preppers” by any means, and I’m pretty sure that if there was some kind of catastrophic disaster that shut down the entire retail food industry to the point that I had to rely 100% on what I grow, I’d be unable to fend off looters and there would be lots of other problems. All that being said, every time I eat a piece of fruit or a vegetable that I grow, I do get a rewarding feeling that I’m (somewhat) providing for myself and am at least a little less dependent on “the system” than most people are. So for me, one of the most rewarding things in growing fruits (and vegies) is the feel that I am at least a tiny bit self sufficient. I would add that that rewarding feeling is tied and equally matched by the fact that the food I produce for myself also happens to be much, much better tasting.
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For me it’s planning, planting and maintaining a garden/orchard that allows me to harvest fresh, high quality, organic fruit and vegetables every day of the year.
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A successful harvest of really tasty fruit from my best tree.
In the good old days, before the total crop failures of the past few years, I could get a tree full of near perfection with bagging techniques. 150 pounds of perfect peaches is quite the luxury. The farmers market stuff doesn’t come close.
The shock when I caught a glimpse of purple under the leaf of ‘Glenora’ grape one fall and realized that the formerly unproductive vine had borne a full crop without my even noticing.
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I just started grafting fruit trees,when it took, itis very exiting thing. I plan on doing mote this year ti be good at it.
Another, collecting beautiful flowers is reearding too.
Well said. Most people think fruit and chicken comes from the grocery store.
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For me, its planning, fertilizing, planting, inspecting, pruning, weeding, selecting and harvesting. **But the most rewarding of all, is tasting a ripe fruit or mature veggie and comparing it with store bought stuff!**They want to charge us an arm and a leg for stuff that just looks good but has no taste, is very bland or sour. Us home growers, beat the stores out by far!!! I also love the freedom of growing things not found in the local markets, the diversity is off the chain wonderful! Thanks for asking Mickster!
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