@fruitnut… WOW… I can see myself doing something like that (on a much smaller scale) when I retire.
Just love to grow stuff, and you obviously do too x100.
@AndySmith — if you want to find less expensive property in TN (probably in any State)… look away from the big cities, or even larger suburb areas of big cities… get way out there with the country folks… that is where we are.
But we have to drive 40 miles to the nearest Lowes, or Movie Theater… or decent Hospital… there are trade offs to being out in the sticks…
Back in 1996 when we bought our 30 acres of land, we paid 29,250.00 for it… a bit less than 1000.00 per acre.
I had a co-worker that bought a little less than 1 acre in Franklin TN (a popular sub of Nashville) and he paid 32,000.00 for that…
At least back at that time, there was a HUGE difference in land prices in TN… Not sure about today but I expect it is sill at least somewhat like that. Good Luck… you will be welcome here in TN for sure.
The shipping is a bit much at age 78 with no help. It takes an hour just to set up the boxes each week and 12-16 hrs to fill them with plants.
But actual shipping issues have been less than what you hear about the last two years. I’ve lost just a handfull of plants in 6 yrs selling several thousand.
Things are in a bit of turmoil right now or will be when shippers learn that USPS is doubling their shipping cost overnight with no notice. Had I known what I know now my 1200 boxes on hand would be 28 inches not 30. But I’ll survive shipping UPS at least until they raise rates hopefully not this year.
I just planted 9 apple trees in the front yard, less than 150ft from the front door-and from my dog’s house. I’m hoping my 2 year old border collie/heeler will do his job…
I have a nice hill that starts just off the south east corner of my house, where I will be putting the root cellar. I plan to pour the footer and then build walls with block. I’m not sure how many courses of block I want to go, probably 10, which should give me an interior height of about 80", give or take. Then it will be a reinforced concrete roof, covered by a couple feet of earth. Vents out the front down low, and out the roof. Probably just a single room, with pea gravel floor and drainage all the way around.
I will be excavating away an area in the hillside to get this root cellar into the hill, to achieve an earth temp of around 50*F or so during most of the year.
I’ve found a few plans online that I liked, but nothing that fits my particular landscape.
My two garden projects this year are starting some raised beds for in-yard gardening and to tear down our half-rotted deck. The deck doesn’t work well with the landscape around it and doesn’t allow for a nice flow from the house to the most interesting parts of the yard, so that alone will be a big improvement. It will also open up the possibility of putting in a nice patio in a few years.
My raised beds are of the same height. If I were to do it again, I’d build the raised beds 2x-3x higher than this. They will be significantly more easier to work with and double up as comfortable seating area (with a 2x4 on top)
That was the original plan, but between current lumber prices and decision fatigue, we decided done was better than perfect and this would be a good start. What we really want to do is use black locust or cedar 4x4’s or 6x6s and get beds about 18" high, but that’s definitely not in the budget this year.
You are right about the lumber prices. The whole 4x8 bed (with the 2x4 on top) costed me less than a 2x2s I built for the kiwis this year! Prices have sky-rocketed
Prices are way up on lumber, steel roof material is holding steady for the moment. Concrete costs are up, along with basically everything that needs to be trucked into a store or work site. We as consumers pay for the cost of inflation and now soaring fuel prices.
I think there will be some reprieve though, as many are balking at the costs of materials and are opting to not spend a lot of money, or they are scaling back their projects to fit into their budgets.
Well, it’s not fruit related, but something I’m considering is adding a solar power system to our home. It wouldn’t be a totally off-grid or grid-tie system, but maybe something to offset electrical costs, and to have in case of power outages, which we have quite a bit here. We recently purchased a small 720wh solar powered generator, but now I want to upscale from that.
I’m still working on what would be sufficient for us, and am still learning about this technology. But from what I’ve read on here and other sites, it’s becoming more affordable than it was even 5-10 years ago.
I’d post more questions and other relevant info on the solar power thread, but I no longer have access to the Lounge. I guess I lost that access because I hadn’t posted a lot over the last year or so.
This will be our first growing season at the new place, so we have several “big” projects. I’m trying to remind myself that we don’t need to do it “all” in one year, but life is short…
For 2022, the “bite sized” chunks we’ll be working on:
Setting up apple espaliers
Putting in peach, plum, amelanchier, strawberries, raspberries
Mulching or digging annual veg garden
Setting up seasonal beds (dahlias, tulips, garlic, annuals, etc)
Adding a shed
I want to get these things out of the way so that in 2023 it will be easier to decide where other trees, perennial plants will go.
Project for this spring is planting 53 more trees to expand the farm orchard with this section being a focus on trialling cold climate hard cider varieties. Will be the 1/2 acre section you see on the other side of the creek to the left in the below photo. You can see the 5 mowed rows under the snow. The existing trees you see in the foreground are 30 different apple and pear trees I am trialling for hardiness and productivity and my deer test vs individual fencing in my USDA 3a climate. The land in the upper right is for future years once I know what grows well and survives. Might plant the root stocks in a year or two and graft later - still in the planning phase.
This land was my big COVID purchase and I was lucky to get it right at the start before prices exploded.
2022: I’ve planted 8 Gov. Wood Cherry, 8 No star cherry, 7 bing cherry. 8 plums of 3 varieties. 10 pears of 4 varieties - ambrosia, chojura, moonglow, & honeysweet. 5 hazelnut American. 5 apple trees.
This weekend I hope to plant 100 hazelnut C. Americanus & 3 c. Avellana (Jefferson). These will be planted where I hired a guy to mulch land that had grown wild. I bought land in Carroll Co Va that was clearcut 6-7 yo.
We will see how many new trees survive the SWVA deer population.
There have got to be some produce, local hardware, and nurseries you can sell these to. That’s a beautiful project & with the right connector you can spread your fig love.
If you’re near Winston-Salem NC, then I can hook you up with retailers. Kirk
