Apples
My family LOVES fruit. Yes, I capitalized that. Blueberries, grapes, peaches, apples, pineapple, kiwi… the list goes on and on. I think the only fruit my kids don’t like is tomatoes and that is because raw they burn the children’s mouths. For around 10 years now we have had fruit trees and bushes. Some years there was success (well, one year anyway) but it seems like bugs or fungus take over, or wind blows down all the fruit, or early warm temps followed by a hard freeze kill the buds. The story has been told over an over again, especially with the peaches. We plant an expensive tree, we fertilize, water, pick off bugs, allow chickens to keep the ground below clean. We see fruit, tons of it, and then right about time to ripen it all rots. It becomes very frustrating to realize that in order to get a harvest off these trees we HAVE to spray them with insecticide and fungicide or we generally get nothing. So… we are going to try something new for 2014-15 planting.
One of the few things we ALWAYS see a harvest from, and a bountiful one at that, is blackberry, raspberry and elderberry. These are plants that are almost invasive… okay, they ARE invasive! They thrive without tending and with a little attention produce bountiful harvests. Another really good fruit is mulberry. They pop up from seed, grow quickly, and provide enough for you AND the birds! I have always gotten a harvest even if I do nothing, I have never seen them all rot or get filled with worms. They are delicious, and the bright, rich color of the fruit signifies the high antioxidant levels you need in summer to clean your body and protect you from UV damage. I planted a few black raspberries this spring and they have done so well I can root them to double or triple my numbers by next year. The blackberries produced enough for daily snacks and I only had two plants. The elderberries will do better next year, my chickens got to most of the berries since the plants were still small, but next year they will be towering and heavy with fruit (not bad for only 2 years after planting). I want to plant a bunch of mulberry trees as well. These plants all grow well naturally, and even blueberries do well here if you get the right variety. I have some wild ones in the swamp that I want to dig and plant out of the flood zone and propagate; the berries are smaller, but the plants grow so well and the berries are so sweet it is shocking when used to the somewhat bland ones commercially grown. My theory is that these plants are far more sustainable than the overly dependent fruit trees most of us have access to today. Not to mention most grow well at the edge of woodlands, which is the type of planting space I have available. I have decided that if I want fruit free of pesticides and herbicides I need to go with what nature has made strong rather than what man has made weak.
Here is my fruit plan for planting and provision;
- fig
- blueberry
- grape
- mulberry
- elderberry
- raspberry
- blackberry
Stay tuned for news of how this pans out in 2015 and wish me luck 😉 I would love to hear stories from those that have done this and I would also love to see pictures of your bounty and how you use naturally growing fruit-bearing plants in your landscape.
Nigerianmeadows's Farm Diary 