My orchard isn’t big but it is mighty. I have big plans for this formerly useless strip of land between city houses. I expect it to produce enough fruit to feed my family and several others. Where there was lawn there will be food!
I’m planning on creating an intensive orchard here, meaning the fruit trees are all grafted on dwarf fruit stalk so that they can be maintained between 10 and 15 feet tall. I will be trimming judiciously to keep the branches from becoming unruly so that I can fit many varieties in this small space. I’ve got 18 Tulameen raspberries along the drive, 5 sets of asparagus, 3 apple trees, 2 cherry trees, 1 plum tree, 2 soon to arrive sea berry bushes (for Vit C juice,) and grape vine, a Bay Laurel tree which I’ll likely move the shady back yard, an Aronia bush, a tea plant and a fist full of seed packets. I’m also planning to purchase a black pepper plant and a horseradish start.
Right now the groundcover is creeping thyme and pachysandria but that’s not edible so it’s about to start competing with tougher stuff. I’ve chosen large, unruly species that are perrenials or will reseed at will. Sorry neighbors. I may even plant some edible dandelions. Here is my list:
Magentaspreen
Strawberry Spinach (beetberry)
Orach
Claytonia
Garden Purslane
French Sorrel
Malabar Spinach
Amaranth
Arrugula
Marshmallow
Echinacea
Chammomile
Borage
Chickweed
Comfrey
Sunflowers for seed
Cammelina
Vetch
These things will feed us or the chickens and it will be nice not to worry about weeding or sowing them year after year. This makes me giddy, reclaiming useless space and growing so much food on it. The best part about these sorts of plants – they require minimal effort if you set up a drip watering system. The fruit trees need to be pruned in the spring and I’m still reading up on dormant spraying which is done again in the spring/late winter.
Otherwise consider this laid back landscaping. I expect it to be a raucous, sprawling jungle we’ll need to cut through with machetes – but then again that could be the form of harvest. This will truly parallel that overgrown “cottage” style of landscaping. And hopefully the bees and lady bugs will love it too!
10 responses so far ↓
1 kitsapFG // Feb 13, 2010 at 4:03 pm
That will be a great addition to your food production garden. Our fruit production is scattered all over our property – with a significant amount in the garden itself, but a lot of it is also worked into our landscaping! We have a beautiful park like lawn in front (my husband loves it and I cannot touch it) but mixed into the naturalized plantings in the beds adjacent to it are blueberries, salal, evergreen huckleberries, red huckleberries, and a few containers of strawberries too.
In the garden area we have; bush pie cherries, rhubarb, two big strawberry patches, a raspberry patch, cranberries, blueberries, and a small blackberry patch that we allow to grow but keep machete’d back to keep it from taking over the garden beds. We do not have tree fruit because we just do not have any more room on the property that get’s adequate sun and I don’t want any trees near the garden to grow up and block sun there too. I do have an asparagus patch as well (not fruit but a perennial producer). So we grow mostly berries and with last years addition – cherries too, but purchase apples, pears, plums, peaches from regional growers when in season or as gifted to us by neighbors and family who have trees with fruit to share.
2 admin // Feb 13, 2010 at 6:47 pm
KFG – seems like you have a good opportunity where you are to trade for fruits too. I remember how many #s of plums you got last year from a friend. I too got 120# of plums from neighbors last year which caused me to take out one of the plum trees I planted and put something else in that space. Seems like you can never have too many berries or stone fruit though!
With my kids being so young we probably go through more fruit than you do too – lots of apples for sauce, grapes for juice, etc. Stuff I wouldn’t do if it were just me although it’s nice to have for treats.
3 Sandy // Feb 13, 2010 at 11:00 pm
My orchard is my favorite part of our garden. I keep expanding and expanding it. Good thing we have an acre of land!
4 admin // Feb 14, 2010 at 12:19 am
Sandy, I’d love to come see it this summer!
5 Auburn // Feb 14, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Annette, what kind of wood did your husband use to build the raised beds? Construction wood is rather expensive around here and is heavily treated. Hubby is saying that using decking or similar wood would be costly and maybe toxic.
I think the patch where I will be planting veggies this year has good soil but I want to try raised beds which I think help keep the weeds in check, yes?
6 admin // Feb 14, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Hi Auburn – we used cedar. You can use pine but it won’t last as long. You want to be sure and use only wood that has not been treated. The other thing you can do is get branches and plant stakes in the ground then weave the branches through the stakes and shore up with straw or something. That also won’t last as long but might be fine if you don’t get our rainfall.
The weeds you’ll get will likely be windblown unless you are planting over morning glory or blackberry so having raised beds probably won’t help much there. For me I wanted to bring in good dirt because mine was solid blue/green clay. Otherwise you can simply mark off a patch to work and put down wood chips, straw, cardboardd or recycled cofee burlap bags from a roaster where you want your paths to be. I think that type of garden looks much more natural, is faster to get in and easier to change around later.
7 Kelly Orehovec // Feb 16, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Great post! I like the list of edibles and since it is planting time and the Pacific NW weather says it is going to be a nice weekend, we are ready to dig in! We have 5 yards of compost being delivered on Friday. Yipppeeeeee!
8 admin // Feb 16, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Kelly,
I’m not sure what kind of summer we’ll have but hoo boy what a winter & early spring, eh? How fun for you – 5 yards of compost. Boy the older I get the more bizarre are the things excite me.
9 katie // Feb 22, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Just found your site through your post at Cans Across America and very timely – your recent posts on buying meat and this one are both things I’m in the process of researching.
I live in Mason County (basically west of Seattle), and am looking at fruit trees right now – have you had much luck with cherries? Pie cherries are hard to find, and growing them would be wonderful, but I haven’t found anyone growing them here. Something about first hand stories of success is so much more encouraging!
10 admin // Feb 22, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Hi Katie,
Those middle of the night proofing coughing sneezing eyes just don’t do a very good job.
hopefully it was after the typos were corrected.
My dh is from Shelton so we go there a few times a year when grandma is not working or being a snowbird. 2009 is when I took out the lawn and put all this in (not quite a year ago) but we did still get 1 cherry tree. I think if you amend your soil well and put the tree in a nice dry sunny spot you should be able to get cherries. My next door neighbor has an amazing cherry tree that is a cross between a Bing and something tart and so far each year his tree has done great. The neighbor kids all scale the fence to pick them with his permission so hopefully we won’t have that issue too (minus the permission).
Last year I froze 1 gallon, pickled 1 pint, canned 4 1/2 pint and dehydrated what turned out to be 2 pint jars which I shared with him. Plus what the racoons, birds, kids, other neighbors and he ate. It’s a very established tree though, I’m not sure how old it is.
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