Other edible fruit and plants

Gooseberries are my kids favorites and what other fruit is available in May and June? They are sour, but this native fruit is great in pies or just as a snack when we are out hiking.

That is a happy smile. My daughter loves gooseberries.

Another Missouri native is the Persimmon. A beautiful tree and a prolific producer of fruit. The fruit is not ready to eat until late fall, usually after frosts have begun. If you eat them too early, they will make your mouth pucker. We have used them in jam or eaten fresh.

A good harvest from a single tree.

In the late fall all the leaves have fallen and only the fruit remains.

I think the prettiest flower I have ever seen is the Passion Flower. It has so many layers of depth it almost looks artificial. This is a Missouri native vine that can be aggressive, but who cares if this beautiful flower is everywhere? To control it's spread, I do plant it along fence rows where I mow on both sides because it will sucker up 10' from the original plant. If you plant it on a garden fence or near a landscape bed, it can be a nuisance weed.

Here the fruit is developing. When it turns yellow you can peel it and suck the juice out of the inside. I am not sure what the relationship is to the passion fruit drinks you can get on tropical islands, but the taste is very similar. Kind of citrus, and very sweet.

Our native Redbud is a beautiful small tree with pretty heart shaped leaves and pink flowers in the spring. It does well in shade or sun and is very tough and adaptable to various soils.

The flowers are great to eat on salads or freshly grazed from the tree. The seed pods, when they are young and tender, can be eaten like snap peas or cooked with salt and butter.

Spring berries and fruit trees

This has been a great spring for us. Most of our fruit trees are still young, but our berry bushes are producing very well. The following are some photos and comments on what is doing well and tidbits of what we have learned. We have had a lot of Japanese Beatles this year. I am trying to figure out a natural method of destroying the little devils other than physically removing and squishing them. Any ideas are welcome in the comments.

Sour bush cherries have beautiful spring flowers and produce lots of small, sour, red fruit that is well suited for pies or fresh eating if you don't mind the sour taste. So far this is doing well (3rd season) without any spraying and has been disease and insect free. Japanese Beatles don't seem to fancy them over the grapes, fruit trees or blackberries.

This is the first year our bush cherries have produced (3rd season in the ground). The fruit is small and sour, but seems disease and insect free thus far.

Our small developing nursery (inside our dog fence). This year (2010) we have some peaches, nectarines, and crabapples developing fruit.

Our grapes (mostly Concord) are doing well. They have all reached the top 6' wire and I am starting to train them and trimming (in Nov.) lower growth off. It is important to get them off the ground so that they have good air movement to discourage fungal disease.

Early spring with grapes and blackberries leafing out. Spring greens have been planted in the hoop house, but there is no need for shade clothe until mid-May when it gets hot.

Grape leaves healthy as can be before the Japanese Beatles start eating them.

Fruit starting to develop on the grape vines. Concords seem to be the most disease variety for mid-Missouri. We also have some seedless varieties, but they don't seem to be very vigorous or productive yet.

Blueberries in early spring.

There is nothing finer or prettier than blueberries. No house or garden should be without them. They are easy and productive if you have a little patience. They are disease and insect resistant, are beautiful plants and the fruit is super healthy. I often recommend to friends that all gardens should have blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. All are very hardy, productive and healthy for eating.

Blueberry flowers are a beautiful dainty white.

Developing fruit in May.

Fruit starting to turn blue. I can hardly wait.

Early spring strawberry flowers.

Strawberries are outstanding. They grow like weeds, but are a beautiful groundcover for any sunny area. They can take shade, but do not produce as well. I have tried many different varieties, but I would stay away from "ever-bearing" types as they bear very little and so it is difficult to process them as they fruit at different times and produce very little. It is nice to have a huge harvest for 3 weeks that we can pick, clean and freeze. Try to keep your beds less than 3' wide as it is hard to pick the berries on the inside without stepping on the outside plants to get to the inner berries.

These beds are a little wide and the edges need to be trimmed. The outer plants can be given away to friends.

Fruit staring to develop.

Beautiful ripe fruit.

Quite a harvest. We wash, cut off the bad parts and freeze the berries on baking sheets. After they freeze individually on sheets, we put them in freezer zip-locks until we can use them in smoothies or jam.

A perfect fruit.

Apples in bloom are beautiful. I am still experimenting to see what varieties I like best.

A beautiful apple blossom.

Grow your own Food!

Edible Plants we Grow: Click on the links below for content!

Fruit Trees and Plant Propogation

Fruit Trees and Berries

Pruning Blackberries

Vegetable Gardens

Summer Garden

Nut Trees

Herbs

Indoor Tropicals

Other Edible Plants

Starting from Seeds

Composting

Pruning Trees: More on this later.

Pruning grapes: More on this later.

Fruit Trees and Berry Bushes

Fruit Trees that don’t need to be sprayed

You may have a friend who has a fruit tree or berry bush that they inherited with their house and they do not know what variety it is. Or maybe you just want to get some fruit trees and berry bushes for free. My goal is to find fruit trees that are not sprayed and still produce good fruit. I specifically look for neglected trees and grape vines that have decent looking fruit on them. If you want a beautiful glossy apple with no blemishes on it, you will have to spray gobs of pesticides on your trees, but if you want very tasty fruit that may not be as large or pretty as store bought fruit, keep your eyes open as you walk in your neighborhood or are driving around town. If you see a Pear tree in a neighbor’s yard that has nice fruit, ask them if you can take a cutting to attempt to grow yourself. It will do no damage to the tree and you can grow a free fruit tree. Not all trees, vines and shrubs are easily propagated by cuttings, but many are. Grapes, Elderberries and Blackberries are particularily easy. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?

These apples may not have store quality fruit, but they produce well without the use of chemicals and they taste great.

Grape and Paw Paw cuttings in tall pots of perlite in a tub of water to keep moist.

Grapes growing in a mixture of perlite, peat moss and compost before being planted.

Some basic knowledge of plant propagation can help you turn one specimen tree, berry bush or grape vine into many for you to grow in your own yard. Here is a link to a good website to learn about propagating plants:

http://plantpropagation.com/

Here is a great article about grafting the fruit bearing top of a tree to hardy root stock: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/clay121.html

The following is a list of some of the fruit trees we currently are growing. I hope to get more good photos up soon.

Crabapples with large tasty fruit. Many types of crabs do not require spraying and they have very tasty fruit, albeit smaller than full size apples. More on this later!

Plums: Native and varietal. I really like our native plum. The fruit is sour and about the size of a cherry, but it is very hardy and a reliable producer. More on this later!

Apricots: Manchurian and others. More on this later!

Pears: Asian Pears that do not require spraying and are sweet as can be. They taste like candy. More on this later!

Peaches: I got a great variety from an old timer at a seed festival in Mansfield, MO http://www.rareseeds.com/ that he got from a farm in Dent Co. Not a great looking fruit, but reliable and does not require chemicals. More on this later!

Apples: Some require so many chemicals that they are not worth growing, I look for neglected looking trees on old farms and either collect some seeds or cuttings (with permission of course). Make sure they are not grafted by looking for a knobby growth near the base of the trunk. If there is a knobby growth just above the soil, it is probably grafted and you will not likely have success with a cutting. On grafted trees, often the fruit bearing portion is not very hardy and that is why it is grafted to a hardy root stock. You can take a cutting and graft it onto a hardy root source, but that is pretty advanced.

Cherries: Black (native) and Bush Cherries. More on this later!

Persimmon are native to Missouri and we happen to have some choice trees in our woods. Not only are they a beautiful tree, they taste good when ripe. they are almost mushy-soft when ripe. You have to be careful to make sure they are all the way ripe before picking or else one bad fruit can ruin a whole batch of jam. If you eat a bad one, it will make your mouth pucker up like nothing else in this world, but a good one is sweeter than molasses. There are some Asian varieties I want to try that have larger fruit and are less astringent than our native tree. The large fruit varieties can be dried like prunes as well.

A small harvest in October 2009.

Paw Paw: More on this later!

The following is a link to a great fruit growers guide from Missouri State U

http://mtngrv.missouristate.edu/Publications/index.htm#CommercialFruit

Berry Bushes

We have had great success with blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. We are seeing a lot of promise with chokeberries, elderberries and our Concord Grapes (very reliable), but because we got them planted later than the other berries we will have to post more on them later. Raspberries are growing, but yet to produce much. Native gooseberries continue to be a favorite of my kids, but because they are so prevalent in the woods around our house, we do not have to plant them. If you have never had one, think of a sweet tart without the sweet. They make a great pie with plenty of sugar added.

Blackberry bushes are very hardy and reliable. They can be aggressive and send up shoots where you don't want them.

My son picking Blackberries.

Me planting blueberries and strawberries in our newly tilled garden in 2007. Almost all berries like acid so I planted grapes, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries around the perimeter of our entire garden (inside the fence to protect from critters). Grouping of plants with similar soil needs can greatly reduce the time it takes to care for your garden. Our soil is clay so I had to add a lot of peat, sand and compost prior to planting. My daughter picking blueberries!

We have had great strawberry production. There are several weeks in June where the kids come inside with multiple bowls of berries. We grow the strawberries under the blueberries and grapes in a 3-4' wide swath around the entire vegetable garden. See: Our Vegie/fruit garden 2009

My daughter helping me pick strawberries!

Concept Plan for a Sustainable Farm

Here is a sustainable-living concept plan for a 1/4 acre home in an urban setting. I hope you can get some good ideas from it for your own home! Following this plan is a concept plan for a home on acreage. Click on the plans for larger views!



Below is a conceptual plan for a hypothetical sustainable farm that could be created on between 2-10 acres. Our own home is on 2 acres and as such we do not have any animals other than pets. We would like to have chickens, but our covenants do not allow it. Obviously this plan is just an idea and would have to be modified to suit your site. We started out with a ranch home that is not a stellar example of passive solar architecture or earth contact, but like so many things in life, you make do with what you have. Very few of us can start building our own Eden from scratch with the budget we desire.

Some things we have found particularly beneficial is siting the garden below our home so that we can collect the rain water off our roof and store it in a 500 gallon barrel to irrigate the garden. This may or may not be possible at your homesite and of course you want to also consider where you have the best sunlight and the richest soil. We have built our garden fence with our dog run area around the garden. This has proven to be very valuable in keeping the deer and rabbits out of the garden.

What sustainability means to me!

More great ideas are available at Mother Earth News online:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/