Fruit Harvest

Two years ago, I redesigned our landscape and put in a more edible landscape plan. Instead of ornamental trees I put in dwarf fruit trees. I replaced and added foundational bush plantings that bear fruit. We installed two tiered strawberry beds along with a grape arbor and raspberry patch. I was able to squeeze quite a bit of fruit into our landscape. This year when we lost our maple tree, we replaced it with apple trees which will provide shade along with apples.

In our medium sized suburban yard I have a raspberry patch, 2 kinds of grapes, asparagus and rhubarb patch, 100 strawberry plants, 2 gooseberry, 1 currant, 3 cherry, 7 blueberry and 3 blackberry bushes, 2 pear, 1 nectarine, 1 plum, 1 apricot, 2 cherry, 1 almond and 1 peach tree and 2 semi-dwarf apple trees. This year the berries and some of the dwarf trees have started to bear fruit in their second year. I will never get huge crops off of them like I would if I could plant a larger grove of semi-dwarf and regular size trees but I still get enough for our family to eat fresh. The fruit is organic and freshly picked.

I never thought I would be able to produce so much fruit here at home. This year, we have started to benefit from our landscape redesign. Everyone should be able to include fruit in their landscape. It just takes some creativity.