You can always tell the non-gardeners. They’re the ones who see the bland white butterflies with the black spots on their wings fluttering over my cabbage plants and say things like, “Ohmygosh how pretty! Butterflies!” Poor, poor, misguided fools. They never go crazy, like I do, for the dive-bombing glint of dozens of dragonflies. They never…
Growing Fruit
Fruit Trees: Summer Pruning vs. Winter Pruning
To grow the most varieties of fruit on my small suburban lot, I am experimentally trying a technique called Backyard Orchard Culture developed by the fruit tree-growers at Dave Wilson Nursery. Proponents will tell you Backyard Orchard Culture or BYOC (“Bring Your Own Cherry? Citrus? Cherimoya?”) is a great way for space constrained gardeners to…
Figs in the Pacific Northwest: Will My Unripe Figs Ripen?
Note: This post has been updated to reflect additional and more accurate information. I don’t think I’ve ever hosed up gardening advice quite so completely as in the first version of this post, but thankfully my readers are amazing and set me straight. Thank goodness for community! I’m getting lots of questions about figs right…
How To Grow The Most Delicious Strawberries
It’s strawberry season in the Northwest. Every year around April I give in and buy a plastic clambshell full of gorgeous berries trucked up from California. Winter’s been long, you see, and those berries just look like perfection. And every year, about two months later, I taste my first homegrown berry and I remember what…
Cross Dressing Fruit and Frustrated Apple Maggots
One of my readers, Robin, left this comment on the October Garden Tour post, where I showed my espaliered apple tree full of apples wrapped in pantyhose footies: I’m really curious about the cross dressing apples as well. I must’ve missed the post that explained it. Why the sexy legwear? And how big were they when…
Adventurers Of A Corporate Gleaner
Location 47.58 degrees North by 122.155 degrees East: a top secret blackberry patch adjacent to the offices of a major mobile communications provider. Date Friday, August 12, 2011 Time 09:34 local, 16:34 Zulu Mission Initial reconnaissance by the operative codenamed “Homebrew” on Thursday, August 11 revealed an exceptionally large blackberry patch at a previously unsuspected…
It's Harvest Time
Yes, summer has been elusive, but that means best quality cool weather crops like lettuce and broccoli. The warm weather stuff has been slow to ripen but I’ve got zucchini and greenhouse cucumbers and the very first cherry tomatoes. And – excitement of excitement – tiny little green beans. I can’t wait to eat fresh…
Backyard Orchard Culture: Designing Fruit Tree Quartets
The whole idea behind the Backyard Orchard Culture method is to prune trees so that they produce an extended harvest of manageable quantities of fresh fruit rather than one really big harvest all at once. This is achieved by planting trees with different ripening times and keeping them small through aggressive but thoughtful pruning that includes annual summer…
Backyard Orchard Culture: A Mini-Orchard In The Making
About a month ago, I talked about our plans to attempt the high-density fruit growing method called Backyard Orchard Culture. Well, plans have become reality and the mini-orchard is planted! A few weeks ago our bare-root trees came from Raintree Nursery. A box arrived that was about the size of me. I was very excited to see the…
Backyard Orchard Culture: Too Good To Be True?
I have struggled for a few years with a desire to have more fruit trees than my 1/3 acre lot can accomodate. A third-acre is actually pretty big by urban standards, but only one-quarter of our property is given over to edibles. The house, driveway, paths, shady areas and kid’s play area (aka lawn) take…
It’s Called Gleaning. No Relation To Glee.
I have a friend, the Shoreline Fruit Lady. Today is her birthday, so in her honor I thought I’d talk about one of her favorite things: gleaning. Fruit Lady is a neighborhood gleaner. She walks around her ‘hood with kids in tow and if she notices a big overgrown plum or apple tree in someone’s…