It is early spring (4-23-22) as I walked through the garden, I shared how to grow some of your own vegetable and fruit trees to save money on groceries.
We set $300 for our monthly grocery budget for our family of 5. It included $60 a month for fruit.
When you want to grow your own food, you might think about fruit trees you could introduce in your garden to save money.
Some fruit trees produce fruits that have health benefits or high in certain antioxidants to help prevent some diseases.
Video 15:32: Quince tree
Video 29:45: Aronia (blue fruit tree I couldn’t remember the name)
Online fruit tree nurseries
A nursery I purchased fruit trees from is Burnt Ridge Nursery. They share information on health benefits of fruits on their website (https://www.burntridgenursery.com/).
The second nursery I have purchased from is One Green World Nursery (https://onegreenworld.com/) a little pricier, gives an idea on how tall the fruit trees they sell can grow and the maximum of fruit they can produce when they reach maturity as well as how long it takes for the trees to start producing.
When I purchased our fruit trees, I draft a spreadsheet to record the name of the trees and the information I found on them from these 2 nurseries for our own record.
When you plan to plant fruit trees, you could introduce some berries as well. They produce as early as the year following the year you planted them. Many fruit trees or trees that will produce a lot of fruits tend to take longer to fruit. For instance, I planted Italian Plum (Prunus domestica) in June 2016. It flowered for the first time this spring 2022 while Sweet Scarlet Goumi planted in spring 2015 has been fruiting since 2017. Based on the nursery website where I purchased them, the plum tree could produce over 50 lbs. of plums when the tree reaches maturity while the goumi tree could produce between 10 and 15 lbs. at maturity.
Fruit trees we planted in our backyard that are still growing include:
Ashmeads Kernal Apple (M. pumila)
Goumi tree sweet scarlet (Eleagnus multiflora)
4 varieties of blueberries including Brunswick Lowbush Blueberry a wild blueberry (Vaccinium augustifolium))
Sunflower Paw Paw (Asimina triloba)
Mango Paw Paw
2 black berry varieties (Chester and triple crown black berries)
2 raspberries (Caroline and Polka red)
Meader Persimmon (Diospyrus virginiana)
Kuganskaya Russian quince (Cydonia oblonga)
Smyrna Quince (Cydonia oblonga)
Reliance Peach (Amygdalus persica)
Polly Peach (A. persica)
Rainier Cherry (Prunus cerasus)
Montmorency Pie Cherry (Prunus cerasus)
Viking Aronia (Aronia melanocarpa)
Rosa Rugosa Alba
Strawberries
Alpine strawberries
Some fruit trees were purchased once and propagated throughout the years. The mother plants are in the front yard. Few examples include:
Black currants- Black September (Ribes rubrum)
Seeded concord grape (Vitis labrusca)
If you like to plant fruit trees, you might need to fence your garden against deer and bunnies if they roam free in your area. Fruit trees are expensive, and deer might chew on their tips preventing them for leafing out in spring while bunnies can chew at the graft level in winter damaging the trees.
We purchased and planted around 60 fruit trees shrubs and ground cover plants like strawberries in the front yard and back yard. We have about 30 of them growing now.
How to protect your fruit trees from deer and bunnies?
You could wrap ½ in chicken wire around the base of the trees to protect from bunny. A galvanized wire around the tree with space around the tree could stop deer from getting close to the tree to munch on the tips.
Because we have a lot of fruit trees, we fenced within fence with the galvanized wire. It took few years for the deer to know they could jump in it. By then most of our trees are tall enough for deer to do damage to them.
After bunnies damaged some of our trees one winter, I put chicken wire around the tronc of some of them and it prevented more damage to the trees. Some damaged trees were damaged at the grafted level but came back from the root stock. I left them to see what type of fruit they will produce.
Fencing you garden could be expensive. However, fruit trees take years to start producing, cost money, and last years. It might be worth protecting them from deer and bunnies.
You don’t need to water your fruit trees nor fertilize them. Once they start producing fruit, you could overtime decrease the amount of fruit you purchase from the grocery store and save some or your grocery money or allocate that saving toward some grocery staples you don’t grow.
While you wait for your trees to produce, you might learn different ways to preserve your fruit harvest so that you could enjoy your organic fruit all year around. You will be eating healthy and saving money at the same time.
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