Starting A Homestead Orchard
This is the year we’re finally investing in perennials. We’ve been putting this project off since we moved in 3 years ago. We didn’t have the time, the money, or the plan. But 2021 is going to be the year of the fruit. Apple trees, grapes, raspberries...they’re all going in.
It’s kind of a hefty up-front investment, but we’re biting the bullet because the longer we wait the longer it’s going to be before we see any of the rewards. If we had planted trees and bushes when we first moved in, we could potentially be harvesting some fruit this year. But we didn’t, because we were busy with other things.
Since we’ve moved into our house, we’ve dug the garden, added a greenhouse, planted blueberries (last year), 2 crabapples, 2 elderberries, a currant, a mulberry (I think it died), and some other miscellaneous ornamental shrubs and trees.
Now that we have the major structures (the garden and greenhouse, trails, and our goat pasture) in place, we want to spend this year focusing largely on perennial food plants. We’ve been here long enough to know the lay of the land and more or less how we plan to use it. We can plant trees and be pretty confident that we won’t regret their placement next year.
Unfortunately for us, 2021 is the year that EVERYONE is planting an orchard and a garden. It’s been a little bit of a challenge trying to buy seeds and plants online, with lots of things being sold out and shipping delayed by weeks. But we were able to get most of what we wanted, and it’s so great to see people taking an interest in gardening.
What We’re Planting
So far, we’ve ordered plants from Fedco and the Winooski Conservation District’s annual plant sale. We’ll talk about our seed orders in a different post (so many seeds). For Christmas, we got a very generous gift that will likely get us 2 fruit trees from Horsford’s nursery in the spring, maybe cherry trees, or peaches, but we’ll see what they have come spring.
Here’s what we’ve ordered so far:
Fedco
This is our first time ordering plants from Fedco. I’m generally not a fan of ordering live plants through the mail. They come stressed and I haven’t had nearly as much success this way. But, Fedco is a great company (I’ve ordered their seeds), and they have a huge selection so we’re giving it a go.
From Fedco:
10 ‘Nova’ Raspberries $29.50
5 ‘Nelson’ Blackberries $29.50
2 ‘Beta’ Grapes $30.00
2 ‘King of the North’ Grapes $30.00
With Shipping, it cost $141.50. We already have 1 grape, so that will bring our total to 5 (way more than enough for the two of us, but it makes a complete ‘row’ in the garden and will give us plenty if Andy ever decides he wants to experiment with winemaking).
We’re trying the raspberries and blackberries because while we have plentiful wild blackberries, they’re a pain to pick. You can go out all afternoon and only get a quart. So we’d like to plant a dedicated patch of each that will be easier to pick from. We’ll still probably only get enough to snack on, but we won’t have to traipse all over the property to do it.
Winooski NRCD Plant Sale
Last year we ordered a few trees and shrubs from the plant sale to place around our property and just add some interest to the yard. They are very, very small plants (bare-root), but they’re cheap, healthy, and support a good local cause. We ordered again because we had such good luck with them last year.
The plants are young so they’ll take longer to reach a mature size, but for us that’s ok. We don’t have to dig as big of a hole, so planting is easier, and the plants are much healthier in the end. A 3-gallon plant goes through a lot more shock when transplanted than a 1 ft bare-root plant. Most of the plants we bought from the sale last year had put on visible growth by fall, and some had more than doubled in size by the end of the season. We were very impressed.
From the Winooski plant sale:
1 Groundnut $6.00
2 Allegheny Serviceberry $12.00
1 Paw Paw $10.00
1 New Jersey Tea $5.00
1 Black Chokeberry $7.00
2 Spicebush $14.00
1 Red Mulberry $10.00
1 Highbush Cranberry $7.00
2 Nannyberry $14.00
1 Northern Spy Apple $26.00
Total: $111.00
Some of these are edible, and some are mostly just to add variety to the yard or feed the birds. Many of these are natives or hardy plants that will grow in the less-than-ideal locations scattered around our property.
Perennials Are A Long Term Investment
Trees and shrubs can cost a lot of money, especially when you compare them to a packet of seeds. A tree can easily cost anywhere from $30 to $150 or more. But we’re making the investment because it’s so worth it.
I love our vegetable garden, but we have to till it, plant it, weed it, monitor it, pick it, and then clean it up in the fall. Every single year. Many of the plants have to be started indoors when there is still snow on the ground.
An orchard produces a huge amount of food and can be left alone for much of the year. When I was very young, my parents planted a small orchard in our front yard. Pear, peach, plum, apple, and cherry trees, along with a blueberry patch, a raspberry patch, and a few currants and gooseberries.
We lived in a very, very cold microclimate on the side of Mount Mansfield, so unfortunately the peach and plum trees never did anything besides give beautiful flowers in the spring. But the other plants were hugely prolific with only the smallest amount of care.
Eventually, the cherry trees succumbed to disease (they have surprisingly short life spans and are prone to disease) but not before giving huge amounts of fruit for a number of years. The blueberries, currants, and apples are still producing abundantly in good years despite having had no maintenance done to them in over a decade. In the best years, we pick bushel after bushel of apples off of the 5 apple trees, still leaving plenty for the wildlife, and fill half our freezer with blueberries.
When you think about what it would cost to buy this amount of fruit, the savings become clear. Locally, a quart of blueberries costs $7 pick-your-own. Last year, on a terrible year, I picked 5 gallons of blueberries off my dad’s bushes over the course of the season. That would have cost $140. Which means, we wouldn’t have eaten any blueberries (we’re cheap and on a budget). If we had to pay, we might have picked a quart or two, but wouldn’t have saved any for the freezer to have over the winter. That would have been a tragedy.
Growing our own food has saved us huge amounts of money. It allows us to eat a healthy diet that we wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. Fresh, amazing fruits and vegetables can be a staple part of our diet, not just a small part or a special treat.
We Like Simple Plants that Serve Many Purposes
We love trees because we don’t have to think about them. They just do their own thing, sitting outside all year by themselves. With basically no intervention from us, they provide habitat, sequester carbon, make shade, produce oxygen, and grow food. They also add beauty to our land.
As humans, we love to over-complicate everything, including gardening. Trees are not complicated. They need to be pruned and potentially sprayed to prevent or treat disease and pests. That’s mostly all they need once they’re established. Maybe some mulch or fertilizer. Native trees exist without any intervention from us.
We want to get the most benefit (whether that be food, beauty, whatever) with the least amount of work. We only have so many hours in the day and so many days in a year, so we want to be as efficient as we can with them. Why do extra work?
Adding fruit trees and bushes to our garden is a huge towards increasing our efficiency and the production of our land, towards getting more food for less work.
We’re really looking forward to getting these perennial plants established. The best time to plant a tree is 20yrs ago, and the next best time is yesterday. It will be good to make this long term investment in our property. The benefits of these plants will be many, including added diversity to the landscape and our micro-ecosystem. Hopefully providing fruit for us as well as various treats for birds and the bees as we establish a permaculture landscape in our little space on earth.
