For most folks just moving to the country, there are many choices to be
made concerning their new lifestyle. These choices can seem
overwhelming sometimes. For instance, many new homesteaders think that
having home grown fruit must be a pretty good thing, and so they jump
right in, order trees, plant them, and hope for the best.
Sometimes
the trees grow, and sometime they don't. Sometimes the fruit makes,
and sometimes it doesn't. Newcomers and, I must admit, older folks
like me, too, need to do some homework before planting. It really doesn't
matter where in the country the farm is. Up north, in the midwest, or down south, there are
just lots of things to study and be sure of before the shovel hits the
sod.
Homesteaders must remember always that planting fruit trees is
a very labor intensive effort. Fruit trees are even more time
intensive. Think about this: Plant the wrong peas, and you've made a
three month mistake. You lose a planting season. Plant the wrong fruit
trees, or plant them in the wrong place, and it may be a ten year
mistake, and you may never really get to make it right.
Through the years, my family has lived in the country in a
number of places, from the northern parts of the Ozarks to the very
southernmost parts of Alabama, Wherever we've lived, we've grown our own
fruit. We have made our share of mistakes, and we've had our fair share
of successes too. There must be something about seeing fruit trees grow,
bloom, set fruit, mature fruit, and then yield fruit up when ripe for
our eating that keeps us coming back. We just keep planting fruit trees.
Although we've lived in lots of places, we've always found that wherever
we have lived, fruit can be home produced, and very often be much better
than anything store-bought.
There are a few things that we've discovered that we'd like to share.
A long time ago when we first moved from the city to the northern Arkansas
Ozarks, planting fruit trees for our home use was one of our first
priorities. We were very fortunate at this time, because my
father-in-law lived close by, and he was a first rate orchard-man who kept
a ten acre mixed orchard and had years of experience growing fruit.
We had good guidance from him when we started selecting varieties of apple
trees, plum trees, pear trees, and pie cherry trees. He had learned
much about the climate and trees which he passed along to us. From him, we
learned which trees would work together to produce fruit for our family's
use.
Before we obtained our first old homestead, I spent long summer days and
even longer fall days (and nights in some cases) helping my father-in-law
prune, spray, pick, grade, polish, and sell many, many bushels of apples.
It was a pretty full education I received. However, even my
father-in-law's judgment was not perfect. You see, in addition to
his apples, plums, and cherries, he wanted to grow peaches, and that was a
problem.
On the west and north facing hillsides of his multi-acre orchard, his
peach trees grew well, bloomed vigorously, and almost every year had their
infant peaches frozen by late spring freezes. In all the time I was
there-about fifteen years- he got two partial crops of peaches.
These were wonderful crops and we enjoyed the fresh peaches, but two
out of fifteen crops successful just won't work. For a homesteader who has
plans of selling fruit for profit as well as home use, it can't even be
considered.
What I saw and learned from my father-in-law's peaches was
this. Even though the fruit tree catalogs informed us that peaches would
grow in our Ozark climate, the specialized micro-climate of his orchard
made growing peaches practically impossible. The home grower must realize
that this sort of thing happens. No matter where a homestead happens to
be located, the new grower must be cautious in selecting fruit trees, and
make sure that an investment of money, effort and time will actually
produce. Another thing. No matter how much we may want a
particular fruit, that won't make it grow if it can't prosper where we
live. We couldn't grow oranges in Arkansas,
and we have learned that we can't grow apples in south Alabama.
When
we moved from the Ozarks to south Alabama, we had to make some "changes in
latitude, changes in attitude". In our new homeplace, we planted
blueberries, and a wide range of citrus trees. Now, planting orange trees
was a change for us. I never expected to live in a place where I could
grow oranges in my yard. But, that's what grows down here. I also found
that peaches and nectarines (which is a wonderful fruit eaten full ripe
and fresh from the tree) would grow very well down here. So we planted our
new fruit trees, and watched them grow, and waited for them to make fruit.
