Backyard Farming the Natural Way

Archive for the ‘Growing Fruits and Berries’ Category

Our family loves avocados and we use them mostly on our salads.  Therefore, with ever increasing prices of store bought avocados, the prospect of having producing trees in my yard was too much to resist.  Most information on the web about growing avocados, deals with the fun of growing them from seed etc. However, if you are serious about having productive trees in your yard within any acceptable time span, and you desire specific characteristics, you really need to purchase a grafted tree from a reputable nursery. The particular tree I have pictured here is a ‘Brogdon’ variety which is very cold hardy for this northern Florida climate. Read the rest of this entry »

I just wanted to post an update picture of the muscadines growing along my newly erected trellis. You can see that in a little over a month (since my first post on the trellis), that these cordons have grown a few more feet and are now within just a couple of feet from reaching the trellis posts. When they reach these posts which are 20′ apart, I will pinch off the ends to restrict the muscadines to this expanse and encourage more lateral growth along the cordons.

Out of the six grape vines I now have, a couple had a few problems resulting in a loss of some growth. On one, I had put a little too much fertilizer which killed some of the newer growth. Be very careful to not place the fertilizer too close to the base of these plants, as they are very sensitive.  At the rate these are going, I am expecting a partial crop this coming summer. Not bad for 8 months since starting as bare root whips!

I ordered six muscadines of different varieties this past winter from Ison’s online nursery, and you can see that they have already grown to the top of the 5′ support and are spreading out along the wire!  I ordered them dry root, and when they arrived during the end of winter, they were roughly 8″ not including the root.

Out of these, a couple did not survive, and I had to buy two replacements at the local nursery this spring. The varieties which I now have are Ison, Noble, Tara, and Southland. You can see that the basic idea is to trim down to one shoot, and then let this reach the top.  Following this, you let one branch (cordon)  go in each direction where it will have 20′ of wire (10′ in each direction) before encountering the next post. Any grapes which tried to form this year, I removed so that the energy of the plant would allow maximum growth. Supposedly, it takes about three years to have a good harvest, but at the rate these are growing (and being in Florida),  I am betting on a decent first harvest next summer. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been about 2 months+  since we moved to our new 1.75 acre property and I have been ‘busy as a bee’ planting fruit trees.  Early winter is a good time to get discounts on plants; For example, our local Lowe’s will mark 1/2 off deciduous fruit trees (loose their leaves) because people won’t tend to buy plants without leaves, pretty flowers, etc. But you and I know this spells a good deal, right? I even got nice blueberry plants and figs the other day for $2.50 each because of the first cold snap. Read the rest of this entry »

We have moved into an older neighborhood where people used to know what persimmon trees were and fortunately planted a few trees.  I  couldn’t resist the temptation while walking the other day, when I saw a tree loaded with huge persimmons in a new neighbor’s yard.  Because there were persimmons starting to fall and rot on the ground, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask for some, and because the guy didn’t even know what a persimmon was, we scored about 35 large persimmons off this tree!

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Pictured here is an avocado tree started from seed by a friend just a couple of years ago! It was started from a Haas avocado, but because plants started from seed do not usually produce specimens ‘true to kind’, it may not have all the characteristics of the true Haas.  However, so far the leaves and such seem to be developing along the lines of a Haas.  When I received the plant, it was getting pot bound, so I moved it to a larger container, and plan on putting it in the ground this coming spring. Read the rest of this entry »