Monday, April 2, 2012

Edible Landscape: Primary Residence

Last week,  I wrote about our yard and how we are trying to make it so that we can generate most of our produce from our property.  In this post, I will show you pictures of our primary residence and the steps we have taken over the last 4 years and the steps we plan on taking in upcoming years to make this land as productive as possible.

Front of the house.

This is a picture of our primary residence which is half an acre. As you can see, it is not very colorful this time of year.  I love when the leaves start to form on the trees and everything bursts with colors of spring.   We have a nice sized front yard, but the majority of our property is to the side of our home and very dense with trees. 


Picture from the edge of our property to our home.

Picture of our side property - we own to the bush in the side yard.
These are our new red raspberry patches. 

In the side yard,  a little closer to the road, there are two pear trees. We purchased these trees along with a dwarf plum at a large discount in June 2010.

Pear Trees
This is a picture of our teeny tiny back yard. We have never really done much back here, but I’ve got big plans for this area. I received 6 blueberry startings a few weeks back that are now planted in this area. I also plan on putting in blackberry bushes and strawberries in the area.   My new moto is: If it’s got sun, decent soil and room to grow, use it!

Teeny Tiny Backyard

6 Blueberries Planted!

A new addition has arrived last week that I absolutely love: our new arbor!  On this arbor, we will be planting 4 concord grape vines (on their way in the mail as I type this).  I have wanted to grow concord grapes since we moved in, but this year it is actually happening!  Concord grapes bring up great memories of my childhood when my mom, dad and I would eat bags full of concord grapes, never getting enough of them.  They aren’t as readily available here in Ohio as they were in New York and Pennsylvania, but that will (hopefully) all be changing in the next 2-3 years when we have our very own source of them in the front yard! 

Arbor

Close to our mailbox in the front yard, we planted a dwarf plum tree that we bought on clearance from Home Depot two years ago at 75% off.  We have been patiently waiting for fruit to start producing on this tree.  One reason we have this tree here in the front yard is because it is decorative, but the added bonus is that it will hopefully start producing fruit for us!

Dwarf Plum

Where are all of our vegetables going to be planted?
Next week, I will show you the other ½ acre lot we own next door.

Please feel free to link up to this post with pictures of your yard or container garden.  I’d love to see it!





This post is linked up to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop!

5 comments:

  1. Hi! I just saw about your gardens and wanted to a.sk about your dwarf plum tree. Do you have to spray it much with something for problems? I have two dwarf asian pear trees and a peach tree. Always wanting to add more fruit to our yard but afraid to do dwarf apple trees because of the upkeep. Come see my gardens at http://cozythymecottage.blogspot.com/ Nancy

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    1. We have not had to spray the dwarf plum at all in the two years we've had it. To be honest, we havent sprayed any of our fruit trees, as we havent had a problem yet with them. I have been looking at organic ways to keep the bugs off the fruit trees, and I see that you can put water, vinegar and some orange peels into a gallon jug, mix it up and hang it on the trees. It will keep bugs off the trees (apparently). I will be trying this method this year.

      I cant wait to go take a look at your gardens!

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    2. Hi! Happy Easter! Thanks for the plum tree info. Is it a certain kind of plum tree? Also have you posted anywhere the proportions of the vinegar, water, orange peel spray. Do you start spraying with that in the spring and do you have a schedule for doing that? Or do you just use it if you see some bugs? Last year my peach tree got that curling blistering leaves blight so last fall I sprayed it with Fung-onil and now this year I see one of the Asian pear trees is getting it so sprayed it yesterday even tho the leaves are already out and I think I was suppose to do it sooner! Thankss for your help. Nancy at http://cozythymecottage.blogspot.com/

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    3. We do not know what kind of dwarf plum this tree is (sorry). This is the recipe for the bug repellant: http://www.ehow.com/how_4449531_make-natural-bug-repellent-fruit.html
      I will not be making a batch until we start to see bugs on the tree. We are very new to fruit trees and have had absolutely NO produce in 2 years. :-) We are learning as we go. I would like to avoid spraying the trees as long as possible.

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  2. Thanks! I hate spraying things too until I have to! Why can't the bugs leave them alone! lol Nancy at http://cozythymecottage.blogspot.com/

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