Planting Small Fruiting Plants within the Landscape an Age Old Idea

What do Europeans know that we, Americans, don't? Well, they've been planting fruiting plants right alongside shrubs and perennials for centuries. It's time we followed suit and did the same.

The average American home should be able to incorporate 3 to 6 blackberry or raspberry plants. Taller growing blueberry shrubs make a good choice as a hedge. Strawberry plants can be planted in unused open areas and make a great substitute for growing grass.

Cheryl Jones, owner of Greenwood Nursery, notes, "I've been promoting the European concept of planting small fruiting plants within the landscape for the last 10 years in our gardening newsletter, on our website and to customers. It's such a great feeling to be able to provide yourself and your family with the summer's fresh fruits that came from just outside your door."

Fruiting plants do require mostly sunny areas and soil with high organic content which can be accomplished by adding aged compost or aged manure mix in the holes at the time of planting.

Visit GreenwoodNursery.com to buy small fruiting plants for your landscape.

Eating fresh blackberries, blueberries and strawberries as they mature over the summer months is so refreshing and to know that they came from your own plants is comforting.

Steve and Cheryl Jones started Greenwood Nursery, McMinnville, TN, in 1978 as a  propagation and wholesale nursery. In 1998, they took their plant catalog online offering a wide selection of garden plants to the home gardener, and, now, Greenwood Nursery is an online plant nursery and garden center shipping plants throughout the continental United States.

For further information or to place an order, please visit https://www.greenwoodnursery.com/.  Questions may be sent by email or by phone during office hours, Monday through Friday, 8am to 4pm central time.

Add Small Fruting Plants to Your Garden

If your landscape isn't suitable for standard-sized fruit trees, you might want to consider fruit bushes. Here are some idea starters:

Thornless Blackberry plants could be a very good choice! In addition to being thornless, they do not need a trellis, and I find that they have a particularly sweet flavor. I like two varieties, Arapaho Thornless and Triple Crown Thornless. Both produce sucker plants that help them co-mingle quickly and produce an appealing blackberry hedgerow that can be very attractive in various different landscape designs. By the way, Arapaho is the earliest thornless blackberry of any variety. Both are hardy in zones 3 - 8.

There are a number of very good varieties of strawberry plants available. If you have questions about which varieties might be best in your area, you can drop me an e-mail at steve@landsteward.org One variety that I frequently recommend is the Ozark Beauty because of its exceptional hardiness and because it's one of the heaviest producing plants I've ever tested.

If you'd like to find a strawberry that's also an effective and attractive ground cover for your landscape, take a look at Sweet Charlie. It produces runners freely, making for good ground cover, and it produces large, juicy fruits with a tart, distinct flavor.

Here's a pleasant mental image for you: It's a Saturday morning, and the weekend is stretching lazily in front of you. How about a plate of home made pancakes? Step outside in you pajamas and pick a handful of your own fresh blueberries and you're all set. I love the distinctive taste of blueberries, and the plants are an attractive element in your landscape, too. Bear in mind that you will need to plant at least two different varieties for proper cross-fertilization.

Some of the rabbiteye varieties of blueberry bushes I often recommend are Austin, Brightwell and Powder Blue. These have an excellent flavor and produces nicely colored firm fruit.

Well, there you have it. Just a few ideas that should get you thinking about landscape that tastes as good as it looks! I invite you to tell me about any topics you'd like me to address in future columns.

It's a berry good time to select delicious fruiting plants

With the Holidays and the Winter Solstice behind us and the days slowly but surely growing longer as we head towards spring, we can start to enjoy mental images of gardens and landscapes alive with colors and aromas where now we see only bleak soil and dry branches!

Colors and aromas satisfy two of our senses – sight and smell. But why stop there when you can add taste to the sensual mix? Include small fruiting plants in your spring planting plans and you could soon, literally, be enjoying the fruits of your labor.

Here are a couple of suggestions that I hope will make your mouth water!

Blackberry Triple Crown Thornless

We recently discovered this relatively new blackberry and we quickly became enthusiasts. Yes, it really is thornless and that’s a big benefit to those of us whose hands and forearms seem to be magnets for little scratches when we work around our plants.

However, for us the “wow factor” came from the size of the fruit that this variety can produce, based on results achieved in agricultural testing. Triple Crown was tested extensively by agricultural research scientists before finally being offered to nurseries starting in 1996. Oregon State University trials found 8-year-old plants yielding 30 pounds or more of berries per plant.

The fruit is also suitable for juices, pies, syrups and preserves, according to puree trials by the Oregon testers. The name, by the way, doesn’t refer to horse racing. Rather it gets its name from its three crowning attributes: flavor, productivity and vigor.

Raspberry Anne Fall Gold

Anne Gold is a yellow-gold variety noted for its sweet flavor and great holding ability on the vine. It is described by horticulturists as ever-bearing: you’ll get a good crop around June and an even better crop in the fall. A nice benefit: Anne Fall stays firm and won’t turn to mush in your hands if you delay picking it for a day or two. Tests show that it resists powdery mildew, too. For correct pollination, plant Anne Gold close to some regular red raspberries.

Raspberries tolerates most soil types but prefers deep, well-drained, fertile soil. It is quite versatile and hardy in cold climates where other cane fruits tend to fail.

Blueberries

If you enjoy blueberries in fruit salads, muffins and pancakes, why not grow your own? To ensure good pollination, you need to plant at least two varieties, such as…

Sweetheart, a new variety of blueberry, suitable for USDA zones 4 to 8. This one ripens early with firm, nicely colored fruit that has a sweet taste. The bush itself can make an attractive and decorative hedge with its pink-tinged white spring flowers and vibrant yellow-gold fall foliage, in addition to the blue early to mid-summer fruit.

Blueray, a mid-season blueberry that is upright, productive and vigorous. We’ve found you can get about 20 pounds of fruit from a single plant over the course of a season, so you’d better have a really good muffin recipe. Blueray is considered a good pollinator for other highbush varieties.

Some of the fruiting plants I’ve described are quite new and might be tricky to track down. If you need some online shopping help, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Start planning now for many summers of delicious, home-grown fruit!