[Food] Production - Trees Pt. 2

[PrestonSturges]

Mostly semi-dwarf or stuff that can be kept under 15' with pruning. Most fruit trees demand heavy annual pruning. Some of these trees will only get small amounts of fruit unless I cut down a couple shade trees, and my neighbor has a couple declining shade trees that I look forward to him removing. I have a full size Keifer pear on the northern property line so my neighbor gets that shadow. After 5 years and too much shade it got a couple pears last year. The fact that it does not get enough sun is partly compensated for by a long growing season.

Shortest stuff faces south.
Tallest stuff on the north side.
Short stuff on east side, taller stuff on the west.

An orchard would have orderly rows, but a homeowner landscape might benefit from a checkerboard pattern.

If I had five tall trees, and nothing else, I'd put them in a row north-south or a diagonal. If I wanted smaller trees to share that space, the big trees would go in an east-west row at the north edge of the growing area.

This is a good time of year to get out with a digital camera and an 8' stake to measure where the shadows are as the day lengthens in areas like the north side of a garage. If light reaches the top of the pole now, it'll be full sun in summer, and fine for a tree. I have a semidwarf plum tree I sited that way on the north side of the garage. It is now 1/3 illuminated by the noon sun. When the buds break it'll be 50%, midsummer it'll be 100%

[PeakOiler]

Yesterday I brought the potted bay laurel tree that I received as a gift for Christmas out of the house and onto the front deck to get full sun. I also trimmed about 5" off the top of the 6+ ft tall tree. I washed the bay leaves with purified rainwater this morning and now the leaves are drying in a solar leaf dryer, which I use for the oregano, basil, and thyme I grow.

Dried Turkish bay leaves (McCormick) from the local grocery cost $5.99 for five grams. As soon as the leaves are dry, I'll weigh them on my food scale to determine my profit from such a high-value item. I'll update my Tree Summary spreadsheet. The only other trees that have produced anything else so far this year were the grapefruit and the lemon. I harvested the last four grapefruit of the season and one lemon in January. The local grocery sells pink grapefruit (4-4.5" diameter) @ four for a dollar. It's hard to compete with the prices of the local grocery store for Texas-grown citrus.

I'm glad those bay leaves didn't have to make the trip all the way from Turkey to Texas.

Edit to add that one of two pear trees is about to blossom. The flower buds are starting to break open.

[PeakOiler]

Thinking about it, I bet "Turkish" bay leaves at the local grocery here in Central Texas are actually grown in California. I'm curious if McCormick relates where their bottled spices come from...

At any rate, I weighed the dried bay leaves and measured 2 grams (~$2.40) on my food scale. It's accuracy is only +/- 2 grams. I may take the leaves to work and weigh them on one of the analytical balances which is accurate to 0.0001 grams.



The Bay Laurel tree was a great gift! I hope it gets acclimated to Central Texas weather...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_leaf

Gardeners in frost-free or light frost areas will find that bay laurel seedlings planted in the ground easily grow into large trees, 38 feet (12 m) and taller; but when kept pruned, it can thrive as a small bush. Bay laurel can also be grown in containers, the size of which limits the ultimate size of the trees.

I want a shrubbery, so I will keep the potted tree topped.

NEEE!!!

[Shaved Monkey]

Yes, I have about 18 trees on a tenth of an acre, with room for plenty more if I did some ax work. I'm hoping my 4 year old kiwi vine will gives some fruit or at least some flowers this summer.

Monkey and Preston - are those dwarf trees? What kinds of techniques are you using to pack them in so close? Do you have pictures or maps you could share with us? Would love to hear your real-world experiences.

My ones aren't all dwarf root stock
The Avocado and one of the oranges is.
My ones grow on pathetic shallow soil mainly rock and fine clay dust.
Ive spent over 10 years trying to build it up with mulch,but the rocks aren't melting away any time soon.
I had to plant every tree using a crow bar it was that much rock.
I have built up little rock wall on the down hill side of each tree to catch water,using the rocks from the hole.
The trees are virtually bonsaied by the root competition and the rocks.
I prune a bit to keep them going where I want them to go,but I don't mind chaos.
Heaps of variety on smaller than an average sized house block.
Ive recently just discovered I own another few meters of land to the side and have many more trees to plant. 7metres wide at the bottom and 30 metres long tapering like a triangle.
Ive still got vineyards chooks,quail, bees, aquaponics, wicking beds all to stack in.

Get some books on Permaculture and videos on food forests
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6239561835

[Keith_McClary]

Seattle to Create Nation’s First Public Food Forest

In the heart of Seattle, a public park is planned like no other: an urban food forest that is free for the plucking!

Due to its mild temperatures and routinely wet climate, Seattle is one of the very few cities in the US with a year-round, outdoor growing season. Taking advantage of this vegetation-friendly environment, and a seven acre plot of public land, a community of local planners and advocates are moving forward with plans to build the first, completely free, public food forest in a U.S. city (or perhaps anywhere in the country).

The proposed forest will be planted with hundreds of varieties of edible plants, herbs, berry bushes (such as honeyberries and lingonberries) and fruit trees — including apple, pear, plum and exotics such as pineapple, yuzu citus and guava. And all of it will be available free for the plucking to anyone who happens to walk through the soon-to-be-planted public forest in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.

That would be very popular around here.

[davep]

That is very cool.

[PeakOiler]

I'm glad I don't have black bears around here competing for the fruit from my trees. Squirrels, possum, raccoons, birds, and other critters are problematic enough here.

The main problem trying to grow fruit trees around here is lack of rain. The worst drought in over 100 years really makes it challenging.

But meanwhile, one of two pear trees is blossoming:



Edit: In the background of the picture above, is the younger, still-dormant pear tree, and even further in the background is a deer feeder. (The idea was to be able to shoot deer from the back porch/deck/deer-blind of the house, haul the deer one mile to the deer processing shop, and have jalepeno-deer sausage for part of the year.) I do not live in suburbia.

Below is the same tree showing collected rainwater coming out of the 3/4" PVC irrigation pipe:



Below shows the temporary plumbing from my stand-alone 1,550 gallon tank to the PVC irrigation manifold that services 10 of 13 peach trees.



All the irrigation from the rainwater tanks uses gravity flow for the most part. After I let out a lot of the water from this tank, I will use a small electric pump to transfer water from the tank collecting off the carport back to this tank which is slightly uphill.

[Revi]

That's really cool. I love drip irrigation. I think I'll install a version of that in my raised bed garden I'm putting together this year.

Meanwhile my other trees, 300 maples all tapped already, aren't doing much because up here we finally got winter. We have about a foot of snow on the ground, and it has been too cold for sap to flow. I am betting this won't be that great a year. We are going to get something, but I think it will go right from cold to warm around here, which is no good for the maple season. We'll see...

[PeakOiler]

I pronounce my second and last fig tree dead. I blame the intense heat and drought last year. It was after all, the worst drought ever.

http://tamunews.tamu.edu/2011/08/04/texas-drought-officially-the-worst-ever/

“These statistics rank the current drought as the most severe one-year drought ever for Texas,” Nielsen-Gammon explains. “Never before has so little rain been recorded prior to and during the primary growing season for crops, plants and warm-season grasses.”

So I'm going to replace the fig with another pecan. The rainwater catchment irrigation plumbing is already in place to that spot and pecans are better for my diet than figs anyway. Pecans are one of the most energy-dense foods I know of. No roto-tiller required.

All 13 peach trees have immature fruit on them. I plan on taking some to the farmers market this year if they survive. The youngest pear has a few fruit this year too, only the second year it's ever had any fruit. The young plum tree survived.

All the citrus trees have fruit on them too.

All three pomegranates are alive and well.

The one banana tree (which has now turned into five) survived the winter and are coming back nicely.

The young avocado and bay laurel trees are doing great!

[PrestonSturges]

My So jujube is getting ready to bloom, even though threat of frost is barely past, so that's about 2 weeks early, and several of the figs have a breba crop that look like they will escape the usual frostbite.

[Shaved Monkey]

A feel good story of being a little more self sufficient in a suburban setting.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-10/e ... ar/3940536

Basically what I am aiming at, but in a subtropical sense .
I have a slightly larger block ,heaps more fruit and nut trees and larger garden beds and probably as much if not more plant diversity. Eventually It will include chooks,edible fish and yabbys too, seriously considering bees and quails as well.

[PeakOiler]

Thought I would post an update on my food producing trees:



The peach harvest is not over, I'm going to go get some more this evening. The birds and rabbits are happy (and I saw a squirrel taking one away in it's mouth (pretty funny looking actually--the peach was bigger than it's head).

I haven't weighed more of the dried bay leaves, so that number will change in the spreadsheet.

There are immature pecans forming on some of the trees. I hope this year may yield a better harvest.

Lots of young citrus fruits are forming. Mostly lemons, but some satsuma, a couple of oranges, and about six tangelo. The grapefruit have not blossomed this year. Those two little trees did give a good harvest last season. Perhaps they're taking a break!

I may get about 5-6 pears off of one tree this season.

Most of my trees are still recovering from last year's exceptional drought. We're still in moderate drought!

Edit: Note that I'm finally in the green! (YTD Net) It took five years of fruit production to cover my investment in the trees vs the cost of the local retail outlets for that produce. And this was (is) through the last five years of mostly drought conditions. Harvesting rainwater has helped. Check out my utility water use chart:

[PeakOiler]

Since the peach harvest is over (and I'm still eating one peach per day that have been in the frig--only about seven left) I updated my tree production spreadsheet:



I actually made about $100 cash from selling peaches this year. I need to start making receipts for any sales over the next three years, so I can show them to the county tax-assessor. That is a requirement for getting any kind of an agricultural tax exemption on the property. I learned that after asking the clerk at the tax office a couple of years ago.

Some pears are getting close to picking, and at least a peck of pecans are still forming.

The citrus trees are still doing ok this year.

[PrestonSturges]

My Conadria fig is in its 4th year, near 6' tall It's putting out about 70 huge figs, many just under 2" across. I'd guess that about 8 lbs of figs. The quality is much improved this year. The best part is none of the mockingbirds have figured out that the green figs are ripe, so no bird damage. We may just put them in a pie crust and bake them.

It's a real workhorse of a plant, lost some leaves in the first furnace blast of heat, but the figs are ripening nicely despite the missing leaves. It's also a ridiculously easy variety to propage by air layering branches in the spring.

[PeakOiler]

I picked my first pear of the season yesterday. There were only six on the young tree this year. The remaining pears are not quite ready.

[PeakOiler]

I recently updated my Tree Production spreadsheet after harvesting six pears from a young tree this season. (884 g, 1.9 lb, ~$3.29 @ $1.69/lb)

The first pear I picked too soon. It was ok, but not very sweet. I ate the second one last night. It was good. The others should ripen up well, and also store well, over the next 7-10 days.

I look forward to the harvests from those pear trees as they mature. It would be great to get 100+ lbs/year. We'll see. I'm glad they survived Texas' worst drought last year.

[PeakOiler]

This season I harvested 956 pecans weighing ~6.598 kg (~14.5 lb). The pecans came from two of the six pecan trees. (Three are still too young to produce any nuts apparently). The potential energy from the unshelled pecans is about 23,987 calories. That's approximately 2.4% of my annual caloric needs.

So far I've shelled 438 of the pecans, yielding 1,278 grams (2.8 lb) edible fruit. At 6.86 cal/gram, that's 8,726 calories. I've been freezing most of them, but also eating about 28 g per day. Yum.

Edit: The local grocery (HEB) was selling plastic-bagged shelled pecans @ $8.98/341 grams.

[Shaved Monkey]

Well done,love nuts,pecans and macadamias do well here too hot for every other one
My one pecan hasnt nutted yet its still young
2 Macadamias are covered in flowers though.

[RedStateGreen]

My trifoliate orange "Flying Dragon" finally has some fruit! I posted about it in my journal here: http://journal.edible-landscape-design. ... range.html

[PrestonSturges]

i have jujubes still on the tree, and they are ripening even though the weather has cooled. I was not sure how that would work.