I don’t know if I can have a fruit tree. I need to first look at the yard and work out the exact placement of my vegetable garden, bonsai beds and greenhouse and then I can figure out if a fruit tree can even fit into the mix. Fruit trees raise other questions as well, because they’re a bit of a pain in a lot of ways.
They need to be sprayed and even though I am an organic gardener and there are a lot of things I refuse to touch, that spring hit of dormant oil is not one of my favourite jobs. A lot of fruit will not set and will instead drop to the ground and I really hate stepping on it and I’m not too nuts about constantly picking it up either. It’s not as if there is nothing else I need to do- I already have my work cut out for me.

I need to keep a fruit tree away from my eating area because it will attract those pain in the neck yellow jackets. Fruit trees also attract birds and squirrels (at least) who are intent and usually very successful at stealing the fruit that survives the early summer drop. And finally, when all goes well a fruit tree can be like having too many zucchini plants (that would be two zucchini vines) because it pretty much all comes ripe at around the same time.

But if I do have a fruit tree it will be a peach. They’re good looking and the size is easy to control and I can think of lots of things to do with peaches . One of my favorites involves a hefty amount of brandy. I can freeze them for smoothies all winter and I know of a great peach marmalade I can add to the Christmas baskets (OMG that makes me sound like such a perfect little Martha Stewart, but the real truth is I’m just cheap!)

But that leads me to start thinking about all the other food producing plants I plan to grow. At the moment the plans are pretty fuzzy, but nothing will make the cut into the final planning until I am satisfied that I’m growing something I like to eat and I know what to do with. That might sound like a silly thing to say, but bouncing back to the subject of the much maligned zucchini, how many people do you know who grew it and then had no idea what to do with it – besides try to pawn it off on their friends?

People get sucked in by seed catalogues and garden centers and end up growing vegetables that they either don’t like or don’t know what to do with. And a lot of home gardeners grow plants that just don’t fit their space. Take corn for example. I know a few people who’ve tried to grow corn and met with dismal failure because they couldn’t grow a big enough patch of it to get any real pollination going and for all the space and the plants, the actual yield of corn was pitiful. I nearly get seduced every year by Brussel sprouts. Have you ever seen them growing? They are so cool looking the way the sprouts grow up and around the stem and the leaves pop out the top, they remind me of a palm tree and I love the way they look, but I don’t like to eat them.

So really the point is that if you want to grow something to eat, you’re definitely thinking in the right direction, but like everything else you also need to think it through. For the last few years I’ve had very, very little space to devote to vegetables and the ones I’ve grown have been raised in hydroponic containers where space was at a super premium. Planting them into the ground offers me the luxury of more space than I’ve imagined in a long while and I plan to use it well.

Have I abandoned hydroponic vegetables in containers? Heck no! I’ve just moved them to my greenhouse for the winter.

I’m calendar challenged.  Always have been,  always will be (I fear) and when my challenge starts getting the better of me I get in trouble with very simple concepts.

Like if your starting seeds with an average germination of 7 days, it’s a pretty darned safe bet that in 10 days you’ll need a good way to get them into the light.  And if you’re planting jumbo sucker seeds like squash, you’re probably going to need to move them into their first pot inside of another 7 days.

So first I’ve run around like a madwoman to dig out and set up my little portable greenhouse-type-shelter-thing so my seeds could get some light only to discover that those little 3 inch pots were not to be found anywhere in my garage.  I can’t believe it, for the last 10 years I could have sworn they were practically breeding in the garage I couldn’t even find one.  So now I have a bunch of baby plants starting their life in the bottom half of small plastic coke bottles ( I was appalled at how many I found in my son’s room – gotta talk with that boy!)

On the plus side I found a viable organic fertilizer for my hydroponic vegetables and a good planter I can convert for my cut-and-come-again salad greens.   And if anyone asks about my coke bottle pots I’m going to take the high road and claim it’s a green initiative- actually they make pretty good pots – that stuff is good for something after all. And by the way, these lovely little hot peppers have been planted in coir.

But calendar challenged also explains the 75 tree seedlings that arrived before the garden to hold them exists.  I can’t cut gardens out of the sod any more- well not unless I’m planning to spend the better part of my summer in traction.  So I booked the young strong backs of a few members of the next in line in some gene pools I’ve been hanging around for a couple of weeks- but that won’t happen til next week and the trees got here last week.

The neighbours think I’m wacko since I put 75 tree seedlings into my two front door planters -I had to do something.  Just please don’t let them still be there in a month.

Today, I took the first step in setting up my project for the summer and I’m very excited about it. You see, I’ve loved gardening all my life and lately I’ve been really interested in things like small space, urban and container gardens, vegetable gardens, the whole idea of eating as much locally grown food as possible and what are the best ways to make that happen. I put myself in the shoes of someone working outside the home, maybe travelling a lot and maybe living in a condo or simply having only a tiny amount of ground or just a deck to work with.

So, here are the questions my summer project is going to solve:

1. Can I make it easy enough for busy, inexperienced gardeners to successfully grow vegetables in containers on decks, patios and postage stamp yards?

2. What vegetables will give them the best bang for the buck – so to speak?

3. Can they maximize the yield and minimize the work at the same time?

4. How does hydroponics play a role?

5. How can I make it affordable?

I am intrigued at the role that outdoor hydroponic systems can play to solve this problem and when I first started looking into it couldn’t understand why they aren’t used more widely. Now I understand all too well – the currently available systems are too expensive for broad adoption – unless of course your aiming for a far more lucrative cash crop than tomatoes and as far as hydroponics goes right now it’s WAY TOO COMPLICATED.

I want to fix that and that, is the project. I have some tomato seedlings on the way (I hadn’t really thought of my grand plan when I first ordered them) and today I started acorn squash, two types of hot peppers and pickling cucumbers. I have half the seeds started in jiffy pots and the other half in rockwool. I’m going to grow them side by side and compare the results.