It’s gonna take years before we see apples here on “The Little Half Acre that Could.” Heck, we don’t even have any peaches, pears, plums or cherries planted in the ground yet! It’s pretty discouraging when you thumb through your favorite nursery catalogs and the descriptions say “5 to 7 years to bear fruit.” Yikes! Who can wait that long? It’s okay though; we’ve got it covered here on the ol’ homestead. Sort of.
It started with the discovery of Hardy Kiwi. Remember a few posts back when I talked about using the kiwi for stacking functions in our permaculture design? The Hardy Kiwi plants we wanted would provide shade for our sunny front porch, food for us and the birds, biomass that could be chopped in the fall, and it would also attract beneficial pollinators. Well, on one of our recent trips to Tractor Supply (I could live there!) I discovered a display of fruiting bushes, including Hardy Kiwi plants. I plopped two of those bad boys in our cart faster than a card shark can palm an Ace. Yep. We got them home and I immediately transplanted them into pots and started hardening them off. Then winter hit. In the middle of March. I ask you. We’ve had several nights in the single digits or just above, with highs in the mid-thirties. Seriously? The kiwi are sitting out in the Microgreens grow room on the floor, begging for light and warmth. A few more days boys, just a few more days.
That’s okay, cuz in the meantime I ordered a couple more Hardy Kiwi from my favorite nursery. If two Hardy Kiwi’s are good, then four must be even better, right? So into the online cart they went, along with a dwarf cherry tree and two figs. Now the cherry tree will take three to five years to produce up to 25 pounds of fruit, but those kiwis and figs will start producing fruit next year. Maybe by that time the Honeyberry plants, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries that we planted last year will start to give up some decent fruit.
The long and short of all this is that I can put some of that “immediate” fruit into my CSA boxes while the apples and cherries get around to producing fruit, and while the plums, peaches and pears sit on our wishlist. The fast producing fruits will make it easier to run a good CSA. Yeah, I know, I’m back on the subject of earning some of those grubby, nasty ol bucks. But, on the plus side, I will be providing quality fruit to my CSA members as well as sharing some of it with my family, my friends and a few people who could use an occasional helping hand. Now that’s my kind of fruit.
