Fruit Trees for Every Garden


Book Description

Written by the long-time manager of the renowned Alan Chadwick Garden at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this substantial, authoritative, and beautiful full-color guide covers everything you need to know about organically growing healthy, bountiful fruit trees. WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY BOOK AWARD For more than forty years, Orin Martin has taught thousands of apprentices, students, and home gardeners the art and craft of growing fruit trees organically. In Fruit Trees for Every Garden, Orin shares--with hard-won wisdom and plenty of humor--his recommended fruit varieties and techniques for productive trees, including apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, nectarine, sweet cherry, orange, lemon, fig, and more. If you crave crisp apples, juicy peaches, or varieties of fruit that can never be found in the store, they are all within reach in your own backyard. Whether you have one tree or a hundred, Orin gives you all the tools you need, from tree selection and planting practices to seasonal feeding guidelines and in-depth pruning tutorials. Along the way, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the core principles of organic gardening and soil stewardship: compost, cultivation, cover crops, and increasing biodiversity for a healthier garden. This book is more than just a gardening manual; it's designed to help you understand the why behind the how, allowing you to apply these techniques to your own slice of paradise and make the best choices for your individual trees. Filled with informative illustrations, full-color photography, and evocative intaglio etchings by artist Stephanie Martin, Fruit Trees for Every Garden is a striking and practical guide that will enable you to enjoy the great pleasure and beauty of raising homegrown, organic fruit for years to come.




An Orchard Odyssey


Book Description

Inspiring and practical, this is a lovely resource for anyone looking to grow fruit trees or start an orchard, whether in your garden or as a community project. For centuries, orchards have been a compelling and important part of our landscape. The sight of a fruit tree, blushing in blossom in the spring, and then laden with fresh fruit in the summer and autumn, can be truly enchanting, inspiring folklore and art. Not only do orchards provide bountiful fruit for families and communities, they are also attractive to pollinators such as bees, and make a wonderful habitat for birds. There are many ways of incorporating orchard living into your lifestyle, no matter how busy or short of space you are. Written by esteemed horticulturalist Naomi Slade, this gloriously illustrated resource illuminates the possibilities and enables you to make it a reality – whether you have a few fruit trees already or have always wanted an orchard of your own. An Orchard Odyssey shows you how to plant and care for your trees and suggests fruit trees suitable for different spaces. It also covers the benefits of orchard for conservation and biodiversity, orchard heritage, and the role of fruit trees in garden and landscape design. The guide promotes the 'five trees' principle of orchards, and encourages the reader to embrace the orchards in a way that is personal to them. Packed with practical ideas and inspiration, let this delightful book encourage you to re-engage with tree fruit in new ways: look at it the right way and everyone can have an orchard.




The Orchard Book


Book Description

Wonderlands of bounty and beauty, orchards offer an abundance of fruit in a wildlife haven full of diversity. A well-managed orchard works with nature to provide maximum harvest for minimal effort. Wade Muggleton has distilled 20 years of orchard know-how into this practical handbook to help you plan, plant and manage your orchard, whatever your garden size or budget. With his expert guidance you can have an orchard on any plot--garden, yard, allotment or smallholding--and both maximise your harvest and minimise your outlay. The book covers: Rootstocks and fruit varieties Planting plans Maintenance strategies Pruning Propagation Eco-friendly pest and disease management Harvesting Storing Preserving the harvest The diversity, history and heritage of apples and other fruit trees is fascinating, and Wade's passion for them is infectious. Let him draw you into a world of apples and pears, walnuts and cobnuts, cherries and plums; of ancient varieties such as quince, medlar and mulberry; and even of juicy apricots, figs and peaches. Imagine having organic fruit all year round from your own little nature haven and use Wade's tried and tested experience to create your perfect orchard.




Trees, Fruits and Flowers of the Bible


Book Description

An engaging and informative study of all the most important trees, fruits, and flowers mentioned in the Bible, identifying the specific species and explaining the message or symbolism behind the texts. The Prologue sets the scene by giving a simple description of the topography and climate of Israel, so that readers--wherever they are--may get a sense of what the place is like. The following sections of the book cover the flora in detail. A wide range of fruits, herbs, nuts, flowers, and trees is covered, from those of major symbolical significance such as the apple and the olive tree, as well as those less prominent like the saffron crocus, but which none the less give a fascinating picture of everyday life in the Holy Land.




These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit


Book Description

A thoughtful new collection of poems, one that deconstructs the deceptively simple question of what it means to be good—a good person, a good citizen, a good teacher, a good poet, a good father. With These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, Hayan Charara presents readers with a medley of ambitious analyses, written in characteristically wry verse. He takes philosophers to task, jousts with academics, and scrutinizes hollow gestures of empathy, exposing the dangers of thinking ourselves “separate / from [our] thoughts and experiences.” After all, “No work of love / will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart.” But how do we act on fullness of heart? How, knowing as we do that “genocide is inscribed in our earliest and holiest texts”? Thoughtful but never preachy, Charara sits beside us, granting us access to life’s countless unglamorous dilemmas: crushing a spider when we promised we wouldn’t, nearing madness from a newborn’s weeping, resenting our lovers for what happened in a dream. “Good poems demand to be written from inside the poet,” we are reminded. And that is where we find ourselves here: inside a lively and ethical mind, entertained by Charara’s good company even as goodness challenges us to do more.




Grow a Little Fruit Tree


Book Description

Grow your own apples, figs, plums, cherries, pears, apricots, and peaches in even the smallest backyard! Ann Ralph shows you how to cultivate small yet abundant fruit trees using a variety of specialized pruning techniques. With dozens of simple and effective strategies for keeping an ordinary fruit tree from growing too large, you’ll keep your gardening duties manageable while at the same time reaping a bountiful harvest. These little fruit trees are easy to maintain and make a lovely addition to any home landscape.




Concepts for Understanding Fruit Trees


Book Description

Anyone who observes fruit trees may wonder how or why they behave in specific ways. Some trees grow upright while others have a spreading habit. Some produce many flowers and small immature fruit only to drop most of the fruit later on; others grow more strongly on their sunny side than their shady side. It is common to ascribe such behavior to the tree as a whole and state that trees preferentially "allocate" resources to specific organs. However, this is the wrong approach to understanding tree functioning and behavior. Trees are not in control of what they do. What trees do and how they function is shaped by the individual organs that make up the tree, not by the tree as a whole. The genetic code only indirectly determines the habit, structure and behavior of a tree by defining the behavioral and functional limits of the component organs, tissues and cells. Unlike animals that have a mechanism for collective control of the whole organism - a central nervous system - trees (and plants in general) are more appropriately considered as collections of semi-autonomous organs. These organs are dependent on one another for resources, such as water, energy and nutrients, but control their own destiny. This book presents a clear set of integrative concepts for understanding the overall physiology and growth of temperate deciduous fruit trees. The emphasis is on overarching principles rather than detailed descriptions of tree physiology or differences among the numerous species of fruit trees. Although the focus is on deciduous fruit trees, many aspects apply to evergreen fruit trees and trees that grow naturally in unmanaged situations.




Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts


Book Description

*2023 GardenComm Media Awards Silver Laurel Medal of Achievement The easy-to-use resource for growing healthy, resilient, low-maintenance trees, shrubs, vines, and other fruiting plants from around the world—perfect for farmers, gardeners, and landscapers at every scale. Illustrated with more than 200 color photographs and covering 50 productive edible crops—from Arctic kiwi to jujube, medlar to heartnut—this is the go-to guide for growers interested in creating diversity in their growing spaces. "[Levy and Serrano] go way beyond the standard fare. . . . With their help, you’ll be growing persimmons, currants and hazelnuts in no time."—Modern Farmer Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts is a one-stop compendium of the most productive, edible fruit-and nut-bearing crops that push the boundaries of what can survive winters in cold-temperate growing regions. While most nurseries and guidebooks feature plants that are riddled with pest problems (such as apples and peaches), veteran growers and founders of the Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano, focus on both common and unfamiliar fruits that have few, if any, pest or disease problems and an overall higher level of resilience. Inside Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts you’ll find: Taste profiles for all fifty hardy fruits and nuts, with notes on harvesting and uses Plant descriptions and natural histories Recommended cultivars, both new and classic Propagation methods for increasing plants Nut profiles including almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, and pecans Fertilization needs and soil/site requirements And much more! With beautiful and instructive color photographs throughout, the book is also full of concise, clearly written botanical and cultural information based on the authors’ years of growing experience. The fifty fruits and nuts featured provide a nice balance of the familiar and the exotic: from almonds and pecans to more unexpected fruits like maypop and Himalayan chocolate berry. Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts gives adventurous gardeners all they need to get growing. Both experienced and novice gardeners who are interested in creating a sustainable landscape with a greater diversity of plant life—while also providing healthy foods—will find this book an invaluable resource.




Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden


Book Description

Lee Reich provides a valuable guide to uncommon fruits and berries, which add an adventurous flavor to any garden. Though names like jujube, juneberry, maypop, and shipova may seem exotic at first glance, these fruits offer ample rewards to the gardener willing to go only slightly off the beaten path at local nurseries. Reliable even in the toughest garden situations, cold-hardy, and pest- and disease-resistant, they are as enticing to the beginner as to the advanced gardener. This expanded sequel to the author's celebrated Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention offers new fruits, new varieties, and new photos and illustrations to entice the reader into an exciting world of garden pleasure.




The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello


Book Description

"Not since Jefferson himself has anyone combined such love and knowledge of all that blooms and grows and bears fruit at Monticello as does Peter Hatch.... History, pomology, the mind of Thomas Jefferson, the best of many worlds in scholarship and nature, are all to be found here, as well as a number of surprises.... The book is at once thorough, authoritative, and a pleasure to read. For it’s not only that the author knows his subject as does no one else, but that he has the natural ability as a writer to include us in its pleasures."—David McCullough Anyone who didn’t already know that fruit-growing looks more romantic from the outside than the inside will come away from the book recognizing that a working ‘fruitery’ is a hard-won achievement. "As seen here, Monticello fascinatingly crystallized an age full of promise, puzzlement, and contradictions. It was a place quintessentially Jeffersonian: the creation of a man who loved experimenting with unions of the useful and the beautiful."— Los Angeles Times "This is an intriguing book. It took Hatch 10 years to write a book that will appeal to pomologists, backyard fruit growers, historians, and politicians. That is a wide sweep and Hatch does it magnificently."— Richmond Times-Dispatch "Illustrated both with old drawings and photographs as well as recent color photographs of the varieties, this book has an astonishing amount of historical detail.... Those interested in early American fruit culture and the dawn of horticulture (which were nearly synonymous) will find no better account than this."— Horticulture "Beautifully illustrated, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Jefferson, or the history of American horticulture." — Traditional Gardening Lavishly illustrated, Peter Hatch’s The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello is not only a detailed history of Jefferson’s gardens and their re-creation but a virtual encyclopedia of early American pomology. Peter J. Hatch is Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello and the author of The Gardens of Monticello and Thomas Jefferson’s Flower Garden at Monticello (Virginia).