Frost and Fruit

In my latest book Lily, one of the characters, is described as an artist who paints with plants. I'm not a Lily - although I would dearly love to be. I admire, and try to learn from those, who are talented gardeners. The ones who have the proverbial green thumb. The ones who seem to know instinctively how to get things to grow. The ones who don't have houseplants die on them for no reason.

The ones who are so unlike me. Or, rather, us. DH and I would love to be proficient at gardening, but we're not there yet, although if dreaming and a coffee table laden with gardening books could get us there, we would be experts by now. 

Yesterday morning started as many other mornings this past week: cold and frosty. The one good thing about a frost - and the only good thing in my opinion since the frost never kills off any weeds that I can tell - is that a good frost in the morning usually means a gorgeous day to come.

Yesterday didn't disappoint. It was so sunny later in the day that it was hard to believe it was still the middle of winter. Perfect weather to get in and prune back the lavender that was beginning to overtake the garden, but, more importantly, perfect weather to plant the fruit trees that had arrived earlier in the week (not bare-rooted because they would have had to be planted immediately).

We had been waiting for these trees for well over a month. Carefully chosen for our area and our taste, we were excited when the courier finally deposited them at our front door. Planting them was, however, mildly traumatic. 

But, first, I need to go back in time. Back to when the feijoa trees behind our garage started becoming too large and woody and DH decided to remove them. Pre-pandemic he had successfully grown trees from cuttings taken from these trees (for no other reason at the time than that he wanted to see if he could do it) and they had just started giving us a decent-sized crop in another part of the garden.

With the feijoa trees out, we looked at the woodshed and mused, What a shame it's not in the corner. We could've used all this additional space to plant more fruit trees. That thought soon set off a chain of events, with DH literally picking up and moving the woodshed to the back corner of our yard. Now, several months later, it is installed in its new home, and where it once stood, has now become a new orchard and vegetable garden. 

Under Construction

Shady at the time photo taken but observation suggests enough daylight hours for successful growing of fruit and vegetables.  

To make the most use of the available space we decided that we would espalier the fruit trees. We had done this previously with some mature apple trees (including a Granny Smith which apparently is not suitable for espalier - although since ours produces a decent crop each year we've decided to ignore that piece of advice) and love the effect and the fact that you can fit more trees into a suburban backyard. (In fact, if we were starting over with a bare canvas as far as our garden goes we would espalier all our fruit trees because it is just so pretty and practical. But we're not starting over.)

However, and this is where it was traumatic, our trusty gardening book suggested cutting our newly acquired trees back to hip height. I'm not sure how long we debated removing all those beautiful branches from off the new trees, and trying to determine how they will grow and be able to be espaliered when just a single trunk, but in the end we decided to trust our sources and just do it. I think DH would have found it easier to shave all my hair off than he did to so harshly prune each of the trees.

But we did it. And now we wait until Spring to see if the experts were right.

Yep, that's a fruit tree and not a stake in the back of the garden.

Proof that some things will grow in the new garden even in the middle of winter.

Meanwhile we continue to pore over gardening books to determine what seeds will soon need to be sown, how to grow your own potatoes, and whatever else we would like to harvest from our own garden. It seems that DH and I have reached a time in our lives when producing a lot of our own fruit and vegetables is not only extremely desirable, but also practical. Of course, with this comes the need to hone and refine our skills. To accept that there will be a glut of some foods that no one will take off our hands (broad beans, anyone?) and that there will be the inevitable failures (I'm looking at you Brussel sprouts).

So here we are, in the middle of winter, eagerly anticipating spring so that we can sow some more seeds and start picking some of the vegetables that are already growing, and hoping that some kind of magic will turn our single branch fruit trees into something glorious.

The lavender was pretty but it was taking over the garden.

And if the fruit trees fail to grow? I guess we will have a good cry, pick ourselves up, purchase new trees, and never trust a gardening book again.