The Yardavore: Trees for Bees
by Maria Reidelbach
Last month in my column
about bees, Chris Harp, local apiarist, explained that the blossoms of fruit
trees are one of the richest sources of food for bees. Just after I wrote the
piece, there was more bad news about the colony collapse disease that threatens
the entire honeybee species. What a great time to think about adding more
blossoming fruit trees to a garden both for our six-legged allies and for our
own delight!
 |
| Mulberries. |
If foraging wild food is like a pick-up, and growing
annual vegetables is like a summer fling, planting a fruit or nut tree is like
getting married. Both marriage and tree take time to get established, but if
healthy, both endure for a very, very long time. “You plant a pear for your
heir,” is the old saying that John Wightman repeated to me. John is the
extremely knowledgeable farmer of Wightman Fruit Farm and an NRCCA Certified
Northeastern Crop Advisor. He sobered me
about the impact of, and the amount of care needed by, the unimposing twig with
roots that you place in your garden. If all goes well that twig will become a
towering presence, so you want to take your time and choose very, very
carefully. If you choose well, John adds, well-placed and -tended fruit and nut
trees can add a lot of value to a garden both visually and productively. He
points out succinctly, “Trees are fantastic at turning solar energy into stuff
that tastes good.”
Siting a tree in an optimal
location is crucial. The main conditions that affect a tree's success are: the
amount of space for mature size, amount of sunlight, the condition and
composition of the soil, water drainage, exposure, wind direction and soil
contamination. Many species need to be planted in pairs in order to fruit
abundantly (kinda romantic, I think), so you've either got to have room for
two, or get your neighbor to plant one. The permaculture method takes the art
of siting to a new level. Ethan Roland is the principal of Appleseed
Permaculture in Accord and for the last seven years has been planning balanced
ecosystems that contain a wide variety of food-bearing plants, from annual
vegetables to berries to fungus to trees. Ideally, all live in a symbiotic
community that makes the best of a site's conditions and that maximizes
self-maintenance and sustainability.
The variety of tree you
choose will have a huge impact on your success. Counterintuitively, the most
obvious choices are not the best! Our Hudson Valley climate spans the USDA
hardiness zones from 5 to 7. This rules out citrus fruits and tropical fruits,
obviously, but also makes some borderline species much more challenging.
Peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums will grow here, but you court failure
at many turns. Successful growers take these limitations seriously and instead
choose species and varieties that thrive here.
Elizabeth Ryan is a local ag
powerhouse, one of the founders of the New York City greenmarket and farmer of
four orchards in Dutchess and Ulster counties. For home growers she recommends
pears; the trees don't freeze and although they grow slowly, they will live 100
years (plant a pear for your heir!). Elizabeth also suggests the sweet cherry
varieties Schmidts Biggarreau and Hedelfingen, and sour cherries, which I think
are the most insanely delicious fruit ever.
Lee Reich is a New Paltzian
who has written a bunch of books about all aspects of edible landscaping. He's
got a master’s degree in soil science, and a doctorate in horticulture. Lee
grows a stunning variety of fruits and vegetables on his “farmden” (farm and
garden). He recommends native varieties because they evolved especially for our
environment. These include the pawpaw (get a named variety), the persimmon
(Szukis is good), pear (dwarf trees do well), sour cherry trees (Cornelian),
and chestnuts (peach chestnut). Wightman recommends dwarf varieties for small
gardens.
Cultivated fruit and nut
trees need more care than ornamental or native trees because it's heavy-lifting
to grow fruit every year (literally): they need species-specific feeding and
pruning, they are vulnerable to pests and diseases (who also like to eat fresh
fruit), and some more particular than others. Apples, as it turns out, are
incredibly difficult to grow, and require specialized pruning and multiple
pesticide sprayings, whether organic or not. It's not rocket science, but if
you don't do it right you probably won't get fruit and your tree could die. Who
knew?
Many smart growers choose native fruit trees with
unfamiliar fruit. Natives are both hearty and disease and pest resistant. Philip
Perlman is a retired video and filmmaker and a founder of The Kitchen, a
performing arts org in New York City. These days he farmdens in Accord, and has
become so smitten with the pawpaw tree that he has planted over 60 of them—a
real pawpaw plantation! Pawpaws are a
delicious, tropical-tasting fruit that is distantly related to the banana.
Philip sells his extras to the High Falls Food Co-op, where you can get them
for a few weeks in September. Lee Reich points out that pawpaw trees are very
beautiful in all seasons. They also begin bearing in just three or four years.
Another native tree that is recommended by the experts I asked is the
persimmon. Philip likes the hearty American persimmon varieties, which bear a
juicy, sweet-tart fruit in the fall. Ethan recommends mulberry trees, with a
delicious fruit that looks like a blackberry.
Chestnuts take a long time—7
to 10 years to fruit—but they, too, are a favorite with our mavens. A generous
neighbor gave me some fresh chestnuts once and they were shockingly good. Most
native chestnuts were wiped out in the 20th century by blight, but now there
are new blight-resistant varieties. Lee recommends hybrids and Philip likes the
flavor of Chinese chestnuts best. Hazelnuts are also a hearty native nut and
they grow in curious little cabbage-like shrouds.
There's something I haven't
mentioned that is a problem with almost all fruit trees. Squirrels are the
elephant in the room (or, er, garden). Philip recommends planting your trees
far enough apart so that the little buggers can't jump from tree to tree. Birds,
also, can be voracious. Chris Hewitt (CW publisher) once told me that smart old
farmers would plant mulberries next to their cherry trees because the birds
liked mulberries better.
I hope that I've whetted
your appetite for tree fruit and nuts. But do your homework! Catalogs may
entice, but as John Wightman points out, “You don't build a house by going to
the lumberyard first,” and “don't plant more than you can care for.” It's a bit
of work, but the payoff? John confides that “my apples taste better to me than
any other apples do,” and your fruit probably will, too. He thinks it's the
taste of pride.
Maria Reidelbach is the
proprietress of Homegrown Mini-Golf on Kelder's Farm: wacky putting greens set
in a tasting garden of edible plants.
Tree fruit related events in
May:
Lee Reich plant sale (keep
an eye on his blog for details)
Kickstarter project to
rebuild the historic cider house at Breezy Hill Orchard: kickstarter.com,
search Breezy Hill
Good resources:
Appleseed Permaculture:
appleseedpermaculture.com
Lee Reich's website and
blog: leereich.com
Fruit Production for the
Home Gardener, Penn State:
http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fphg
The Pruning Book, by Lee Reich
Uncommon Fruits for Every
Garden, by Lee Reich
Landscaping with Fruit, by Lee Reich
The Complete Book of
Edible Landscaping, by Rosalind
Creasy
New York Nut Growers
Association: nynga.org
Northern Nut Growers
Association: nutgrowing.org
Local commercial orchards
mentioned above:
Breezy Hill Orchard,
Staatsburg
Stone Ridge Orchard, Stone
Ridge
Wightman Fruit Farm,
Kerhonkson
Posted by Chris Hewitt
on 10:21 AM.
Filed under
.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0
Hi,great blog post. Information is very useful and saves me huge amount of time which I spend on something else instead of searching posts like this Thank you!
Tree Service Birmingham AL
Superb Post,I have spent a lot of time to gain effective info,I liked it very much,Thanks for sharing this post.
Tree Cutting Service Birmingham AL