Edible perennials?

[stevelau1911]

I should be getting thousands of air potatoes off my dioscorea batatas as I have so many plants this year. Perhaps I will have enough to eat since I really only want to re-plant around 100 of them. There's really no need to plant that many of them since their germination rate is pretty good.

People are starting to sell live ginseng now on eBay so I'll probably wait until the price drops a little bit and then ordering some myself. http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-GINSENG-ROOT ... 5d34a604b5

[stevelau1911]

One thing that I have not considered growing until now are persimmon trees. These trees get pretty tall, don't require pesticides like apples, and most of them are good for growing in zones 6-10. Hopefully that means they don't die back when it gets a few degrees below 0F. Anyways, it is good to have a few of each kind of fruit tree.

Another thing that appears to be very easy to grow, but I haven't grown in a while is carrots. I have a lot of beds with stuff like EEs, bananas which have plenty of free soil space that can be filled up with carrots. They are also known to be deer resistant like garlic. The only drawback with carrots is that they will grow very short and ugly unless you plant them in loose soil.

[canadianplant]

Perssimmion are nice trees. Ive thought about trying them here, but they seem to "on the edge" for me. You should be ok where you are steve im pretty sure there is a type that is hardy to zone 5. The american varieties are said to taste better and have better disease resistance due to less breeding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_virginiana

On the topic of trees, why not try pawpaw, and any variety of NA native nut trees? (walnut, chestnut, butternut, hickory, hazlenut etc). I do belive pawpaw is native to your area, and is the most tropical tree I can think of that is anywhere near hardy (paulont here has one that was unfazed by -30C)

re: carrots

You could try and intercrop some daikon radish. They get 3 inches thick and almost a foot long, and break up hardpan.

[johnw]

Steve - Here are two persimmons a friend planted before he moved to BC. He thought they might be tender and espaliered them on the back of his house. There was no need for that as they are tough as nails ans have produced bumper crops every year regardless of cool summers, fog etc. The leaves are spotless.

[stevelau1911]

Thanks for the picture. I changed my mind and decided to go with 5 different self fertile plum varieties as well as a pomegranate tree. I think plums taste better than persimmons. I got them from this website which seems to have pretty good deals. I just hope they are viable. I've thought about tyty nursery due to their cheaper, but I've read too many negative reviews on them so I'm staying away, and trying Willis orchards instead.
http://www.willisorchards.com/category/ ... TlXGFfM1j0

I have a few varieties of carrot seeds now that I will consider planting. The problem is that I don't know if planting the seeds too early can result in seed death due to freezes or over-competition from weeds. I decided to go with carrots because they are supposed to be one of the vegetables that deer avoid.


It is kind of frustrating when my neighbor can grow a huge patch of watermelons without any deer browsing at all(no fencing) while my wintermelons will get completely destroyed if I don't have them fenced in with deer netting so I have become selective on what I plant.

[canadianplant]

Steve - Which plums did you get? Im hoping you opted for at least one of those P americana seedlings...

As for the carrots, I have killed many carrot seed planting them too early. They like to be planted cool yes, but every time ive planted them in april, they never come up (well, early april). They seem to not like cold wet soils. I will say as long as there arent too many root crops carrots do seem to grow well with competition. I had some sprout in my main bed last year, which ive let succession run for 3 years, so just imagine the grass and self seedling plants in there. It didnt do well mind you, but it grew. I probably wont plant them until my spring bulbs are all up and my lilac buds get big (mid april or so).

IF youre worried about the weeds, just use a thin layer of wet paper on the bed (maybe 2 sheets) and throw on some clean top soil and plant in that. You may want to interplant with radish since they can indeed take colder soil temps IMO, will crop before the carrot, and shade the soil so weeds dont pick up.

[foxd]

Thanks for the picture. I changed my mind and decided to go with 5 different self fertile plum varieties as well as a pomegranate tree. I think plums taste better than persimmons. I got them from this website which seems to have pretty good deals. I just hope they are viable. I've thought about tyty nursery due to their cheaper, but I've read too many negative reviews on them so I'm staying away, and trying Willis orchards instead.
http://www.willisorchards.com/category/ ... TlXGFfM1j0

Willis Orchards does have a lot of bad reviews on the Dave's Garden website, over half the reviews were bad.

[stevelau1911]

Steve - Which plums did you get? Im hoping you opted for at least one of those P americana seedlings...

American Plum seedling
Burgundy Plum Tree
Green Gage Plum Tree
Plumcot Hybrid Plum Tree
Methley Plum Tree
Chickasaw Plum Tree
Utah Sweet Pomegranate Tree

Willis Orchards does have a lot of bad reviews on the Dave's Garden website, over half the reviews were bad.

I do understand that they basically sell seedlings without soil, but I'm currently confident enough in my soil mixes so that as long as it is viable, it will thrive for me. They claim to have 1-2 or 2-3ft tall seedlings and I have gotten a 1ft tall fruit tree up to around the 5ft mark in 1 year, filling out a 5 gallon pot. This is also just about the right time to start growing them because my existing fruit trees are just getting started. I can give an update once I get some results, and leafing out generally occurs in a few weeks.

I feel that if I were to plant trees, I might as well plant something edible

[canadianplant]

Nice list steve. I hope they arent mislabeled (always a chance when ordering online). I still recommend a set of Pawpaw, theyll grow in full shade, and even produce in semi shade...

[stevelau1911]

Here are 3 softwood pink lemonade blueberry cuttings that I took off the little plant I bought from Lowes. They are perking up after about a week, and I hope they can co-exist with the goji seedlings which appear to be pretty aggressive.


The wheat grass is ready to harvest now at 7 inches, but I want it to grow for another day just to have a little bit more to juice.


Here are my 10 health kick F1 tomato seedlings that seem to all be coming out. They will get their own pots once they are big enough.

[Iowaboo]

Update it this summer and let us know how Willis did for you. As mentioned, customers that went on gardenwatchdog and gardenweb have showed a lot of negativity towards them.

[stevelau1911]

I'm just hoping that they are viable, and they are true to their stated species.

If temperatures will be 8F below average for April as well, it may be a long time before we start getting any growth on these twigs.

[canadianplant]

Dont worry steve, just a blip..

[stevelau1911]

Here are a couple pictures of callus production which is basically when a cutting of a plant starts to become self sustainable. Sometimes cuts in the wood can help in the process.

These cuttings were taken very early in the spring when all the plants were still completely dormant, and kept underground in a controlled environment to cure for over a month with the cuttings up side down with rooting powder. Once it warms up enough, I will turn them right side up, and simply stick them in the soil. It's important to keep the soil well drained, but it has rained too much recently so many of my cuttings have rotted, but I'm getting a good number of them take.

Here's a blackberry cutting showing the callused stem at the bottom which means that it is no longer as prone to rotting, and roots can form from these calluses. The calluses are basically a mass of stem cells.


When I know they have taken, then I will give them their individual pot.


Most fruit trees can do this too. Here's an Asian pear cutting producing calluses near the center of the cutting.





One way to make cuttings more successful is to supercrop them by wounding the branches and causing that branch to heal up, sending a mass of energy into that section that you want to eventually cut off to make a division the following fall or spring. I find that most shrubs and trees of any type can be propagated through branch cuttings.

[canadianplant]

Are those "chester" blackberries steve?