Home » Gardening Information » Kitchen Gardening
Sweet Rewards
by Lee Reich
The crispness of the autumn apple, the buttery smoothness of the persimmon, the mellow flavor of a ripe blueberry or pear and the piquant flavor of a currant or strawberry.... Just think of the range in textures and flavors of fruits, Mother Nature's original desserts.
Full flavor in any fruit is achieved only when that fruit is grown well, then harvested at the right moment—and the way to experience that rich flavor is to grow the fruit yourself. Although commercial fruits must be picked while they're still underripe to be firm enough to survive the rigors of shipping and storage, plums you grow yourself can hang on the tree until they're bursting with ambrosial juice. And no need to pluck that blackberry until its final moments of ripening, when a mere touch stains your fingers. Fortunately, such blackberries need travel no farther than arm's length—to your mouth.
Planting your own fruit trees and bushes is an expression of freedom, the freedom to choose, for example, which from among the 5,000 or so varieties of apples suits your fancy. There's a slew of fruit varieties, even kinds of fruits, that you rarely, if ever, find in markets. What Liberty Hyde Bailey, the doyen of American horticulture, wrote almost 100 years ago about apples could apply equally well to all fruits: "Why do we need so many different kinds of apples? Because there are so many different kinds of folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he wants 20 or 40 kinds of apples for his personal use, running from 'Early Harvest' to 'Roxbury Russet', he should be afforded the privilege....There is merit in variety itself. It provides more points of contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony."
Fruit growing in America underwent a dramatic change just after the middle of the 19th century. More Americans began planting the best European varieties of apples, peaches and pears, rather than relying on seedling trees whose fruits were fit only to feed hogs or to ferment into beverages. At the same time, interest developed in American varieties of these traditional European fruits-apple varieties such as 'Esopus Spitzenberg', 'Newtown Pippin' and 'Winesap', for example—as well as in native American fruits such as persimmons, pawpaws and juneberries.
I believe that we are now entering a new era in fruit growing, an era fueled by the desire for old-fashioned flavor and the joy of cultivating plants. Many people also grow their own fruits to limit the amount of pesticides in their foods, which is possible with backyard fruits because those that you grow yourself need not meet the stringent cosmetic standards demanded in commercial markets.
This handbook is for you, the backyard fruit grower, who might not plant an orchard, but might have just one row of dwarf fruit trees, perhaps a currant hedge enclosing the vegetable garden, a grape vine clambering up an arbor to shade a terrace or a stately cherry tree in the lawn.
Within these pages, you will find enough information to get you started in growing fruits of temperate zones or to expand your horizons—in knowledge or plants. Individual chapters are not meant to be encyclopedic, but rather to reflect the enthusiasm and biases of the authors, all of whom have extensive experience with the fruits about which they write.
Fruit growing can be a challenge, but if you plan ahead and then closely observe your plants as they grow, the challenge can be rewarding, both to your mind and your tongue. After a quarter century of studying and growing fruits, I am still making "adjustments" to my fruit garden, digging up plants whose fruits did not meet my expectations or that I overplanted, and setting promising new plants in their places. When my garden has yielded an overabundance of fruits, I am reminded of the words of Andrew Marvell, written over 300 years ago:
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and exquisite peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Overabundance has been the result of poor planning on my part; but what a sweet learning experience.
Lee Reich is devoted to fruits both as a vocation and avocation. He earned his doctorate in Horticulture at the University of Maryland, and since retiring from fruit research at Cornell University has been a horticultural consultant and writer. In addition to magazine and newspaper articles, his books include Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention (1991), A Northeast Gardener's Year (1992) and The Joy of Pruning (1996). He also has an extensive planting of backyard fruits—both common and uncommon varieties.