Send help, cannot stop thinking about potential gardening plans

[luzula]

I don't move into my new place until mid-September, but it's hard to stop thinking about what I could grow there! Right now I'm mostly reading about trees and shrubs for fruit, berries and nuts. I absolutely love picking and eating fruit and berries as they are, or for making jam and cordial. I don't eat a lot of nuts right now, but I'd still love to grow them and incorporate them in food.

What there is already:
- There is one fully grown apple tree already, and three newly planted ones, so that'll be fine. Alas I don't know what kinds yet, except for one newly planted Discovery.
- There's a fully grown cherry tree, which is great, because I love cherries. Also a newly planted morello cherry.
- There's an old, dying plum tree and a newly planted plum tree.
- There are two gooseberry bushes and two currant bushes, but I don't know what kind yet.
- There are some cultivated blackberries.
- I can tell that there's plenty of lingonberry and bilberry in the woods nearby.
- There are huge amounts of acorns from the oaks. I have friends who grind acorns and leach the tannins from them to use in cooking, and it would be interesting to try it.

What I could plant:
- It's temperate enough for walnuts and chestnuts! : D Also hazelnuts, of course.
- It seems like it's also temperate enough for a mulberry tree?
- A pear tree or two would be nice, of course.
- A quince tree? OTOH, perhaps one does not consume quince in large quantities. There's also flowering quince which is just a shrub, but which also has fruits...
- I've never eaten blue honeysuckle berries, but it seems easy to grow and they are said to be good! Has anyone tried them?
- Definitely sea buckthorn, I love those berries for making cordial.
- Apparently one can grow delicious minikiwis in Sweden; they're a vine. Awesome, I somehow thought kiwis needed a tropical climate. : D
- There are also some types of grape that one can grow in my zone.
- Has anyone eaten Ribes odoratum (buffalo currant)? They do sound interesting, and the flowers seem to be great for insects...
- I do like Aronia melanocarpa (black chokecherry) for jam and cordial, and it seems to be easy to grow.

I do absolutely have space for all this, but perhaps I shouldn't aim to do all of it at once, ha ha. ETA: Do share if you have additional ideas, or input about my ideas!

Comments

A former roommate put it well when she said

[jesse_the_k]

"who put the 'moan' in 'homeownership'?"

What a delicious array of possibilities!

We have several hundred-year-old oaks on our lot. The acorn-processing wisdom I found begins with "place acorns in free-flowing stream for six weeks" -- do you have one of those? How do your friends do it? Have you consumed food made with acorn flour?

Re: A former roommate put it well when she said

[luzula]

The advice I have seen for acorn processing is: first remove the shells and grind or chop the interior. From there, there are several options for leaching out the tannins.

1) The first is to pour cold water on the acorns and keep them in a container. Keep it in a fridge or otherwise in a cold place. Every day, you carefully pour off the water and replace it with new water, carefully not stirring up the stuff on the bottom. When the water is clear and the acorns don't taste bitter anymore, you're done. This method preserves the starch (which is the stuff that will precipitate on the bottom along with the ground acorns).

2) Put the ground acorns in a finely-meshed bag and put it in a stream with running water. If you don't have a stream nearby, or the water in the stream isn't clear, you can for example keep the bag in the water tank of your water toilet. At least in Sweden, toilets have tanks that contain clean drinking water--it's only after the water is flushed from the tank that it goes into the unsanitary toilet. When the water you flush the toilet with is not brown anymore, you're done. This method does not preserve the starch.

3)You can also put the chopped acorns in a large kettle of hot water, this method is faster, but also does not preserve the starch. The water must not go up to the boiling point, or the acorns will be bitter anyway. Keep at 85-95 degrees Celsius for about 5 hours.

[sovay]

What there is already

That's a lot of nice trees!

I am biased toward quince, but would love to hear back if you grow blue honeysuckle. Mulberries grow wild where I live, so I think of them as requiring little care and yielding sidewalk-staining loads of berries.

[luzula]

I do like quince, but my sister has a tree and usually gives me enough quinces to last me for the year.

Oooh, how cool with the wild growing mulberries!

[sovay]

I do like quince, but my sister has a tree and usually gives me enough quinces to last me for the year.

Fair! My parents have one behind their house. We didn't know what it was for years. It's sort of feral. I'm very fond of it.

Oooh, how cool with the wild growing mulberries!

I ate them last spring off trees I walked by and I'll do it again!

[nineveh_uk]

That is a lot if fruit (and space for if!) - sounds great. Discovery are my favourite apples, I planted one in the autumn. Mulberries are great, and hard to come by for eating. Flowering quince fruits are nice (I did them on waffles once), and quincd makes delicious jelly.

If I had space, in addition to your list I personally would get a prunus mume, the Japanese plum/apricot (it gets called both in English, it seems!) for something different.

[luzula]

My favorite kind of apple is Gravenstein! Yes, I do like quince as well, but my sister has a tree which usually gives plenty for the whole family. Nice to know that you have a good experience of flowering quince!

Ohh, that's interesting, I've been looking around various websites but have not seen Prunus mume mentioned yet.

[philomytha]

That's a fantastic list of fruit crops! My neighbour has blue honeysuckle; I'm not that fond of it, the berries are sweet but a bit watery. Her chickens go crazy for it, though. Walnuts are a pretty long-term project but the few times I've eaten them fresh it's been worth it, much nicer than sweet chestnuts and less work to get something palatable. And if greengages will grow for you, they're amazing fresh from the tree.

[luzula]

Thanks for the input about blue honeysuckle! Also about greengages, I'm not sure I've tried those. Yes, I am of course aware that walnuts are a long term project, but hopefully I will stay put at this place…

[mific]

What bounty! Walnuts are great, and very good for you. You'd have the space to grow one as they need to be away from other things, being allelopathic. A grafted one would produce nuts a lot faster.

[luzula]

Thanks! Yes, I've heard that walnuts are allelopathic, so it's probably good to have some space for them.

[james]

Ooooh, nut trees! Can you grow pawpaws where you are? I dearly want to grow a pawpaw tree but we are always renting apartments, so can't plant anything in the common areas.

[luzula]

Nope, paw-paws are a little out of my climate zone, alas! I hope you get to grow one someday.

[lyr]

What exciting plans!

And blueberries are always nice too.

[luzula]

Yes, I have thought I might plant some American blueberries along with the European bilberries I've already got in the forest. They are pretty different berries, even if they are of the same basic type!

[chestnut_pod]

Your fruit tree plans fill me with vicarious glee! I encourage you so much in all your fruit tree plans.

[luzula]

Thank you! : D

[rachelmanija]

Plant ALL the nuts! However, I think it takes a while before nut trees start to produce. So plant berries too as you'll get them soon.

[luzula]

Very true! Also, I think my Yuletide treat for you was very revealing. : D

[rachelmanija]

Haha yes. Plant translucent apples!

[nnozomi]

Oh gosh, this is a mouthwatering post. My immediate reaction is "plant ALL THE THINGS" (blue honeysuckle berries sound like something out of a fantasy novel...) but maybe you could narrow them down by a) how much effort required to care for, b) time of harvesting (unless they all get ripe at the same time anyway), and c) how many recipes (or straight-off-the-tree flavors) appeal to you? Keep us posted!

[luzula]

I think at the stage I am now it's perfectly fine to be brainstorming and want to plant all the things! : D In addition to your thoughts, in practice I will also be limited by how/where I can get the rarer kinds of plants--for example, it's not that easy to find places that stock different varieties of walnut trees adapted to Swedish climates.

[seascribble]

There's more plants on here than I've even heard of, but I'm excited about the MINI KIWI.

[luzula]

So am I! : D Check it out.

[seascribble]

So cool!! I would love to grow some.

[princessofgeeks]

So much fun!

[luzula]

Yes! : D

[regshoe]

Aww, this all sounds amazing :D I love picking berries, but have never had great variety—my favourites are bilberries and wild strawberries (how common are those where you are?). Mini kiwis sound like great fun!

[luzula]

Wild strawberries grow commonly all over Sweden, but they don't always carry much berries. A good place is usually along the side of a gravel/dirt road in the countryside, which gets some sun. There are also cultivated varieties of wild strawberry (this sounds like a contradiction in terms, but what I mean is, they are smaller than "ordinary" strawberries).

But surely you must have a lot of brambles/blackberries in England? And how about wild raspberries?

I also think mini kiwis sound like a lot of fun! : D

[regshoe]

Yes, brambles are very common, and blackberries are by far the easiest wild berry to find in large quantities.

Ooh, those look quite different to typical kiwis (and they don't seem to be furry, which I thought might be a bit impractical with much smaller fruits).

[pallas_rose]

Seconding blueberries if you can! They're lovely bushes to look at, too, and no brambles or thorns.

We have a bid on a house right now that has a mature sour cherry tree and a grape trellis, with a few raised beds. The front of it isn't very landscaped but could probably take some herb bushes (I imagine some huge rosemary bushes) or blueberry bushes. I'm jealous of the size of your space!!!! I want apple trees too!!!!

[luzula]

Yes, I have thought I might plant some American blueberries along with the European bilberries I've already got in the forest. They are pretty different berries, even if they are of the same basic type.

Oh, I hope you get the house, or if not that one, then another one with more space for fruit trees! The cherries and grapes sound great, though. There are so many different things to weigh together when bidding on a house…

[feroxargentea]

I'm late to this, but -- get those pear trees in if you want them, because they'll take a while to fruit. But otherwise
don't try to do everything at once, partly for your own sanity and spine, and also because it's worth waiting to see what your new garden does by itself. Watch it for a year, and you might discover that a dull shrub is a cultivar with surprisingly beautiful blossom, flowering bulbs may spring up from where they've been hidden away, wildflowers and garden escapees may seed themselves all over the place. If I'd cleared the gravel in my driveway as the surveyor recommended, I would never have known it's (by accident) the most beautiful part of the garden, with its self-seeded hollyhocks, alchemilla, aquilegia and violets. Messy, yes, but lovely :)

[luzula]

But otherwise don't try to do everything at once, partly for your own sanity and spine, and also because it's worth waiting to see what your new garden does by itself.
Thanks! This is good advice for my sanity and spine, obviously, and I was thinking about not going too fast for that reason. : ) I will go out there in May, and probably some other points in the spring and summer, to get a look at it when it's not winter, so hopefully I'll have a head start on what it looks like throughout the year.

[mergatrude]

I'm delighted by your enthusiasm, and look forward to many photos! *cheers you on*

[luzula]

Thanks! I will definitely take photos. : )