Unless your fruit trees are well lestablished, it's usually a good idea to thin fruits off a young fruit tree. My Rubinette apple, which is going through it's 2nd year in ground put out a fair amount of apples this year.
As much as I would love to try to keep every single apple on my young tree. The quality of fruit would not be as good and the thin branches would not be able to support the weight of the full size apples. It's already struggling as is with the small immature fruit. I'm afraid that it will eventually break my scaffolding limbs if I left them all on the tree.
This quick video shows how I choose which ones to pluck off.
Besides fruit I like the idea of having fragrant flowers like jasmine around the garden. 1 they smell good and 2 they help attract the beneficial pollinating bees.
Every Spring I see these beautiful fragrant Jasmines at the big box stores and they smell great. The problem is they are no more than annuals in Seattle since they cannot with stand the Seattle winters. I some in the ground by my trellis hoping to have them vine up and all 3 plants died. So pink Jasmines are a bit of a waste of money if you want to grow them outside here in Seattle.
However, all is not lost. Star Jasmine does great outdoors here in Seattle. I have a vine that is thriving!
I'm also trialing the Night Blooming Jasmine. I'll leave it out this winter to see how it will react to our climate. I've managed to root a cutting so all is not lost if it doesn't survive the elements.
“I
want to help people grow food for generations. In order to be able to
do that they need to be able to buy edible plants at a much lower price
than what most nurseries currently charge. My goal is to remove that
price limitation. Lower prices mean more plants and more food.”Gabriel Kahn, Owner of Harvest Nursery
I really like the principles at Harvest Nursery. Help people grow food and not let prices be the limiting factor.
The
nursery itself is in an odd place next to an apartment complex. There's
2 greenhouse, and only one available to customers. It's a relatively
small but they do have a 40 acre location that was just purchased. In
the small space are all the plants that I hold dear. Fruit trees and
berries. Don't expect to go here and buy a japanese maple.
The have a wide selection of $5 figs. A little on the small side and remind me of tissue culture starts. All the plants that have been propagated by HN have killer prices. The plants from Monrovia and other big distribution nurseries were some what comparable to other nurseries.
Overall I like this nursery. the only quirky thing is we were only allowed 3 bags for our plants, considering we purchased about 20 trees, 3 bags seems to be on the light side.
Up potting in the rain
The smaller greenhouse for customers. It has a shade cloth
We
ended up leaving with over a dozen pineapple guavas, Haichia persimmon,
mulberries, and loquats. Next time I have to check out their 40 acre
farm.
