Photo Credit: Steve Hillebrand/ US Fish and Wildlife Service

Moving up from strawberries and bramble berries, fruiting shrubs are a bit more of a commitment and require some planning, since they take 3-5 years before the labor invested in them pays off with fruit. Fruiting shrubs can last up to 20 years and after the first few years, get to be too bit to move easily if you decide you want them somewhere else so planning is essential.

Birds like these berries, so, space permitting, plant more than you think you’ll need. Products like bird netting keep the birds out of the fruits, but I cannot recommend them, having had to cut a dead bird out of an entanglement with a pest deterrent. Since I don’t have space limitations, I just consider feeding the birds and other assorted wildlife part of fruit gardening.

These bush fruits are well worth growing for their nutritional value, though. Blueberries consistently get high marks on analyses of superfoods for their high levels of anthocyanins. Elderberries make a delicious jam and are a traditional herbal medicinal for relief of the common cold. All currants are high in vitamin C, and black currants contain proanthocyanidin, a powerful antioxidant. (continue reading…)

ⓒ iStockPhoto - ObjectifMC

Bramble fruits - blackberries, raspberries and their related varieties like boysenberries and dewberries - are also fairly easy to grow. In many areas, bramble plants have escaped cultivation and become weeds, easily found on roadsides or in woodlands. I have run that in reverse in my own fruit garden and domesticated some wild black raspberries that were growing as a weed in a wild spot on my property, after first carefully determining that they were, in fact, edible.

Many blackberries and raspberries pretty much grow themselves, needing a gardener’s intervention mainly to keep the patch clear of weeds and older, non-producing vines.  Bramble berries pack a nutritional punch and don’t travel well, so they’re often prohibitively expensive in supermarkets. The ease of growing and expense of buying makes blackberries and raspberries a prime candidate for home growing. (continue reading…)

If you live in North America, (excluding Hawaii) your area has hummingbirds. These tiny nectarivores can hover, beat their wings between 20-90 times per second, and are the only type of bird able to fly backwards!

Hummingbirds are territorial and have an average lifespan of four years, so once you attract the birds to your yard they are very likely to return. There are two ways to attract and feed hummingbirds: feeders and gardens. (continue reading…)

ⓒ iStockPhoto - Hatman12

Strawberries are a good place for a beginning fruit gardener to begin dabbling in permaculture fruit plantings. The plants are inexpensive, often available in packs of 25 for $10 or less, and produce runners prolifically to propagate more plants, giving a lot of plant for your buck. Strawberry plants are pretty, so you can plant them as an edging plant in a sunny ornamental bed before committing to tearing up part of the yard for a full fruit garden.

Strawberries can be june-bearing, day-neutral or everbearing. If you’re looking for a lot of berries at once, to freeze or make jam, go for the june-bearing. They get ripe over a short period of time and the fruit is generally considered tastier than the other types. For a home planting for snacking purposes or a few shortcakes for special summertime occasions, though, the day-neutral and everbearing varieties produce a more constant but smaller stream of berries over the entire summer.

(continue reading…)

©iStockphoto.com - ivanmateev

While many people enjoy vegetable gardening, fruit gardening is somewhat less common. Gardeners who already grow a vegetable garden can dip their toes into the world of growing fruit with annual vines crops. Watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melon will all grow in a vegetable garden if given enough space. Melons are members of the cucurbit family, along with cucumbers, and the growing techniques are similar. Like cucumbers, melons have sprawling vines that require some extra garden space or a separate bed where they have room to spread out.

(continue reading…)

Soji Solar Lantern

Whether you are looking for unique lighting for an outdoor celebration or just beautiful lighting for your landscaping Allsop Home and Garden has an interesting selection that can light up the night in eco-friendly style.

Allsop has a beautiful selection of hanging solar lanterns, hand blown glass string lights, even solar votives- elegant enough for a wedding yet casual enough for any outdoor party these aren’t your garden variety solar lights.

Soji solar lanterns glow without the hassle of electrical cords or the worry of candles. The elegant festival-style lanterns open like an accordion, collect sunlight all day and turn themselves on at dusk. They will cast a beautiful glow on your garden party or patio. (continue reading…)

ⓒ iStockPhoto - MattJeacock

You might have heard people saying that lawns are bad for the environment. The lush expanse of golf-course greenery comes at a staggering environmental cost. It is not the grass which is bad, but it is the resources used to maintain the bigger lawn makes them harmful for the environment.If you decide to turn too much area of your backyard into lawn, you are reducing the space for wildlife habitat as well as polluting the environment.

A bigger lawn needs a more powerful mower which can create pollution equivalent to 10 to 12 times what the family car produces in an hour. In addition,  an estimated 8 million gallons of fuel spills each year. Seventy millions tons of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and pesticides are applied in the lawns per year that effects the environment in one or the other way. These chemicals keep the lawn green but create underground water pollution and surface water pollution when run off with water and find their way to streams and rivers. Thus, we really have to rethink the way we care for our lawn that works with nature instead of against it and also saves the money, time and resources. (continue reading…)