Nothing like having a Big Nut tree, a fruit tree: peach, cherry, avocado, citrus, nectarine or persimmon growing outside the window. Better yet, in terms of famine coming, plant a few trees in the curb strip on the street. Seasonal jam making is easy with a home orchard. But year round feeding of poor, hungry, wandering strangers that comes from planting curb strips makes you an angel and makes all the children in your neighborhood appreciate gardens and orchards. You will change history!
For the home garden, the costly trees: HOME DEPOT has the trees that
you want, for 19$ every late Winter, early Spring. They're inexpensive
as (except for citrus*,) because they're bare root. They just have a bag
of peat or sawdust around their sleeping roots. These trees are dormant,
having lost their leaves in autumn, (which citrus does not,) having just
been pulled from their nursery or farm while sound asleep. They hibernate,
like bears!
But for CURB strips, I use the freebie trees that I grow myself. (All
citrus seeds give you STOCK THAT is true to the parent, so plant those
seeds, it must be done while still damp from the fruit, cannot dry out)
While you're at the Home Depot, get a few bags of good soil. But remember it is much cheaper at a landscaping service where you just fill the truck up, rather than buying by the bag. The city has many free compost sites. The cities nowadays take the green trash to compost it. Sanitation Dept will tell you where they are. Just pull up a truck. Last, MUSHROOM factories give away the GREAT black soil they use every few weeks. They'll pay YOU to haul it away!
Now, dig a lot of holes and run go get the trees. As they say, a ten dollar tree gets a hundred dollar hole. That means a big hole filled with fine compost and soil, some sand, gypsum, some manure. And some of your own hole soil mixed in.
For Great site on tree health: http://extension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/hort/g06850.htm
EASY BREEZY JAM RECIPE. Peel a lot of fruit. 3 Cups is enough
jam
for a few weeks of morning toast. Add a cup of sugar. I always lowball
the sugar. Simmer
over fire while you grate in a lot of lemon rind and add some lemon
juice. Add
at last minute to the simmering jam. Throw into washed peanut butter
jars
cool, then refrigerate. I don't leave jam out. If I have ten jars,
I freeze NINE.
If you want to store it in an unfridged area, you have to sterilize
jars, tops. Too
bothersome for moi. We have fruit year round in California so why go
through all
that? I simply make jam every few weeks.
Do remember to plant on the street. THE CURBSIDE TREE that FEEDS THE
PASSERS BY, THE POOR, INVITES ALL TO EAT. I planted part of my 200 feet
of curb strip with peach trees. First I dug out the grass, shaking the
roots free of the soil, added manure, then planted babies from my table
top nursery.I composted the grass off to the side, slathering manure on
it so it would boil down to humus. Every fruit I eat gets its seeds
planted. My compost pile for two years becomes a tree nursery for the next
few years. I trade trees
on CRAIGS LIST for a bag of potting soil. Gets them about five trees
total. Every mulberry I eat, I spit the
seeds into flats. I have not only the regular BLACK MULBERRY but the
LAVENDAR one and the TURKISH MULBERRY, the big inch long purple one that
is very juicy and tangy, and squirts you when you bite it. Won't make jam
cuz we eat them soon as they ripen.
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