Planning My Dream Backyard
Right now, my spouse (we're common-law and I'm still trying to decide what to call him... it seems incorrect to say husband, but boyfriend also seems less than what we are. Alas, a conundrum that's not meant for this blog!) and I are house-hunting, and as a staff member at Silver Creek, I find myself daydreaming about what things I’m going to plant at our new place once we find it!
And so, I thought I’d share my tidbits of wisdom on why I’d choose certain plants from my unique perspective:
- as a staff member here
- as a beekeeper who pays attention to when and which types of bees I see visiting plants
- and as an avid home cook who likes to use fruit and veg in fun ways
In addition to this, our budget is going to limit us to a relatively small amount of backyard space, where I’ll likely need to rejuvenate soil and turn a lot of lawn into perennial growing beds with my big crop plants and a perennial understory of flowers, herbs and edible greens. My key garden priorities are food for insect pollinators throughout the season and food for me and my family. Aesthetics, thorniness and space will also affect my choices.
As I have worked on this project, I’ve determined that this will need to be a series of blog posts to help make it more bite-sized. I'll begin by sharing my plant choices for each year of planting - for budget’s sake, I’ll be choosing batches of plants over several years, slowly building my dream gardens.
As we approach having a new place to grow, there will be lots more planning to do, including sun mapping, DIY soil testing (maybe also some help from Zack’s expertise and tools!), and I may find that I need to spend some time (a fall, a spring, or maybe even a full season) amending my soil before planting too.
This journey may provide some insights for folks who are searching for their own backyard plants and don’t know where to start!
Let’s start with what I’d like to plant during year 1:
Rhubarb – Grandma Barbara Anne
Rhubarb is a classic! It’s easy to grow, harvest and eat in all kinds of yummy things from baked goods to rhubarb ketchup. It’s also quite easy on the annual plant budget, and it’ll be one of the quickest perennial plants to reach a harvestable age/size, so I want to put it in first just to have fun harvesting sooner! I’ll be accounting around 9 SQFT for a patch of rhubarb and start with 4 root chunks. If my budget gets really tight, I may choose to do 2 root chunks and then expand the patch more in a few years by transplanting from those initial two, but I’ll dream big until I can’t!!
Raspberry Bushes – Heritage Red and Anne Yellow Raspberry Canes
These two varieties are primocane raspberries, which means they can bear fruit on both 1st and 2nd year growth and I’ll be able to mow or prune the patches back each year (either in the fall or spring) so that I get some fall (September) berries – this is important to be because pruning to promote their fall berries also means that the blooms will be later and provide much-needed late season support for native bees and honeybees!
If I have space, I’d love to add some Jewel Black and Royalty Purple raspberries too because I really enjoy their flavours and colours, however, they are floricane and specifically summer-bearing, so they hold less importance to me on the pollinator support priority. Jewel Black is also notably thornier and not as fun to pick, but yummy enough to easily make up for it if I have enough growing space.
With regards to spacing out the raspberry beds, I plan to start my patches with 8 canes of each variety, spaced 18 inches apart in beds that are 3 feet wide, with lots of compost and mulch to support the new plants. Recommended spacing is 2 feet apart, but I’d rather see the patches fill in a bit faster. This amounts to about 72 SQFT, and within 2 years I should be able to get decent little pickings from each patch!
Elderberry Bush – Scotia
Elderberry blooms support bees in the spring, just after dandelions. In addition, I like to try to do elderblossom fritters or tempura as a special weekend food each spring season, and in fall I make elderberry oxymel for winter colds and use elderberries in fire cider batches, so having a bush or 2 of these is perfect for that. I’ve chosen Scotia over York, mainly because I find that while York has lovely big berries, they seem to take longer to darken up and truly ripen.
Two elderberry bushes should take up about 12 SQFT (with regular pruning back once mature, more space would be even more ideal). If I am short on space though, this is one plant I would also happily forage or visit my parents farm for, so while it is on my dream plants list, it is among the first I will cut if we land in a home that has less backyard to work with!
Blackberry Bush - Chester Blackberry
Chester is a great blackberry option because it is thornless! The berries are nice, large thumb-sized bites, sometimes even larger, and I also prefer its tangy flavour to the thornier Illini blackberry. We'd rather not pay grocery-store prices for fresh berries if we can grow our own in-season, so this is an easy add to my 1st year plan.
While I’d only plant a couple of these, they spread quickly and would bear fruit within the first years, adding to my harvests well before young apple trees. Two of these at maturity would easily spread into 12 SQFT or more if left to sucker and root by tipping. I’d plant them in an area where I could control the spread by mowing/pruning.
Asparagus – Mary Washington
I really don’t think I have much preference between asparagus varieties, so long as I get asparagus! I want to get an asparagus patch going right away for our own perennial food, even though there are no blooms for bees. It doesn’t hurt that the green, frondy foliage that grows out after asparagus season makes lovely texture in bouquets! I’ll also consider placing the patch along an area where it can provide seasonal privacy/sound buffering effects. I’ve allocated around 45 SQFT for an asparagus patch, which would entail a bulk bag of about 20 crowns.
Apple Trees – Oh so many!!
These are the hardest to choose from because I have gotten to know some of our apple varieties better than others and there are just so many unique and heritage varieties! Fortunately, I can leave the unique apple collection to my sister in Silver Creek’s test orchards, and I’ve managed to narrow my selection down to 6 apple cultivars.
I want to plant these in year 1 because they’ll need a few years (2-4) to grow before they’ll begin bearing fruit, and we quite like apples in our house. Pears I’m planning in year 2 because we aren’t as big on them, but they do take longer (5-7 years) to start bearing so consider that if you’re dreaming up your own planting timelines and love pears!
Things I’m considering in my apple tree choices:
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Bloom Timing: I’m aiming for early and middle or middle and late, but not early and late. With 6 trees this isn’t really much of an issue, but if one is only choosing two apple trees, the best pollination will occur between varieties whose bloom times overlap more. An early and late may have a limited window to achieve cross-pollination.
- Any triploids? Triploids are sterile and can’t provide pollen to other trees, so I've double checked this because I want to know which trees are providing fertile pollen - one of my choices is a triploid, but with 6 cultivars there will be more than enough pollen to go around!
- Harvest timing: Even with a single tree, a full harvest can be a lot of apples for a single household to deal with! I’ve chosen to time out my harvests so that they happen from late August through to early November, allowing for some time to process and make space for each harvest.
My top choices for apple trees are:
Chestnut Crabapple
These little apples are great for fresh eating despite this being a crab! My partner likes a tart apple, and I like crunch and sweet-tart, so this apple manages to fit both our tastes well. As a crabapple, it blooms early and will provide good pollination support for my other apple tree choices. It’s ready to harvest in late August, kicking off our apple harvesting season.
Shamrock
This one’s for my partner who is a Granny Smith fan, and it gives us a larger-sized apple that we’ll use for fresh eating + baking. It blooms early, with a late September harvest window, making it the 2nd apple harvest for my little orchard.
Ashmead’s Kernel
With its taste profile of nutty with notes of pear and spice, this apple offers us something fun for fresh eating and is also a great option for making little batches of cider. It’s middle flowering and a triploid, which means its pollen is sterile and it cannot help pollinate my other apples. However, any of the others can provide pollen for it, and it only requires one other apple cultivar to achieve cross-pollination. The harvest window for this one is late October.
Grimes Golden
If I have room I’d also love to put in a Grime’s Golden, I am going back and forth between it and Ashmead’s to be honest! The Grimes Golden apple is delicious for fresh eating and cider too, and it’s actually one of the few self-pollinating apples! It has a mid-October harvest window and blooms for a nice long time, so it makes an easy pollination partner for other apples and would be a helpful option if I become more limited in my choices.
Thunderchild Crabapple
This one I am choosing mainly for it’s pollination and ornamental value with it’s pink blossoms (middle blooming) and deep red foliage, however, we’ll use the fruit in cider, jelly and maybe even sauce! The harvest window is late October, so it’ll match with our other apple choices for potential homemade cider too. If I have room, I'll put in two so I can say I have thunder-children.
Cripps Pink
I like buying this one at the grocery store (goes by Pink Lady there) and it’s great as a fresh eating + baking apple, providing us with another larger-sized apple for eating. It blooms early and ripens early November, so it matches well with the others for bloom time, and it’ll be the final apple to harvest.
Apple tree spacing…
This is going to be quite dependent on what space I end up with. I'll likely need to do dwarf trees (generally this will be our B9 rootstock) and espalier some or all of them. Using dwarfing rootstock will mean the trees bear fruit earlier, stay smaller and are easily harvestable with no ladder (or just a small step-ladder). They'll require staking or some kind of support since the roots provide less anchor, but if I'm already planning to espalier them, this is not a problem.
The trees will ultimately die a little bit sooner than a semi-dwarf or full sized tree. However, I’m leaning towards this because we may only want to be in this next home for 10-20 years. Going with dwarf trees will provide us with food sooner, and perhaps a little apple wood if we have to take them down someday – my spouse is a woodworker, so making some projects out of apple wood actually works out quite well in my dream-scheme.
If I somehow manage to have extra budget/space/time to plant more in the first year, I’d add pear trees as well (recall my note above about it taking longer for them to begin fruiting), but for now, I’ve made them part of year 2’s plantings, which I’ll post about next week!!
Feel free to share your questions about any plants you’re dreaming about growing and we can help you find more info!
Happy growing,
Jodi
