Planning My Dream Backyard: Year 2
Okay, so lets take a look at my Year 2 planting dream…
As time passes in this house-hunt, I’m finding myself swinging through phases of excitement and a doldrum-y stuck feeling while I try to be realistic about what I’ll truly have space to plant. It's good to keep reminding myself that we're lucky to be able to go house-hunting, and to be able to dream up a whole orchard-garden in the first place! Here are my Year 2 plant choices:
Pear Trees – Just 2 for now!
As I mentioned, we aren’t as big of pear eaters, but I do want to have a couple for fresh eating, seasonal baking/preserved treats and sauce. Since pears require pollen from a different cultivar (only a few cultivars are self-pollinating) I’m sticking with these two:
Seckel Pear
I have somewhat hazy but very happy memories of eating these fresh off the tree at my Aunt & Uncle’s house – they were always tasty with a nice crunch to the texture, plus they were small enough to make a good kid-sized treat. Along with some fresh eating, I would want to use these for preserves, sauce and maybe try my hand at making perry some year!
Golden Spice Pear
The flavour description of this pear sounds lovely, and I’m pretty sure I remember liking it at one of our annual fruit tastings as well. As with Seckel, it’ll get used for fresh eats, preserves, saucing and could also be added into a perry batch.
European pears (both of my choices are European pears) and Asian pears do cross-pollinate, so perhaps I’d eventually add a Chojuro if there were enough space! I’d also be looking at espalier trellising for my pear trees, which would mean I’d look at any dwarf options for rootstock (such as Provence Quince or OHxF87) first and possibly switch cultivars or choose to purchase a custom graft. Overall, I estimate that two espalier pears should take up about 24 square feet.
Dwarf Sour Cherry Bushes – Carmine Jewel, & Crimson Passion (or any really)
I mainly have experience growing Juliet Dwarf Sour Cherry Bushes since there are two beside my current home. My spouse loves the sourness of these for fresh eating, but I love using them for pies and cheesecake sauces too.
The reason I’ve chose to deviate to Carmine Jewel and Crimson Passion is that Juliet tends to sucker, and I’m hoping that Carmine Jewel (with a more compact growth habit) and Crimson Passion wouldn’t as much. I’m also choosing two different cultivars for better pollination (and thus higher fruit yields). The bees love the cherry blossoms, so getting some nice crops of cherries should be easy if I protect the fruit from birds! The space requirement for these two bushes will be about 32 square feet.
Peach Seedling
I’m adding a peach seedling to year 2 because a sun-warmed peach on a hot summer day is so delicious! I do enjoy peach pies and frozen peaches in smoothies too, but my main motivation to plant a peach is that the pretty pink spring blooms on a peach tree are such a nice early spring mood-boost, and the bees love them too! Hopefully I will be able to make this a front-yard tree so that passers-by can also enjoy the lovely spring blooms.
Fortunately, peaches are self-pollinating so I don’t need to worry about adding a second one (although, as usual, a second different cultivar can increase crop size/fruit quality. I'm also not at all concerned about choosing a mixed peach seedling because all of our peaches are grown from Niagara or known variety seeds, and the fruit is highly likely to be of good quality so I'll choose to save a little money on an un-specified seedling over a grafted or known-parent seedling.
Gooseberry Bush - Grandma Julie
A couple years ago my dad’s gooseberry bush (one of the original Grandma Julie gooseberries that he transplanted to his property) had a bounty of a crop and I was given some to use. Both me and my spouse liked them fresh with their tart-sweet flavour (especially sun-warmed in a windowsill) but my absolute favourite was the shrub I made with the gooseberries, some honey and apple cider vinegar. It was so good that I kept hoarding it to try to make it last! I just want to be able to re-create that delicious-ness in larger batches for us and for sharing with friends and family!
A gooseberry bush only needs about 9 square feet, and is self-pollinating, so given my space restrictions, I wouldn’t worry about adding a second one. With regards to gooseberry flavours, I'm sure any of our others would provide the same level of deliciousness, and unfortunately we won't have Grandma Julie gooseberry plants for sale this year. I want the Grandma Julie for sentimental value, but wouldn't hesitate to choose a different cultivar if I didn't have that attachment.
Currants – Pink Champagne, White Pearl & Becker Red
I like the idea of having currants for juice, preserves and baking, but this is another of the things (like elderberry bushes, in Year 1) I’d forego if space was dear. I’d choose these three for their colours and creat a mixed patch, all planted within a 12 square foot (or slightly smaller) block. Currants fill in easily and won’t take a lot of extra maintenance once established. They also bloom early in the season, providing ideal early spring forage for pollinators!
Haskaps – Aurora, Borealis, & Honey Gin
Haskaps are yummy, but the main reason I want to fit them into my plan is for pollinators. In a protected area, haskaps can bloom even before the dandelions. As a beekeeper, when dandelions bloom that is when we breath easy knowing that our bees finally have enough to forage on to be “past the danger point” of starving due to a shortage of food while the hive is in a very active state of growth (starting to raise new bees for the summer ahead).
For fruit production, haskaps can be picky pollinators and if their bloom times don’t align just right, they may experience poor yields during unpredictable springs. As such, I’d choose Aurora, Borealis, and Honey Gin (all good pollination partners according to the haskap chart we put together for matching bloom times). Outside of pollination compatibility, I’m choosing these varieties because one of my favourite memories with my spouse is watching the aurora borealis together here in Southern Ontario last year when there kept being chances to see them this far South. Someday maybe we’ll get to go see them way up North! In the meantime, I’ll grow haskaps with goo memories attached to their names. As for Honey Gin, it just felt fitting given that I love bees. Spacing-wise, I am planning to use 36 square feet for these three bushes.
Blueberry Bushes – Northcountry and Northblue
Why not also grow some blueberries??! Both honey and bumble bees like blueberry blossoms, and they can add diversity to the bee smorgasbord I hope to create. I’ve gone with Northcountry and Northblue because they are half-high and thus a little more compact, along with being self-pollinating. Northcountry berries ripen earlier in the season than other blueberries, while Northblue berries tend to store well. If I’m tight on space, I could also look at growing these two as potted plants on a porch or balcony (providing they’d get enough sunlight), but if I have space I’lll allocate 18 square feet to them.
Quince Seedling
The blooms are good for the bees, and I really liked the warming winter spiced quince jam recipe I tried out a couple seasons ago, so I mostly want quince for that. If space is an issue, I’d consider cutting this one out of my dream list as I’m sure I could find someone selling quince at a farmers market (or just cozy up to my family who have some growing in the various Silver Creek Nursery test orchards!!). As a seedling, I could let the quince grow more as a bush or shrub and allocate 12 square feet for it.
Aronia Berry Bushes – McKenzie, Galicjanka, & Viking
Aronia berries provide blooms for the bees, but the real reason I want to grow some is for the berry harvest for juicing and for drying to make small batches of my Aronia berry honey. The berries aren’t great fresh, but they freeze and juice very well, and with honey they are lovely and jammy, and I like knowing that they have a higher antioxidant/vitamin content compared to blueberries. I’ll plant one (or maybe 2 if enough space) of each of our three aronia varieties, allocating about 36 square feet for them.
Finally, the last of the year 2 plants are Sea Buckthorns!
Sea Buckthorn Bushes – Lord, Mary and Klavdija
I want to grow some sea buckthorn berries for use in smoothies, sea buckthorn gummies (high in vitamin C for winter wellness!) and for drying the pulp to use in small batches of sea buckthorn honey. Unfortunately, sea buckthorn is wind-pollinated, so it doesn’t offer any blooms for my bee-friends and it also requires me to have 1 male sea buckthorn (Lord) for every 5 female sea buckthorns. It’s also recommended to plant the male within a range of 10-40 meters away from the females. For me, this won’t be an issue as I’ll just be planting 2 Mary and 2 Klavdija for my female plants, so I’ll do a little row that covers about 80 square feet.
Why Mary and Klavdija? My experience has been that both are reasonably low in thorniness, and the harvest window on my parents farm seems to be Klavdija first and then Mary, giving me some spread across when they’ll be ready. Klavdija is known to be a bit sweeter and possibly higher in carotenoids, while Mary has a higher total oil content and is known for being juicier. In general, I have liked working with them both over the past couple of years!
Stay tuned for Year 3's outline and future updates on this series, and do share if you have any thoughts or questions!
