Homesteader Collection
Homesteader Collection
Plant a kitchen garden this Spring!
Live in an urban space but want to grow your own food? This deal makes it easy for beginners and busy households to start growing productive, perennial foods right away.
The Homesteader Bundle --> Add these to cart:
2 X Fruit Tree (check pollination requirements and/or ensure you already have a pollinator that blooms at roughly the same time).
1 X Dwarf Sour Cherry
1 X Compost
2 X Asparagus
Receive for FREE:
1 X Illini Hardy Blackberry
A small urban backyard, side yard, or even a sunny corner can become a productive food space when planted with perennial crops that keep producing year after year.
Your fruit trees will offer fresh fruit season after season, while the dwarf sour cherry fits easily into smaller yards and still produces generous yields. Asparagus is a long-lived perennial that returns every spring, becoming more productive each year! You can easily plant an asparagus bed right along a fence. And we know, the best way to obtain healthy roots for big shoots is by starting your plants off right with healthy soil! Adding compost helps you build healthy soil from the start, improving plant growth and long-term garden success.
Getting your hands back into the soil is also good for you! Plus, it's a wonderful way to involve the whole family in an engaging and educational activity, teaching children about the life cycle of plants and the importance of nurturing the environment. Start growing today.
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157 products
History: True Root Pippin was discovered on Steph's dad Gary Roth on the family farm in 2022. He happened to come across a large apple tree, a chance seedling, covered in fruit growing along the fenceline and decided to sample them. Pleased by the quality of the apples, we later decided to propagate this lucky find and make these apples available to everyone! It was named True Root Pippin in honour of True Root Nursery, Gary Roth's nursery which is located on the property and is the source of our seedlings. We are happy to introduce True Root Pippin for the first time in 2024.
Why We Grow It: We're always on the lookout for exciting new varieties and this one stood out! True Root Pippin is a pleasant green apple with attractive red striping, albeit it is on the smaller side. It has a good sweet flavour balanced with some tartness. It keeps well and produces nice, clean fruit with minimal care.
Since this is a new variety, there is still a lot for us to learn about it! If you grow this variety and have any observations or find any fun uses for the fruit, we'd love to hear from you!
History: Pine Golden Pippin's exact origins are unknown, but it is quite an old variety that either originated in northern England or in Scotland. It was first formally described by nursery worker Thomas Rivers in A Descriptive Catalogue of Fruit Trees in 1863. In 1875, Robert Hogg claimed that Pine Golden Pippin was one of the best fresh eating apples around in his book The Fruit Manual.
Why We Grow It: Robert Hogg was correct about Pine Golden Pippin! Despite the small size of the fruit, it makes up for it with crisp and juicy fruit with a sweet/sharp flavour that has a hint of pineapple and resin. The fruit is great for fresh eating and can also be used in cider blends. It tends to be slower growing but produces good crops.
Why We Grow It: Melrose produces a flattish apple that has greenish skin overlaid with a bright red flush. It is firm, juicy, and sweet with a more acidic flavour that improves after a little while in storage. It is great for both fresh eating and cooking and can be stored for several months. The tree itself starts to bear at a young age and produces heavy crops, although it has a tendency to bear fruit every other year.
History: Pewaukee originated around the mid-1800s when George Peffer, owner of Pewaukee Fruit Farm & Nursery, crossed Duchess of Oldenburg with Northern Spy on his farm in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The resulting apple, a cross of two varieties well known for their use in cooking, is great for a variety of culinary uses! It was formally recorded as a variety in 1870 and can still be found in old orchards in parts of the US today.
Why We Grow It: Pewaukee produces a yellow apple with red striping that has sweet, crisp flesh with a hint of vanilla. It is great for fresh eating and excels for sauce, cooking, and baking. The tree is known for being hardy and producing fruit at a young age.
History: Fresco, also known by the brand name Wellant®, was developed through a fruit breeding collaboration between Inova Fruit and the Applied Plant Research at the Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands. The goal was to create an apple variety that better aligned with changing consumer tastes. It was bred in the late 1900s and named Fresco during the years it underwent various tests before being released in 2004 under the brand name Wellant®. It is primarily grown and sold in Europe.
Why We Grow It: Fresco produces a large, deep red fruit that is crunchy with a strong flavour high in both sweetness and tartness. It is excellent for fresh eating and can be used in baking and cooking as well. An excellent multi-purpose apple!
History: Woolbrook Pippin originated in 1903 at Woolbrook Nursery in the UK. It was discovered by J.H. Stevens and Son. It is a Cox's Orange Pippin seedling and received an Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in 1929.
Why We Grow It: Woolbrook Pippin produces a greenish apple overlaid with bright red stripes that is excellent for fresh eating. The fruit is firm, crisp, and juicy with a sweet, aromatic flavour balanced by a bit of tartness. This is a great choice for fans of Cox's Orange Pippin!
History: Goodland was developed at the Morden Research Station in Manitoba as part of an effort to breed cold hardy apples for the prairies. It is a seedling of Patten Greening that was selected in 1925 and the variety was introduced commercially in 1955.
Why We Grow It: The cold hardy Goodland produces a medium to large yellow apple with red striping. This crisp, juicy apple has sweet/tart flavour that is great for fresh eating, cooking, and sauce. Unlike most early ripening varieties, Goodland will store well for several months.