The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Small Home Landscaping
The fruits of Your Garden
T7' VERYONE has a natural urge to grow Hj fruit in the garden. There's nothing impossible about it but you must study your place to determine what and how much you can grow. The first requirement for fruit is full sunlight. Fruit will not grow under the shade of trees; the plants become a prey to insects and diseases.
Then, the site itself has an influence. Land with an easy slope is ideal. But, the bottom of a slope, especially if it ends in a pocket, is not a good location. Where heavy frosts are the rule, the cold air flowing down the slope collects in the pockets causing damage to the plants and the fruit buds in spring; mildew and other fungus diseases spread, too.
Fruit needs good soil but, unless the soil is extremely difficult, it can be improved to a degree for many kinds of growing fruit. The amount of space will of course determine what you can grow. The bush fruits, raspberries, blueberries, currants, young-berries, dewberries, gooseberries, logan- berries can be grown to some extent on restricted sites. But, the tree fruits, apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots and quinces must have room. Standard trees of most of these grow large; apples, thirty to forty feet with a forty-feet spread; cherry trees are almost as large; pears are medium; apricots, peaches, plums and quinces are in the medium-to-small class of trees and for the restricted property are the more suitable.
More suitable are the dwarf trees. Growing some twelve to fifteen feet, they are easier to prune, spray and pick the fruit. These begin fruiting sooner than standard trees. Occupying less space, several can be planted. Espalier-trained trees take even less room. These can be trained against walls or grown on stout wire and stakes along a path, or to act as a screen on a fence.
Dwarf apples and pears are readily obtainable, but dwarf plums, cherries and peaches are not sold in too many areas. In the Northwest, the new cherry-plum hybrids are providing excellent fruit where winter temperatures are extreme. They are small trees and bear heavy crops of plums and cherries which, though not as large as those of regular trees, are excellent fruits. The size of the trees commends them well for the small garden.
In dwarf fruits, only the tree is dwarf. The fruit is normal in size, some even excel in size the fruit from standard trees. In buying trees, you merely pick the variety of the fruit you desire, then specify a dwarf tree. This suffices for all except apples. These exist in various sizes ranging from a nine foot dwarf tree to a semi-dwarf up to twenty feet or more.
