Free Fruit and Nut Nuggets

By Robert Laurence

Average Bearing Age of Fruit Plants

When figuring how much you'll save on fruit by buying fruit plants for the garden, always take into account the average bearing age of the fruit tree or bush you plant:

• Apple 5 20 years Orange 3 6 years

• Blackberry 1 Peach 2

• Cranberry 3 Pear 4 - 7

• Currant 3 Persimmon 1 - 3

• Gooseberry 1 2 Plum 3 - 5
  Grape 4 Quince 2 - 3

• Grapefruit 3 6 Raspberry 1 - 2

• Lemon 3 6 Strawberry 1 - 2

Pin Money from Berries

If you have considered making pin money growing strawberries, figure it this way. Commercial growers in California, using all the latest methods, harvest 50,000 quarts of berries from an acre. Do the same in a 33 X 66 foot home strawberry patch, which is exactly one twentieth of an acre, and you can harvest 2,500 quarts. Sell these at an average seventy cents a pint (home berries should be worth even more) and you've made $3,400. Not bad for a little plot of land and no more than a few days' work, even if you cut these figures in half. And you'd do even better with perishable gourmet berries like raspberries, which few commercial growers handle.


A Fruiting Blueberry Fence

Try growing attractive fruit bearing blueberry bushes instead of privet as hedges in your yard. A flowering, fruiting blueberry hedge is made quite simply by planting blueberry bushes three feet apart instead of the usual six feet. Depending on the variety, a fruiting fence can range from three to six feet high. Recommended varieties (and use several of these for good fruiting) are Earliblue, Blueray, Berkeley, Herbert, Coville, and Jersey. Set and care for the plants as you would any blueberry bush.

juniper: The Bathtub Gin Berry

The common juniper berry (juniper communis) has been used for centuries to flavor gin and game dishes like wild boar. Following is an old bootlegger's recipe for bathtub gin made from juniper berries. We have not tested it, do not recommend it, and offer it merely as a historical curiosity. You must take full responsibility if you make it or drink too much of it:

• 2 parts alcohol

• 3 parts water

• 1 teaspoon juniper berry juice

• I tablespoon glycerin (to smooth)

It cost bootleggers about two cents an ounce to make this concoction, which supposedly was ready to drink upon mixing.

A Soapmaking Berry to Cleanse Your Hands of Garden Grime

The scientific name for the tree it grows on explains this berry's use Sapindus is a combination of the Latin for soap and "Indus" (Indian), in reference to American Indians using the berries for soap. Soapberries, the pulp of which contains saponin, lather up easily and were valued for shampooing, although the soap made from them does damage some materials. Two species are of horticultural importance. Sapindus marginatus is a deciduous tree that grows up to 30 feet tall with yellow, egg shaped fruit about one inch long; it is found only from the southern part of zone 7 southward. Sapindus Saponaria, an evergreen, also grows up to 30 feet, but is only hardy outside in zone 9, that is, southernmost Florida. Both trees can be propagated by seed and do best in dry, sandy soil. The lather producing agent saponin in soapberries can be poisonous if taken internally; in fact, some American Indians caught fish by stupefying them with bits of the fruit thrown into pools.

Making a New Prolific Strawberry Bed from an Old Tired One

If you don't want the expense and effort of starting a new bed when production begins to fall off in the old strawberry patch, there is an alternative that works at least passably - although you should remember that commercial growers almost always plow under a bed after two years and usually do so after the first year's crop is picked. Nevertheless, up to one half production from an old bed (and sometimes more) can be maintained for two to three years or longer if the following method is used. Begin the renewal at the end of the harvest season in early summer. Don't wait two or three weeks but get to work as soon as the berries have been picked. At this time run your hand or power mower, set on high (two to three inches), through the strawberry patch, cutting off the tops of the plants (a scythe or hoe will do just as well). The plants will then put all their strength into producing new leaves and fruit buds for the next year (the more new leaves a plant has, the more berries it will produce). Help them along by weeding the patch thoroughly and fertilizing the remaining plants. Also turn under every other row in the patch, including all plants and any mulch that may be present. Runners from the alternate rows will soon fill up these now empty rows and you will get fruit from both the topped plants and their runners the following season - more from the topped ones. If the plants don't send out many runners, encourage them to so by digging in a little cottonseed meal around each plant.

This method works best where very productive varieties like Pocahontas have been planted. Sprinkling an inch or so of compost through the bed after renewing is also a good idea. Within two to three weeks new foliage will appear on the plants, which will look so bad at first that you'll think you made a mistake following this advice, but in another three or four weeks the plants will be thriving. 

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