Monday, 12 September 2011

Lessons in Planting Fruit Trees

For a tree in a home garden to reach maturity and bear fruit, a healthy upbringing is a must - this means it should be planted in a soil of suitable fertility and should be free from diseases and pests as far as possible. An added worry is to protect the ripe fruits from birds and ensuring that the fruit is not just tasty but nutritious as well.

Feijoa is the best option for home garden as it present less headache in terms of maintenance. To bring it to medium sized hedge Feijoa requires just some occasional pruning and trimming. It also has an ornamental value once it blossoms in summer, its white flowers with red stamens gives your garden that aesthetic look. In addition it is self-fertilizing and starts providing bumper harvest soon enough.

Nothing elicits as much pride and pleasant feelings from a dedicated gardener like having a fruit bearing tree in the garden. This is more so if the tree is healthy and bears a yummy crop every season. Plums, peaches, citrus, feijoa, persimmons and pears are but a few of the many options that gardening enthusiasts can choose from. However, these are more preferred owing to their high yields and ease of maintenance.

Having a fruit tree in your garden will help add to the greenery and it also provides shade. However growing a tree is no easy task as there are lots of factors that play an important role like birds, pests, climate, convenience of purchasing it from the market and so on. Taking these factors into account is an aspect of gardening which should never be overlooked.

You can consider planting the citrus tree if you do not have a lot of space because this tree does not grow a lot in terms of width or height. Also you do not need to do much regarding the maintenance of this tree and all you need to pay attention to is the drainage of soil. One way of acquiring lots of lemons would be to use generous amounts of manure on the tree.

Gardeners who are open minded enough to experiment must incorporate companion gardening in their home garden. In this concept, different plants are planted close to each other so that they have a symbiotic relationship in terms of various aspects of growth like pollination, nutrition and so on.

There is a concept in home gardening known as ‘three sisters’. In this concept various species of neighboring plants help one another to grow, get protection against enemies and also provide shade.

For instance, you can plant pole beans and corn together so that the corn would perform the function of a natural support on which the beans can climb up and at the same time benefit the corn by maintaining a level of nitrogen in the soil.

Then there is the push-pull method of home gardening in which the plant which is prone to pests is sown amidst species which act as natural repellents to the same. Also known as trap cropping, this is an effective method of reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals on plants if an appropriate combination is hit upon by the gardener.

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