Porch Garden 2013, Fruit Tree Trials

Below this post are posted some of the pictures fro Porch Garden 101, which was mostly culinary and tea herbs and a tomato pruning trial.

I am finally going to try my hand at  container fruit trees. As the founder of Rescue Tree Program® which is like the rescue animal program, except trees live longer with proper care. One time I rescued a tiny 8 inch spruce from the sidewalk out front of a Walgreens Drug store  It was dry as a bone and shedding needles. That was 9 years ago and it has been my Solstice Tree ever since. 

These little beauties were dying on the warehouse floor of a Costco. Hopefully they will appreciate their new digs and take off.

Everything is ready to begin. Porch gets kind of crowded..

Both the apple and the cherry have more than one variety of fruit grafted onto the root stock. Many fruit trees need this variation in order to pollinate. This grafting technique, if successful, will work well in a small space where you can only have a few trees.

The Cherry Tree, bare roots soaking in water as I prepare her new home.

Pruning some of the longer roots.

Cherry Tree settling into her new home. If it lives I will give it a name, but I don't want to name this tree after someone until I see some vigor.

 

The Apple and the Cherry in place to get maximum light.  I really need to take down my Solstice lights.

Those root looking growths are actually Clematis vine starts. If they survive, maybe they will add a decorative touch.

 Some of the perennial herbs show signs of coming back this year. I placed them on top of the soil. The beauty of this is, as I water the herbs the runoff waters the trees. They look ragged right now, but just wait! 

Update 2015:

Here is the little apple tree during the summer of 2014. Because the porch it started in was enclosed, I hand-pollinated many of the blossoms. The tree set a lot of fruit but because it was so young I pruned most of the off. I know I probably should have pruned ALL of them off but I coud not resist letting 5 or 6 apples grow. They were delcious. The cherry tree did well in 2014 also, but never blossomed. I await spring of 2015 to see what it will do.

 Last years successful tomato pruning self-tutorial. What a great plant that was.

My living Solstice Tree

  Here it is decorated this last December. It has gone through a bad mite infestation where it was completely defoliated in 2007, and last summer someone stole it from its temporary spot at the community garden (but then anonymously returned it when I sent out a pleading email).