Forget the farmer’s market. Grow your own delicious, organic apples, figs, peaches, plums, strawberries, blackberries, citrus fruits, and more with Grow Your Own Mini Fruit Garden. No green thumb required.
Even beginners become successful fruit "farmers" with the techniques and advice offered by author Christy Wilhelmi, the force behind the popular gardening website, Gardenerd. Selecting the best small-scale fruit trees, bushes, vines, and plants for your climate, siting them properly, and pruning your compact trees for health and productivity are some of the many topics covered in the pages of this bible of small-space fruit growing.
You’ll also discover how to:
- Turn your urban, suburban, or rural garden into a fruit factory, no matter its size
- Maximize production from edible container fruit gardens
- Grow more food in less space
- Limit your family’s synthetic pesticide consumption
- Choose varieties with increased disease resistance
- Select plants that grow well in your climate
- Maintain your fruiting plants correctly to encourage years of prolific harvests
With modern, dwarf varieties, and help from Grow Your Own Mini Fruit Garden, a healthy, high-yielding garden filled with fruit-producing plants is possible—even in the smallest of yards.
"...you'll be almost overwhelmed with tips and techniques for creating what can only be described as a wonderland dreamscape, but with Wilhelmi's immersive knowledge, could actually be rendered into reality. The book is a one-stop shop--vertical gardening, arbor making, espalier building, tree grafting, soil prep, compost building, drainage designing, container gardening, pruning strategies, drip irrigation building, disease resistance techniques, pest control, feeding and fertilization, and finally harvesting."-- Beth Py-Lieberman, Washington Gardener Magazine
"Many green thumbs for this book...it's a great read. Highly recommended."-- Andrew Messinger, The Hampton Gardener/27East.com
"Well done! [Wilhelmi's] Grow Your Own Mini Fruit Garden book presents all the bits of info, well-explained but simply, for beginning gardeners to know how to begin!"
-- Yvonne Savio, Southern California Horticultural Society Board of Directors
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the world of small-space fruit gardening
CHAPTER 1 What's a Mini Fruit Garden?
CHAPTER 2 Here's to Your Success!
CHAPTER 3 Choosing the Best Fruit Trees for Your Climate
CHAPTER 4 Grafted Trees and Their Importance to Small-Scale Home Orchards
CHAPTER 5 Let's Get Planting!
CHAPTER 6 Berries and Other Fruits
CHAPTER 7 Caring for Your Home Fruit Garden
CHAPTER 8 Pruning for Production, Size, and Structure
CHAPTER 9 Managing Pests and Diseases
Last Thoughts
Appendix A
Resources
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
Christy Wilhelmi empowers people to grow their own food, to be more self-reliant, and to reduce pollution and waste, one garden at a time. Christy is founder of Gardenerd, the ultimate resource for garden nerds, where she publishes her popular blog and podcast. She also specializes in small-space, organic edible garden design and consulting. She holds regular organic gardening classes in California, and has co-taught organic gardening at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Christy was a board member of Ocean View Farms Organic Community Garden in Mar Vista, California, for over 20 years, and gardens almost entirely with heirloom vegetables. Between 70-80 percent of her family's produce comes from her garden of less than 300 square feet. She is author of Grow Your Own Mini Fruit Garden, Gardening for Geeks, and the novel, Garden Variety.
Cool Springs Press
Pub Date: April 20, 2021
0.6" H x 9.9" L x 7.9" W
192 pages
paperback