If you’re ready to add another dimension to your back yard garden, consider growing your own home grown fruits. While tree and stone fruits can be successfully raised in the home garden, I recommend that you start out with simpler, easy to grow fruits that are guaranteed to bear a bumper crop with very little effort required to care for them. In return, you’ll harvest delicious, vine-ripened fruits that will put to shame any fruit found in your local grocer’s produce section.

Backyard Fruit Growing Woes

The first thing to come to mind when many people think of fresh, home grown fruits, are images of juicy apples, peaches, pears, and plums. However, these challenging tree fruits usually invoke different images from those experienced gardeners who have actually tried to grow them in the back yard environment. They often recall images of misshapen, buggy, mummified, scab and fungus covered, or brown-rotted fruit that despite their best intentions, failed to produce the bountiful harvest that was planned.

While the tree and stone fruits can be successfully raised in the home garden, I recommend that you start with simpler, easy to grow fruits that are guaranteed to be productive with very little effort required to care for them. In return, you will harvest delicious, vine-ripened fruits that will reveal to you the degree to which typical supermarket produce has become bland and flavorless, in some cases to the point of being almost inedible.

Great Fruit Selections for the Home Gardener

The ideal backyard fruits are the hardy ones that are capable of growing wild with little human intervention. Examples of these durable fruits include: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, grapes, elderberries, mulberries, gooseberries, hardy kiwis, persimmons, paw paws, and fig trees. They are all easier to grow, require less space, and are less susceptible to insects and diseases than the average tree and stone fruits.

There’s also less effort required in the from of pruning and planting. And rather than waiting several years before seeing any results, you’ll be able to start harvesting and enjoying your home grown fruits in some cases the same season that you plant them. How’s that for instant gratification?

Ornamental Fruits and Berries

Because of their smaller size and attractive appearance, many of these fruits are perfect for use as ornamental landscape plantings that serve double duty by also providing you with delicious produce. Blueberries for example can make great hedges alongside your home, and attractive grape arbors can be created to beautify and provide shade for your patio area.

There are also varieties of hardy kiwis, grapes, and elderberries that have variegated foliage, which are sometimes grown specifically for their ornamental qualities in the landscape.

Pesticide Free, Organically Grown Fruit

The fact that many of the berries grow perfectly well in the wild, with no assistance from human hands, means that they will flourish when grown organically in your home garden, without the need for spraying to control insects and diseases. Compare that with the effort that is required to raise blemish free apples or peaches in the home garden.

So if you’d like to experience truly delicious fruits from your own back yard, start out with a few of the interesting choices mentioned in this article and before you know it you’ll be harvesting fresh organically grown fruit for your favorite recipes, and enjoying varieties and wonderful vine-ripened flavors that you can’t buy at the market.

For more gardening tips to growing home grown fruits and vegetables, subscribe to the free Gardening Secrets Newsletter at www.mygardeningsecrets.com/optin.html

Other Related Vegetable Gardening Posts:

• The Spinach Scare
• Annual Fruit Tasting
• Heirloom Apple Trees
• Paw Paws, Ju Jubes, and Other Rare Fruits
• Enjoying Elderberries

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