My last post was almost six years ago. Back then, I was talking about starting a tree nursery, and I had the mindset of something along the lines of "As long as you try, you will succeed no matter what happens." Obviously, things have changed as time passed, as has my mindset and my goals with gardening and life itself, to some extent. But after six years of not writing my thoughts and observations, I thought it may be a bit jarring for anyone scrolling down the blog feed who happens to notice the dramatic change in methods and thought processes from the prior writing. So I decided to create a series of update posts to get readers up to speed on what's going on in my life, and how gardening, science, health, and nature all fit into it.
Starting From When We Last Heard From Our Protagonist...
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, back in September of 2016, I was intending to start a small apple/pear tree nursery using seeds I collected over the course of the year. A lot of apple trees did grow and a few of them are currently still growing. I did attempt to grow pears from seeds as well, but I am not sure any seedlings managed to take hold if they did grow at some point. I continued to collect and sow apple seeds over the following year, and my second batch of seeds produce many more seedlings than did the first. My plan was to continue to do this procedure every year and plant out the older trees as they grew larger. Unfortunately, my plan did not exactly go as expected.
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| The apple tree seedling area became a mess after years of neglect |
At this point in time, I was unemployed and it gave me a lot of free time in the day to garden and relax, although I still didn't have unlimited time for it, between household chores and parenting duties. In 2016, after having been unemployed for about two years, I started a job at a warehouse where I prepared various types of products to be shipped to people. However, once I started the job, which had a typical 9-to-5 schedule for employees, there was basically zero time to invest into the tree nursery idea. The little time that I did have for gardening on the weekends (and eventually evenings as the days became longer in the spring) was devoted to getting my annual vegetable beds ready and planted and dealing with bugs, pruning, etc. once the plants were growing.
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| Apple tree seedlings: 2016 batch on left, 2017 batch on right |
Between the lack of time and the location where I planted the apple seeds--down a steep hill, far away from the house--I stopped maintaining the area in 2017, and I didn't check on again for at least a couple years. It became overgrown mess with multiflora roses, privet, honeysuckle and various other weeds that starved the initial batch of apple seedlings of adequate water and light. In the spring of 2020, because I quit my warehouse job due to concerns of coronavirus, I regained those "lost" hours of the day that allowed me to clear out the area a little bit and check to see if the seedlings were still alive. Fortunately, one of the seedlings from the 2016 batch survived, and many of the 2017 batch survived as well. I've been keeping the area clear of weeds that would smother them ever since 2020, but keeping with my original idea of only letting the strongest survive, that is all I have provided for them.
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| The bane of my gardening existence: multi-flora rose and other invasive species |
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| The 2017 batch leaves starting to emerge, a day after spring officially started in 2022 |
So what exactly do I plan to do with them? Not exactly sure of that myself. Initially, I planned to sell them to someone (who?), but now I think I will just try to guerilla garden them into different spots around town, so long as it doesn't present a danger to buildings or infrastructure. Perhaps the best specimens I will attempt to put in pots and grow them that way, or plant a few around in the under canopy of my back yard oak, maple and poplar trees.
Shifting Away from Permaculture
Sometime around 2017, I had a very dramatic change in attitude about permaculture and its usefulness in my life. Moreover, my life had also changed by the addition of our newest family member, my daughter. These were two events that shifted my mindset on how I wanted gardening and science to fit into my life, and helped me understand that I needed to be realistic with my expectations. In my next post, I'll recount the details about these two events which will bring us closer to my current-day thoughts and methods.
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