What  a pleasure to walk in your garden, watch your fruit orchard grow into productive trees, observe the new buds and flowers for each new season, fill your lungs with healthy oxygen, bring yourself to a complete state of peace and tranquility upon the sudden impact of sweet fragrance all around you.

As weeks pass by, buds turning into leaves, flowers into little fruits, no more time to wait, the time is finally here to enjoy the harvest of your labor, to pick your very special fruits from your garden.

It is easy to maximize your harvest, turn it into an all rear round experience with a little planning ahead.  Here are some tips that may bring more pleasure, plentiful harvest, and fruits that taste amazing directly from your garden to your kitchen table.

1. Grow good things that you like
2. Try new types of fruits
3. Grow types that produce in all 4 seasons of the year 
4. Don’t grow too many trees of the same kind
5. Grow Trees that make amazing drinks
6. Grow trees that make great jams, and baking 
7. Grow trees that produce expensive - hard to find fruits
8. Grow trees with multiple purposes: fruits, beautiful shape, flowers, and fragrance.   
9. Keep trees within your reach, some require pruning and trimming.
10. Some trees will produce only on new growth, keep then under 10 feet tall.
11. Inter-plant to minimize insects, harvest at different times of year.
12. Pick things at their peak.  Tree ripen fruits are the best tasting fruits.
13. Pick all fruits to make tree happy at end of season.
14. Prune when trees are dormant – such as stone fruits and persimmons
15. Prune after last harvest for tropical trees – such as Guava.
16. Remove dead branches, lower branches, make it easy to see inside of tree.
17. Deep watering is best for more fruits, bigger fruits especially in late Spring and summer time
18. Look at the trees, they will tell you what is needed.  Perhaps more water, pruning, fertilizer, sun.  
19. Remove weeds as they compete with your trees.  Mulch can decrease weeds and water use.
20. User your own green waste as mulch and a natural fertilizer.
21. Use the right tools to prune your trees, move soil around the base
22. Learn how to can and dry fruits.  Freeze extra fruits in small packs.
23. If you have too much, trade with friends for what you don’t have.

Please don't hesitate to let us know how your garden is coming along, or if you have any questions.  Stop by and say hello at one of our participating Farmers Markets. We love to receive pictures of gardens that we planted years before, see the progress and how beautiful they have become under your love and care.