Living Like Ed Ed Jr. (best ereader for pdf and epub txt) 📖

• 3 fig trees

• 2 olive trees (I cure my own olives)

• 1 large apple tree and 2 semidwarf ones

• 1 plum tree

With many of these plants, the more you cut, the more you get. Broccoli is like that. Sometimes I can’t even cut it quick enough, ’cause you can only eat so much broccoli.

It’s not like I have a huge amount of space. I have three raised beds, and the whole area where those three raised beds sit is only about 25 feet by 35 feet, including the walkways in between. There’s another little area that adjoins it that’s maybe 3 feet by 6 feet. So, obviously, you don’t need a lot of space to have a thriving fruit and vegetable garden. You just need to use the space efficiently, and to choose plants that will thrive in your climate.

One Tree Goes a Long Way

         Ed’s always telling me we could live off the land, and I guess it’s true. If there’s a little space, he wants to put in a fruit tree. I didn’t exactly plan to live on a farm when I moved to California—that wasn’t my big, glamorous dream—but I do have to admit I can tell the difference between our fresh vegetables and that bland, tasteless stuff. My dad and my grandfather had a garden when I was growing up in the South and it was incredible. Fresh collard greens. What a fresh tomato tasted like, not having been sprayed with pesticides and not having had all the flavor mutated out of it. It’s a beautiful thing.

So there’s a lot to be said for having fresh, organic produce, even if your garden produces far more artichokes and broccoli than you’ll ever want to eat. And if you do have too much of a good thing, you can give the extra fruit and vegetables to your friends and neighbors, donate it to a local shelter, or maybe barter with other people for goods and services. Hey, if you grow enough of this stuff, you could maybe even sell it at a farmers’ market.

Rachelle’s right about the kind of bounty you can enjoy. A single semidwarf apple tree, for example, can produce up to five hundred apples in a season, and that one tree has a productive life of fifteen to twenty years. If you live in a temperate climate, like California, you can plant several trees with different harvest times—so one might produce fruit in March and April, and then another might produce in May and June. That way you can wind up putting fresh-picked fruit on your table for much of the year.

Wherever you live, make sure you choose trees that work well in your climate. For instance, in the far north, you can grow hardy apples and pears. A bit farther south, try sour cherries, plums, and apricots. And in the nation’s midsection, add regular cherries, nectarines, and peaches. Of course, citrus fruits can be grown in some areas of the South. Just bear in mind that most fruit trees require a dormant period, when temperatures remain below 45 degrees, so if you live in the Deep South, check with local nurseries for low-chill varieties.

Even if you’re unable to add a tree to your home, by getting rid of the lawn and adding native or climate-compatible plants that don’t require extra energy and water and fertilizer, you can reduce pollution and also absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

Also, whether or not you plant trees at your home, you can work with local and nationwide organizations to plant trees in local parks and literally all over the world—to beautify our land and to help the environment.

Drought-Tolerant Ornamentals

Not everything in my garden is edible. There are a few ornamentals, which are strictly decorative, but none of them really requires very much water. We live in a desert, so it doesn’t make sense to have it any other way.

Some people assume that means I have a cactus garden. Not at all. The drought-tolerant plants in my garden include

• lavender, which smells wonderful

• manzanita

• toyon, which is also called Christmas berry

• ceanothus, or California lilac

Rachelle also put in a succulent or two in the back.

         Does planting drought-tolerant natives mean you have to have an ugly garden? Well, when I first moved in, I used to tell people that our house was the one on the corner that looked like the Addams family’s. We had all these crazy-looking plants out in the garden and it looked sort of barren.

Now that things have grown in, it does look better. It’s no Sissinghurst, believe me. It’s not some gorgeous castle garden that people come from all over the world to tour. But I’d be willing to have people over for a garden party now.

Actually, the amazing thing is that people do want to come and tour our garden. People have actually paid money at auctions held during fund-raisers for different environmental charities to come and visit Ed. They actually pay money to see the house and tour the drought-tolerant garden that produces some of the food we eat. It’s absolutely unbelievable to me. I told Ed we should start charging admission at the gate.

Saving Water in the Garden

Even when you plant the right plants for your climate, you will occasionally have to water them; even drought-tolerant plants have their limits. So the idea is to avoid wasting water. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, “Home,” saving water also means saving energy—and saving money.

What are the best ways to save water in your garden? You’ll use a lot less water overall if you water early in the morning or later in the evening, so the hot midday sun doesn’t make that water evaporate. Also, try to water when it’s not windy so the water goes where you want and doesn’t simply blow around the garden or into a neighbor’s yard.

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