Cover your nakedness and eat fruit

When I started gardening I was extremely naive to what can actually be grown here in the pnw. The last thing on my radar was a fig tree. They are really an amazingly beautiful tree and those long droopy leaves where an obvious choice for Adam and Eve. The leaves where not what interested me though. I was after the sweet fruit so rarely experienced fresh in my part of the country. We are all aware of the dried ones and fig newtons but I wanted to see what the fresh ripe ones tasted like so I go to the local nursery, look through the 3 varieties and find the show tree I was looking for. Desert King. Known to produce a very heavy breba crop (early crop born on older wood). This is important because my cooler climate cannot ripen the main crop. Also one of if not the most cold hardy varieties. Bam! I was ready (after some begging and pleading with the wife as well as having the nursery worker get involved in the plea) to make myself the proud papa of a new baby fig. Turns out this parenting thing is tough stuff. Now I have an 9 month old baby girl (for real) and a 4 month old baby fig. When I brought it home it had a few tiny figs on it but it lost them after transplant. I am growing it in a 15 gallon pot. Apparently figs have super vigorous root systems and if you constrict them it will help the plant to produce more fruit. Every 3 years you do need to root prune but other than that it's just typical pruning. You can maintain them to 10' or less by pruning annually and I've seen reports of much smaller. Great for a patio or for areas that you have to bring them in for the winter. Figs don't require a lot of fertilizer and if you ever lose all your clothes in a bet at least you can go to work Monday styling your fig suit.

What's in it for me?

Mowing and pruning, clipping and snipping, raking and staking, fertilizing and spertilizing? (Try it.  Nothing rhymes with fertilizing).  All of these were tasks that I loved but somehow lacked the desire to do on a regular enough basis to really keep things to the elite standard I was looking for.  I guess it all really came down to one thing.  What's in it for me.  I give them my blood sweat and tears and to what end?  I always had the idea that edible plants = ugly.  In my yard my first priority had always been to have a beautiful looking yard.  Suddenly I wanted more.  I wanted a return on my investment.  In other words "You best give or you be gone".  Fortunately I am not nearly as selfish with my human relationships!  My first call to action was to investigate if there were edible plants that were not hideous.  Turns out there are quite a few.  I first had to convince my wife to let me try a few things.  Growing edibles was her idea first but she just wanted a small veggie garden.  I was thinking on a much larger scale.  Total yard domination if you will.  First up on the list was Blueberries.  Turns out they love my naturally acid PNW maritime climate.  My beautiful wife and baby here in front of our lupins and 3 blueberries in the background along with a recovering Meyer Lemon in the yellow pot that didn't like its winter location.  I'm going to try something else this year for him.

We started with a Reka blueberry.  From there we got 2 evergreen (in my climate) Sunshine Blue, Bluecrop, Earliblue, Pink Lemonaid (A pink when ripe fruit with really cool slender glossy leaves with a metallic undertone), Spartan, Chandler, 2x Bountiful Blue(Also evergreen in my area).  If I was going to grow just one fruit bush from my first 2 1/2 years of experience I would say do blueberries if you have the acid soil for it or can do them in a container.  They give a good return young and can give 10-20 pounds in the right condition depending on variety when mature.  So far my best successes have been Sunshine Blue and Bluecrop.  Sunshine ripens over several months and gives me a large handful every other day.  It also seems to be less picky on the soil type and acidity.  Bluecrop was more all at once but fruited pretty heavy for a 2 year old plant.  The others still did very well.  No losers in the group.  I'll post updates in the years to come as to how they are coming along.  I know these are not the rare earth shaking crazy plants that I was talking about but I am doing these in order as to when I acquired them.  That way you can follow along with my journey.