BellaOnline Forums Money Frugal Living What food do you have growing in your own yard?

Do you garden, have fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, or have a lot of edible foods on your property?

Do you make enough of an effort to eat them, sell them or use them in some way?

Hi Jill, Not a very big garden, but yes a small bushy area where we grow tomatoes and some coriander. That's it!

I have quite a few plants growing in this small plot of lawn at this studio i am temporarily living at in LA. Lemons, limes, dandelions, mint and rosemary all grow here.

Lori, who lives a little bit south, also has oranges and avocados, and my parents, in San Diego have five kinds of citrus plus a peach and plum tree.

CA is pretty easy for food from trees.

I have just planted orange, lime, lemon and fig trees as well as grapes and raspberries. The pineapple guava were planted a year ago. We already have an apple tree and I've planted one more.

Most of them are still very twig looking right now, but next year should be pretty exciting, I've never grown this much fruit before.

Tina, that is great on all your fruit! I never really considered a fig tree. Can it handle a few freezes?

I have been surprised at how even twig-like citrus trees have been able to put forth a few fruits. You might be surprised. The lime tree in the back here have a few dangly fruits growing and very few leaves and branches.

I want an apple tree! When I get home to AZ I plan to put in a prickly pear cactus, an apple tree, a crabapple tree, a pecan tree and a walnut tree.

Berry bushes are a great plan. What do you plan to do with your fruits, Tina?

I have 2 pear trees, several Japanese quince bushes, lots of red raspberry bushes and some wild-type black raspberries, some gooseberry bushes and strawberries.
The pear trees need a lot of spraying, so I usually just let them go and eat the few that aren't riddled with worms and black spots; the squirels and hornets enjoy them. The gooseberries have a funky taste that I'm not crazy about but I freeze them and usually mix them with cranberries to pad out cranberry sauce, but they also taste good when sauteed with beef, making a flavorful gravy. But most of all I LOVE the berries and eat raspberries 3X a day for that glorious few weeks that they are producing. I make red raspberry jam, strawberry jam and a red/black/strawberry jam mixture that I call Triple Berry Jam. This Fall I tried mixing quince sauce with frozen strawberries and it made the BEST jam, sweet and tart together and a beautiful light red color! I sell my jam at a little Saturday market in the summer, along with small watercolor paintings. The jam goes faster than the paintings!

We have dandelions, lamb's quarters, violets, wild grapes, mulberries and we grow some veggies.

Well I'm in CA, it rarely freezes. This year I did put bags over 3 of my trees to protect them from a weekend of frost.

What do I plan on doing with the fruit? I hadn't really thought. We are a family of 6, 3 of whom are teenage boys. I guess my plan is to reduce my grocery bill a little.

I came back to my AZ home and found a whole bunch of mustard weeds growing. I can certainly use those.

Dandelions make a good jelly or a cream soup.