Moving to a new house and starting from scratch

Discussion in 'Garden Design and Plant Suggestions' started by strider3700, Jul 11, 2009.

  1. strider3700

    strider3700 Member

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    Location:
    nanaimo
    My current house has a half dozen fruit trees and a bunch of raised beds which have kept me busy over the years but I'm moving in a week. The new house has excellent solar exposure, much better then the current house but other then a gravel filled raised bed along the back(North) fence and 1 mountain ash tree the back yard is just grass. Just incase I haven't set up my location it's the Nanaimo area on Vancouver Island. The elevation is about 150-200 feet above sea level.

    I've been informed that i must leave some lawn for the kids to play on but other then that I can do as I please with the backyard so long as it looks reasonable. I'm not at all a fan of the ash tree so it's very likely to be removed. It's big and a mess with the birds/berries and in the way.

    Here's two pictures of the space I'll be working with
    http://lh6.ggpht.com/_w1_9lMbNbxo/Sj5v9LVv4kI/AAAAAAAAEgs/ZLziBFY9vgo/s400/MVI_3147.jpg
    Facing north

    http://lh4.ggpht.com/_w1_9lMbNbxo/SjxUM1wkfNI/AAAAAAAAEYc/60X2qAr3A44/s400/IMG_3124.JPG

    facing west from in front of the shed.

    The space is something like 65'(east-west)x20'(north-south)

    I almost exclusively grow things that I can eat, so most of this space will be devoted to fruit trees and vegetable beds. I have a small greenhouse (12'x12' roughly) that I may decide to set up in this space as well.

    Anyways I love the fruit from my current apples, cherries, and asian pear trees but the trees are a real pain to maintain and take up a lot of space. I've slowly pruned them back to "only" 12 feet tall but I still harvest with a ladder and have tons of fruit all at once. So I was looking for an alternative method since I want to try a bunch of different varieties at the new home and have less overall garden space. I ran across this page http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/gardencompass/gc01_mar_apr_01.html and thought it looked really interesting.

    My thought was to set up a bunch of espalier trees along the back fence and keep them pruned to a reasonable size to keep harvesting easy and to let me get a bunch of different types in there.

    Does anyone have advice as to how to best go about setting this up? The back gardens currently look like this

    http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/gardencompass/gc01_mar_apr_01.html

    Lots of big decorative rocks with what looks like weed barrier covered in gravel. The beds themselves are about 6 inches tall and are all over the place in width. I have no issues with removing everything and starting from scratch if thats the best approach.

    For the fruit trees I'm assuming my best option would be to go with bare root trees and put them in this fall? The local nursery will bring a bunch in sometime near october or november but I don't know what selection will be like. Do you guys usually use local nurseries or do you order online? if online who do you use? Also what price am I looking at for trees? I see bare root online listed for $10-$30 per apple tree but I only paid $30 for potted trees a couple of years ago, I'm sure I saw potted apples at a local nursery for $32 just a few weeks ago. other then possible issues getting the varieties I want would it just be better to go with potted trees even though I'll almost certainly need to prune them aggressively to get started with the espalier?

    For the rest of the area this year will be prepared for next years garden. I'm thinking of doing about half of the space. That's comparable to what I currently have but I'm thinking of doing regular beds rather then the raised boxes I currently have. Any recommendations on the easiest/best way to go from lawn with some tree roots to gardens for next year? I was thinking water the crap out of it, clear plastic to solarize it until september then a heavy mulching for winter, next spring double dig and add compost since I doubt it's overly good soil. Anything else?

    Thanks for any info or recommendations you can provide.
     
  2. Paula B

    Paula B Active Member

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    Location:
    Nanaimo BC
    hello Neighbour,
    the only helpful advice I can give you about the "local" Nanaimo nurseries is that they are well informed as to what does well in our climate. Go in a talk with the nursery people I've found them to be well informed, very helpful and good listeners. They may come up with a few ideas you may like to consider as well. The nursery at Bowen and Labieux will order in anything you may want (if it is not already in stock.) The two nurseries on the Old Island Highway (going north) are great also
     

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