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Have Some Fun in Your Garden
and Feed Yourself Too!
by David Salman

There are few things in life as fun and satisfying as picking fruit from your own backyard grown plants. Kids and adults alike love heading out the berry patch to pick some fruit; you eat and pick, eat and pick. And eventually some of the harvest actually finds its way into the kitchen. High Country Gardens is offering for the first time an excellent assortment of cold hardy grapes and berries (raspberries and blackberries) especially selected for home gardeners.

Home food production is becoming very popular. Along with fruit trees and vegetable gardens, these are easy-to-grow plants that will provide you with tasty, nourishing fruit for many years to come.

Grapes are an excellent multipurpose vine that can provide both food and shade (on arbors or trellises) or screening (of unsightly views by planting on wire fences). We’re offering some excellent but uncommon cold hardy seeded and seedless varieties suitable as table grapes and for wine and juice making.

I became interested in brambles (raspberries and blackberries) as a student at Colorado State University. I took a great class on small fruit production. One of the first projects I undertook after graduation was working with my Uncle to plant acreage of raspberries on our ranch in Mora Co., NM. Twenty five years later, we’re still in the raspberry business with 5 acres of U-Pick It fields and production of Salman Ranch raspberry jam and vinegar.

So I decided it’s time we started to offer the best cold hardy raspberries and black berries for our home gardens. All our berry plants have been selected for abundance of fruit and ease of cultivation. With the exception on ‘Triple Crown’ blackberry, all the varieties fruit on the new season’s growth; simply cut the old canes to the ground each winter. New canes emerge in the spring and flower in mid-summer, thus missing damaging late spring frosts. The fruit begins to ripen a month after flowering begins. You'll enjoy 4-6 weeks of late summer-early fall picking with friends and family. Yum!!!
All our grapes and berries thrive in our Western climates as well as the Mid-West and eastern areas of the US with medium to very cold winters (USDA zones 4-8 ).

Dig into Fall!

Fall is an ideal time to get a big head start on next year's growing season! It's a proven fact that fall planting gets perennial flowers, shrubs and trees off to a faster, more vigorous start the following spring.

In mild winter USDA zone 7-10 climates, Fall is the time to plant! Most people have been trained that spring planting is best. But in mild winter areas where the transition from spring to summer heat happens within weeks, spring planting requires the use of much more water to establish the plants when its hot than planting in the fall when temperatures are much cooler.

Let's look at the factors that make fall such a good time to plant:

• Fall planted plants bloom more profusely the following spring, than the same plant planted in the spring.
• Fall planting develops a larger, more-established root systems that help the plants take off more quickly than the same sized plant transplanted in spring.
• Fall transplanting requires less water. As plants go dormant, they require less frequent irrigation. This is especially valuable when planting gardens in areas with summer watering restrictions and surcharges. Note: Be sure to water first year transplants during the winter (once every 3-4 weeks) when winter moisture is scarce and the soil isn't solidly frozen.
• Plants established by fall planting are better able to withstand the drying winds of spring and the withering heat of summer than spring planted ones. Fall transplants have larger, more established roots that give plants a jump on the next growing season.
• 80% of a plant's root growth occurs in the late summer and fall months. Root growth continues slowly through the late fall and winter, as long as the soil is not frozen. Better root growth increases the amount of nutrients stored in the plant over the winter.
• Compared to spring-planted perennials, which suffer a period of transplant shock, plants installed in the fall grow rapidly in the spring--with both substantial root growth, and more vigorous top growth and flowering.
  

While nine out of ten plants are recommended for fall planting, there are a few exceptions.
These plants native to the southwestern US are best planted in spring:

• Agastache
• Salvia greggii and greggii hybrids
• Zauschneria
• Cacti
• Agave and other succulents

We’ve made notes in the individual plant descriptions when fall planting is not recommended.