I was just at Raintree Nursery on Saturday picking out about 7 fruit trees some vines, ground cover and tea plants. I spent about $500 there that I would not have if I didn’t hear about them on the Survival Podcast. Anyway, if you live in Washington or Oregon it’s worth the afternoon drive out to visit the nursery. The scenery is just gorgeous and they are nestled in the mountains near the tiny town of Morton.

I have a 1/10acre suburban lot and now have a collection of 13 trees, 10 of which are fruiting. It can be done.

Also, yes it would be amazing if Raintree ended up in the MSB. [Bobwells just seems so inappropriate for those of us in the PNW.]

can I plant these things in groups in a 4ft by 4 ft area , like all ground nuts together, all jerusalem artichokes together?

I love Stark Bros. – Planted 3 small home orchards over the course of 15 years. Wonderful trees. Started my current orchard with them almost exactly a year ago. That being said, I ordered my fall trees from Bob Wells – calipers of the trees were bigger, and the peach has two blooms on it after less than a year in the ground (80*F here today – our last frost is supposed to be in APRIL – ugh!). I’m not supposed to be adding to the orchard this year as I’m spending time and money on my chickens (and maybe my stock tank brooder is going to become a quail raising thing). But those sand cherries sound awfully good. Got a 100 ft fence line that I need to do something with… And dwarf mulberries – didn’t know there was such a thing. Thanks for another great show.

I would put in my endorsement for Peaceful Valley for acquiring plant for this spring… I have purchased a bunch of stuff from them this year and they are
all the highest quality, great packaging, healthy… everything you could want.
Great company!

I’m quite certain that I have Sand Cherry’s and dig up the shoots to restarted , but can they be cut at ground level and rooted??

Jack, thank you so much for this permaculture/plant-based episode! Episodes like this are why I subscribe to TSP.

I have a question for you or the other subscribers – do some of the nurseries use a lot of chemicals or growth enhancers when propagating plants, which can affect the fruit, and do some nurseries grow plants more naturally? Last year I won a Dave Wilson Nursery “3 in 1” fruit tree and it looked absolutely bizarre due to the extraordinarily large number of buds on it….

On Blueberries… they are very adaptable, but keep in the back your head that they originally are a bog edge plant, hence it’s preference toward acidity. We have alkaline soils here too due to a preponderance of lime stone (nothing like sitting on coral down there though, sorry Jack) and I like the idea of isolating the soil around the plant. Elemental sulphur is commonly used to increase acidity in soil, so I plant (guild) mullein all around my blueberries as they mine sulphur with their deep tap roots. Would a raised mound tend to dry it out more though? If you can micro-climate design around those blueberries I’d consider mimicking bog-edge where possible.

Question for Jack and everyone else out there. I would love to purchase a number of trees, vines and bushes now but my planting areas aren’t prepared and won’t be until some time this summer.

Does it make more sense to wait until fall to order and plant everything when I have my orchard planned out and prepped or do I buy everything now and keep them in pots so that they are growing in an area that I can control and plant them slightly more mature in the fall?

As Jack noted I’m one of those folks that grow Jerusalem Artichoke in zone 9 (near Houston). He featured an email of mine on a recent show where I was the guy who grew so many that I had to take the extra to farmers market and sold it on consignment!