this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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Nature and Gardening
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Also just getting started! The only edible fruiting plant when I moved here in 2023 was a black raspberry bush. A year ago I added two apple trees (though the honey crisp may not have survived the winter, we'll see). I had a very successful annual garden last year, hoping to continue that this coming season and try out the three sisters companion planting method.
For perennials, this year I'll be adding two blueberry bushes, inoculating some logs with shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn, and encouraging some volunteer black raspberries that have popped up elsewhere.
Pruning hasn't been an issue yet, but I will need to more actively manage the raspberries this year.
In the future I'm hoping to add lots more edible native shrubs, and maybe more trees if I can find good spots for them.
I'm in the northeast woodlands bioregion of the US, zone 5. I have two compost bins going with leaves, grass clippings, shredded paper/cardboard and kitchen scraps. Last year one bin produced enough to cover about one and a half of my 4x8 ft garden beds. I'm planning to order a cubic yard or two from a local business again this year to top up the annual garden. I don't really expect to get fully self sufficient on compost anytime soon, but I'll keep producing as much as I'm able.
Did your Honeycrisp survive?
You might consider Fordhook lima beans and Delicata squash. I've heard good things. Do you have purslane (Portulaca oleracea) there? If you let it colonise the garden beds, it makes a weed-suppressing moisture-retaining arthropod-sheltering edible ground cover.
Yes you will, lest they begin to manage you. I recommend growing them over a fence or some wire or some sort of trellis and then pruning the ends before they can touch the soil and tip-layer themselves. Life is easier that way.
Some ideas in alphabetical order:
So you cover the surface of your garden beds with compost? That's the way. Protect the soil from erosion while keeping the nutrients near the surface where the roots can reach them. A generous layer of mulch over the winter is also helpful, especially if the beds will be vacant.
Do you compost your poop? Mixed with wood shavings, that could make a fair amount of compost.
Thanks for the detailed response!
Neither of my apples have leafed out yet, which has me a little worried - though the Baldwin put out a sucker below the graft which I cut off.
I actually do have a couple of (non-native) purslane species in the yard - I hadn't thought about using them as a living mulch, but I like the idea. One of them has gorgeous flowers.
Not something I feel comfortable I could do safely, unfortunately. Especially since my house is in a saddle curve where a lot of storm water flows through into some wetlands conservation land. I'd be worried about runoff. Also not sure how my town would feel about it!
That's the plan! I'd also like to do some cover crops and chop-and-drop this fall for mulch.
We tell the trees to grow, and they do grow, but just to spite us. (That's called "malicious compliance.")
I don't think that it matters at this point. Native or not, it really is a useful plant, not only for the garden, but also for those sidewalk cracks where nothing else seems to grow.
You'd only need to prevent the water from spreading it around until it breaks down. If you compost it on a small raised platform with a roof over it, you shouldn't have much issue. For any minor spillage, you can plant something around the compost platform to absorb it. Once the compost breaks down, runoff would be a concern only due to the loss of hard-earned nutrients, which you could also reduce with vegetation and mulch.
I've heard that buckwheat can work as a winter cover crop, though I've never actually seen it done. Do you have any Acer negundo popping up? That would probably be choppable and droppable, though more suitable as mulch for the fruit trees than the garden beds. If you have any Elaeagnus umbellata in your area, you could cut it down for woody mulch as well, but I don't recommend planting it. For mulching the garden beds, some large herbaceous plant probably makes more sense, but I don't know the cold-climate equivalent of banana, and the closest things to Tithonia diversifolia probably wouldn't grow back very well. I do NOT recommend grass.
As an honourable mention... Robinia pseudoacacia is another potential source of woody mulch, but it's probably the nuclear option. I don't know if there are any cow pastures or old copper mines near you, but if so, then this could probably reforest them if you let it grow up to produce seeds. The neighbour's lawn wouldn't stand a chance. If it isn't already growing in your area, exercise extreme caution. This plant is not a toy.
I don't have any of those species, but I do have a lot of invasive alder buckthorn (frangula alnus) which I'm cutting out and could use for mulch. Tempted to keep one or two around to coppice for trellis material or firewood/kindling since it seems to grow back pretty well.
Buckwheat and field peas are my current fall cover crop plans for later this year.