Most people like a yard with nice landscaping. Trees, shrubs, etc.

I like foodscaping – landscaping with food.

As we can afford to, we have been working to make our property more productive, while trying to maintain the nice looks of the yard. Our yard came with an abundance of cottoneaster (a.k.a. catoni aster) shrubs. Three of the corners of our house have these large plants which can make a nice, shape-able hedge. There are two more in the front garden, and two complete hedges along the back and one side of our backyard. I would love to replace the hedge across the back with something that would give us edible berries, but that would take quite a bit of work to dig them up, and we would have to do without the privacy for a few years until something else grew into the spot.

This spring we ripped out the one on the front corner of the house and planted two saskatoon berries. The saskatoons are native to this area and can grow to be quite large and have a small berry that looks like a blueberry, but not quite as flavourful. I plan to replace a few more of these around the house this summer.

Speaking of blueberries, last year we planted four bushes and they survived our relatively mild winter this past year and we will be getting some berries in a few weeks. Probably only a handful this year, but as the plants get established there will be more.

Since moving in to this house we have planted three apple trees (one just last summer), and after a few years of them getting established, we are going to get some apples this year. We have Goodland, Parkland, and Battleford varieties, but only the Goodland looks like it is going to produce this year. Unfortunately, the tree has dropped a good percentage of its apples, so I need to do some research to find out what is going on.

This year our two haskap (a.k.a. blue honeysuckle) were producing. The bushes are still small so here isn’t a lot of them, but they taste great! They are ripe by around mid June and were the first things outside the garden we could eat. I think we could have had some last year, but the birds got them first. I hope to plant a few other varieties of haskap soon.

 

We also have around 35 strawberry plants in the gardens and a few other spots on property, so we will be enjoying quite a few of these this summer. First strawberry of the year was June 29, and now we can get a small bowl full every second day.

Nanking and Carmine Jewel cherries are growing nicely and we plan to plant more of these in the yard soon.

The raspberries are producing lots.

Carmine jewel cherries, strawberries, and raspberries from the foodscaped yard.

Looks like we will have some red and black currents too.

We will also have choke cherries, but those taste awful. They can be added to jams and such though, but with lots of sugar.

Our grape vines are doing well, and looks like we will have a good crop this year. We are having a bit of a problem with some grape rust moths though.

Last year’s grape harvest looked like this!

Foodscaping is an investment that sometimes takes years before you start to see a payoff. But when it comes, it is a sweet and tasty payoff.