Lou Meyer, business developer for Davey's mid-Atlantic region and Emily Tepe, Department of Horticulture professor at the University of Minnesota, talk with Doug about the best practices of creating an edible garden, including which trees to plant and how to handle different hardiness zones.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
Learn more about Emily's book, The Edible Landscape: Creating a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden with Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers.
To learn more about growing fruit trees, check out the Davey Tree blogs about caring for fruit trees.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Lou Meyer, business developer for Davey's mid-Atlantic region and Emily Tepe, Department of Horticulture professor at the University of Minnesota, talk with Doug about the best practices of creating an edible garden, including which trees to plant and how to handle different hardiness zones.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
Learn more about Emily's book, The Edible Landscape: Creating a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden with Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers.
To learn more about growing fruit trees, check out the Davey Tree blogs about caring for fruit trees.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.
We have a very special episode today. Lou Meyer is Business Developer for the Davey Tree Expert Company's Mid-Atlantic region based in Baltimore. Lou has been on the show probably more than anybody. We're also joined by Emily Tepe. She's the author of The Edible Landscape and a professor at the University of Minnesota. We are going to talk all about edible landscapes. Before we get started, how do you two know each other, Emily?
[00:00:53] Emily Tepe: Great question. Lou and I are cousins, and somehow we both got involved in this world of plants. It's been a great connection to have with Lou. We talk about plants and landscapes a lot in our family.
Doug: Tell me about the book and how it got started.
Emily: Sure, so I have been working for the University of Minnesota Horticulture Department for about 15 years. My involvement mostly on the research end has been in sustainable fruit production, but a side project of mine and a passion of mine has always been this idea of edible landscaping. I have a little bit of a background in design, so I was always interested in the aesthetic qualities of plants and thought that there must be a way to combine edibles into ornamental landscapes, to make ornamental landscapes a bit more productive. Early on in my career at the university, I set up a demonstration garden, trying some of this stuff out, and it was just so much fun. I learned so much from it that the book grew out of that.
Doug: Tell me a little bit about edible landscaping. When I think about that, I'm thinking, I think Swiss chard, like a red Swiss chard, could be both beautiful and also edible. Sometimes I put pansies and violas with a fancy lettuce. Is that edible landscaping?
Emily: Absolutely, and I have to say you read my mind because Swiss chard is my favorite plant to use in edible landscapes for all the reasons you said. Yes, the concept of edible landscaping is to incorporate the idea of incorporating edible food-producing plants into an ornamental landscape so you can take advantage of the food-production qualities as well as the ornamental qualities of some of these plants.
Doug: Emily, let's talk a little bit about trees and then we can bring Lou in since he's a expert on trees. When you think edible landscaping, and again, we repeat this every show, right tree, right place, but talk a little bit about what you were thinking about in planting those, some kind of tree that had either fruit or something we could eat.
Emily: Sure, so fruit trees can be a great addition to an edible landscape. You're absolutely right about right tree, right place because fruit trees definitely have different hardiness levels, so are suited to different regions of the country. A lot of people, I think their first thought when they think fruit trees for an edible landscape is apples and that can be a great choice, but there are many others that can also be really good to use.
One of my favorites actually is cherry. In the area where I am, tart cherries are the cherry tree of choice. For an ornamental tree, they're beautiful trees. They have a beautiful coppery bark. They've got really shiny, dark green foliage that turns a nice crimson in the fall. Then the flowers and fruit are also really, really ornamental when they're on the trees. That can be a great choice for people in many areas of the country.
Doug: All right, so Lou, let's talk about the problems of growing fruit trees in general, but let's start with cherries. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a cherry tree growing in a landscape?
Lou Meyer: I think they're wonderful. I wouldn't want to lead in with saying there are problems with it. There are issues to be aware of from an arboricultural standpoint. At Davey, we try and keep trees healthy and happy and alive. Down where I am in Maryland, and I'm originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, where it's a lot more humid than it is up in the zones that Emily operates in, we get a lot more fungus down here. For cherries, black knot is a fungus that causes some severe cankering in those trees. It's somewhat controllable, and it's not wiping out every tree. It's just something to be aware of. To every yin, there's a yang, right?
Doug: That sounds good. Emily, over here in Pittsburgh Zone 5-6, we have a saying, peaches will break your heart because what happens is those peaches will flower, and then we get a cold snap and we don't get our peaches, but that's what makes them so special. To me, peaches are like a daffodil. It's an ephemeral crop that when it happens, there's just nothing that can beat a fresh, ripe peach picked right off the tree. Talk a little bit more about some other trees that you're thinking about planting when we're talking about edibles in the landscape.
Emily: Sure, and I share your passion for peaches. If we could grow them more successfully where I am, I would absolutely grow them too. Yes, that spring bloom freeze is definitely a challenge with a lot of fruit trees in a lot of more of the northern parts of the country. Plums are another great fruit crop that we don't often think of as an ornamental tree, but they can actually be really beautiful trees. There are many varieties that are hardy to Zone 4 where I am, but definitely down in some of the warmer hardiness zones, 5 and 6 where you all are. That can be a great choice.
Again, you have that potential for that bloom freeze in the spring where you might have a beautiful bloom, and then a cold snap sets in and kills some of those flowers, and then you might not have fruit that year, but like you said, the years that you do get fruit, fabulous. That's one of the issues that we have to think about with fruit trees and with apples, generally, you're probably going to have more success because they do generally bloom a bit later and you won't have that freeze problem. Something to remember with apples and a lot of fruit trees is that you do need to often have two different varieties or cultivars to ensure that cross-pollination because a lot of them do require that.
Doug: When you know the variety, you can go online and you can see what other variety is suitable, right? Is that how we do it for either one of you? When I've ever talked about it, I've always, somebody says, I've got this one tree. It's not putting on many apples. I said, we got to have two. Then I just look up online the name of the tree and then it gives me a whole list of cultivars. What is it about the cultivars? When it blooms or what bloom it is? What is it that makes it so they work together?
Emily: It depends on the species. With apples, it is overlap. It's the overlapping bloom period. Some varieties of apple will bloom early in the spring and be ready to harvest early in the fall, where others might bloom a lot later and be ready to harvest later. You need to find varieties that overlap in that bloom period. When we're talking about plums, it gets a little bit more complicated because plums are such complex hybrids now that there are actually compatibility issues. You need to make sure that the varieties not only overlap in timing but are compatible biologically as well. That can be a little trickier, but all of that information is easily findable online.
Doug: Does it need to be a different cultivar or can you have two of the same plum trees and they'll do it or does it have to be different?
Emily: Generally, it needs to be different. With apples, we definitely need a different cultivar. Oftentimes, flowering crab apples can be the pollen source for a fruiting tree. There are so many flowering crabs in most neighborhoods that oftentimes if you live in a fairly dense neighborhood, chances are you'll have a flowering crab apple within 100 to 300 feet, which is plenty close to allow for that transfer of pollen.
Doug: Lou, that brings me right to you with flowering crab apples, because I've got two of them out in my landscape that are completely defoliated before frost due to apple scab. Let's talk about apples in general. Flowering crabs, what do you think?
Lou: Yes, they're spectacular trees. We plant them frequently for their flowers and their beauty, but yes, they are susceptible to apple scab. Cedar apple rust is another big one. If you have a cedar species within, I want to say 100 feet or 100 yards, you're going to have some issues with them sharing rust. Rust is a type of fungus that needs two hosts. Cedar apple rust is obviously a cedar and an apple. Interestingly, rust is a very big issue in turf care as well. I know Zane Raudenbush didn't cover this in his podcast, but it's one of my big ones that I have to tackle frequently out here, rust in your turf. That secondary host species is actually the Barberry. Barberry is the host species with turf rust. A little aside there, but an interesting fact that I've just found.
Doug: Well, since we got to Barberry, that's a tick magnet too. That plant is, yes, we don't need any more Barberry.
Lou: Not at all.
Doug: I've heard they're working on ones or might have released ones that are sterile, but who knows? Back to apples. Either one of you two have a favorite apple?
Emily: Ooh, [chuckles] well, being from the University of Minnesota, I have to say Honeycrisp is one of my favorites. It's a child of our department and we're all extremely proud of it. Honestly, I have to say that one of the children of Honeycrisp, which is SweeTango, probably is now maybe more my favorite. It has a really delicious apple cidery flavor, has a little more body, a little more tartness than the Honeycrisp. That one just, I think that's probably my favorite these days. It's not around in the markets for very long. If you're shopping for it, it's ephemeral in the fall, but it's a good one to find if you can.
Doug: How about you, Lou?
Lou: I like whichever one is in the pie.
Doug: Yes. Okay. That's what I figured. People go nuts, Emily, for that Honeycrisp. So many times, nobody knows the name of an apple, except maybe Red Delicious or something like that. Boy, first off, I didn't know that it came from the University of Minnesota. Again, if I hear about apples, it's always Honeycrisp, Honeycrisp, Honeycrisp. Then for me, I love Pink Lady. That's an easy one to grow here.
When we're talking about edible landscapes, Emily, any other trees come to mind or where should we go? What else are you thinking about when we're thinking about planting something that's beautiful and also edible?
Emily: Sure. I think a good place to start is starting small. Start with one or two. Keep an eye on things like mature tree size when you're shopping for trees. A lot of trees that are sold in the nurseries now are grafted on dwarfing rootstocks, which makes the trees smaller and easier to fit into any landscape, but don't go overboard. Keep it simple. Don't plant a whole orchard right away. These trees do require more maintenance, maybe, on a personal homeowner level than a typical ornamental tree would, so you're going to need to be pruning every year.
You'll need to be watching out for diseases and maybe thinning fruit in the spring. All of these tasks are fairly limited and they're actually really fun. It makes you feel like you're a part of this plant's life. When you finally do get fruit off of these trees, it's just so, so satisfying knowing that you've been a part of that and that you've helped that happen.
Doug: Lou, let's talk about pruning. How does somebody learn how to do it?
Lou: When we prune fruit trees, we're looking to accomplish a few things. One is increasing the airflow in the canopy. We talked about fungus earlier being a problem down here in Maryland and in Ohio and in that region. Thinning that canopy allows for more airflow and the drier the canopy is, the less fungus there is available.
Doug: Let's talk about a couple of trees that are more for our zone down here, Persimmon. Lou, talk about a persimmon because I just, I came back from Italy and persimmon was everywhere. I've heard you can grow them in Zone 6, but I really don't know anything about them.
Lou: Yes, so persimmons are a native tree to our area. I see them frequently out in the wild, sometimes in landscape too. It actually brings us onto an interesting topic of a lot of edible trees and shrubs that are surrounding us right now. Doug, you know that I'm out with my two little kids all the time, hiking and exploring the wildlife and the wild grounds around us. We're constantly munching on whatever we can find that I know is safe. The big one you covered a few episodes ago, the pawpaw. A wildly popular edible tree of the Eastern United States, and it is prolific.
Doug: A beautiful tree too. Really a pretty tree. Not great flowers, but its shape is really nice.
Lou: Oh, great shape. Absolutely. A nice little fall color too. Some yellow that you see right now. We love foraging for pawpaws. Another good one is serviceberries. Serviceberries are a native tree to our area. The Juneberry, it's also known as, the Amelanchier. If you're a bird fan, you've got tons of birds on your serviceberry tree around June, July as they fruit, but that fruit's edible also.
Back to the persimmon. It's around the United States. It's a medium-sized tree, so it grows 25 to 40 feet tall. Sometimes you'll see them larger, upwards to 60 feet, but that's really rare. Fruit becomes ripe in this area around early October. They're not large fruit. They're probably about a circle the size of a racquetball at the most, but really tasty. They're used in a lot of jams. Yes, the persimmon's a good one.
Doug: I have Serviceberry, Emily, and I'm always walking by it and seeing those berries on there. By the time I think I'm going to get back to get them, the birds have already taken them, which is okay by me. It's all right. Emily, you're in Zone 4, is that right?
Emily: Yes.
Doug: Is that limiting for you, or are there lots of choices for Zone 4?
Emily: It can feel limiting at times, but really if we think about it, there are so many options. If we expand our thinking beyond trees to other fruits, there are some great, maybe less commitment fruits that we can grow. The strawberries are a great place to start. There are a lot of really hardy varieties that will withstand some of the coldest winters. Raspberries are a great place to start as well. Take a little management to keep them from getting out of control, but it's worth it for all that fruit you get in the late summer.
Currants are a great choice for colder regions. They can withstand the harshest winters. The fruit is delicious, and just beautiful plants with beautiful little chains of gem-like berries that are just so gorgeous. Gooseberry is another one that can be grown in cold regions. Blueberries also. Blueberries require acidic soil, so that would be a consideration. Once you've got the right soil, if you've got planted in the right place, really easy plant to grow and will produce fruit for 50 years at least.
Doug: Let's go back to strawberries. Everbearing or June-bearing or both?
Emily: I like to grow both because it's so great to get that huge flush of berries in this mid-summer, early to mid-summer. Then the everbearings or the newer varieties of those called day-neutrals, which are a little bit improved, those are great because then you extend your fruiting season all the way through fall until your first frost, so I love planting both.
Doug: Emily, how do you keep those strawberries safe from everything that wants strawberries?
Emily: [laughs] It's tricky. Exactly. It's tricky. A fence for the bigger animals if that's possible for you. Netting for the birds if it's a problem. The little ground-dwelling creatures, I haven't quite found a deterrent for those yet. Picking them often, being out there in the garden, and just keeping an eye on things. Picking the fruit when it's ripe so you don't have overripe fruit that's sitting there and attracting wasps and all of that. If you incorporate these into a landscape and you're planting them in small little beds and separating them throughout the yard, you can break up those problems a lot. You'll find that if you plant them in the edible landscape in your ornamental garden, I haven't seen, I haven't had devastating problems with pests when I plant them that way.
Doug: Emily, how about a couple more ideas for edible landscaping? What else comes to mind? What comes out of the book that you would suggest for people? Because I just love the idea and we see it as a trend also. If you go to any public garden, you're going to see edibles used as ornamentals.
Emily: Absolutely. I love starting with leafy greens because one, they're easy to grow. They can replace some of those summer annual flowers in the garden. It's an easy thing to start with because they're easy to grow. They're quick. A lot of quick satisfaction from those. If you start with lettuces, you've got such a range of colors and leaf shapes to work with. Kale also can just offer some beautiful colors, interesting visual textures in the garden. Swiss chard we mentioned is one of my favorites to bring a pop of color. Then if you're a little more interested in some different flavors, moving into some mustard greens.
Mizuno mustard has a great, really frilly texture that is just a beautiful border plant. Then you get up into some of the larger mustard greens. There's an Osaka purple that has a gorgeous deep burgundy purple leaf and it just, all of these bring so much color and texture to the garden that they're really easy ones to start with.
Doug: Flavor too. Oftentimes here in my Zone 5-6 area, they'll sell some of that stuff, those mustard greens and mizuna as ornamentals, and I'm going the other way. They can take cold too, which is really nice. You could put them out there in a cold frame or something for the winter and talk a little bit about the flavor of those greens and, once you get those into your own kitchen, it's hard to live without them. They just have that spiciness to them and a unique flavor that's just wonderful.
Emily: Absolutely. Right. There's such a range of flavors from all these different greens and you can use them in so many different ways at different stages of their growth. As these plants are small, you can pick some of those tiny leaves to add to salads and it's just a nice, tender, sweet flavor. Then as they get more mature, you can harvest them for sauteing or putting in soups and also salads as well. Such a range of interesting flavors and what's great about these plants too is you can continue to harvest throughout the season. You're not just cutting down that whole plant to harvest. You can pick a few leaves off and use those, let the plant keep growing, and it still looks really great in your landscape.
Doug: Emily, I have one more for you. It's called Red Streaked Arugula and it's been out for a couple of years. If you can get it going, man, that thing, you got green leaves with red streaks in it. You can't go wrong if you like arugula. Not everybody likes arugula, but I'm obsessed with arugula. Lou, what are you thinking from your standpoint for edible landscaping from your overall work that you're doing for Davey?
Lou: Sure. As an arborist, I always think of the big trees too. We talk about ornamentals as far as landscape design, but some of the larger trees can be really important for foraging gardens and feeding as well. Around here, pecans are a tree that grows very well and you get pecan nuts from there. Walnut trees. Now, when you buy walnuts from the store, you're generally buying English walnuts, but the black walnut, the native tree to North America, has the same flavor and the same effect.
Then finally, hazelnuts. Hazelnuts, the filberts grow great, gosh, all over the United States. Some of those larger trees. Now, of course, with this comes arboricultural management, and that's why you have companies like Davey to help you maintain them. Pruning them away from your home, getting dead limbs away from them if they're in your yard, and being responsible where you plant them, right tree in the right place. You don't want a pecan tree over your driveway where you park your car, for instance, or maybe even over your roof.
This year, we had a mast year for oak trees in Maryland, and I have two white oaks over my house, and for most of September and October, it sounded like we were under attack from these trees pounding away. Molly kept hitting me whenever the roof was shaking, saying, you got to do something about these. Yes, right tree in the right place with them, but they are options.
Doug: Yes, we had the same thing for our oak trees here. We had to walk the dog with bike helmets on, but that's another story. Lou, what do I do when a kid gets those black walnuts and gets that dye all over their hands? How do we get it off?
Lou: Ah, just leave them outside for a few days, Doug.
[laughter]
Doug: Emily, before I let you go, before we finish up, tell me a little bit about what you hope people get out of the book.
Emily: Oh, I just hope people are inspired to think about food-producing plants in a different way. We always traditionally think about the food garden having to be hidden in the backyard, and these plants offer so much more than just food production. If we look at them from an ornamental perspective, we can get so much more out of these plants, and they don't need to just be relegated to the vegetable garden in the backyard.
I think also one great thing about edible landscaping is it promotes biodiversity in our gardens. I'm not saying that we need to go out and replace our ornamental landscapes with all food-producing plants. Instead, if we work some of these edibles in among our ornamental plants, we're increasing that biodiversity, which is increasing pollinators and beneficial insects, reducing disease incidents in our gardens, and just making a really healthy, balanced space. That's what I'm hoping that people get out of the book, is a little bit of that inspiration.
Doug: That's a good place to leave it. Lou, as always, it was great to talk to you. Thanks for your input, and Emily, it was great to meet you. Great topic, and I've got some great new ideas now for my landscape, too. Thank you both.
Lou: Thank you, Doug.
Emily: All right. Thanks a lot. Great talking to you guys.
Lou: Thank you, Doug. Thanks so much. This has been really exciting to be on here with my favorite cousin. Don't tell the others, Emily, Emily Tepe.
Doug: All right, guys. Thanks again. Join me every Thursday for the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster, and do me a big favor. Subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. Have an idea for an episode or maybe a comment? Send us an email to podcasts@Davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S @ D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, you know it, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.
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