Edible Landscaping with Trees

I just love trees, don’t you?

Fruit trees, flowering trees, shade trees, nut trees, any kind of trees.  Well, maybe not sweetgum trees.  Those are of the devil.  

But I digress!  From food to firewood, trees have so many uses on the homestead and we try not to let any part of them go to waste.  Here at Green Eggs & Goats Farm we have mature pecan, peach, apple and fig trees.  We also have a small fledgling orchard filled with various fruit trees that we are trying hard (with varying levels of success) not to kill.  

 

In a good year, which honestly, this was NOT, our trees provide us with shade, beauty and a lot of extra food for our table.  Gathering pecans is a relaxing fall activity for me, and I use the nuts all year in dishes ranging from pecan pie cobbler to Asian slaw.  During the summer, I make some righteous jam with the fruit from the peach and fig trees.  

Go check out my Rosemary Peach Preserves recipe as well as my Cinnamon Fig Jam recipe!

Even when we lived in a subdivision before moving to the farm, our homesteading spirit had us planting peach and cherry trees in our front yard.  I will never forget how a city employee would come knock on my door every year and ask if he could pick a few fresh peaches.  The novelty of fruit fresh from the tree was just too much to resist so I happily obliged him.  Of course, I understood how he felt.  

Here’s a great, inexpensive way to keep birds off your fruit trees!

But wait, there’s another great reason to landscape with edible trees!  We don’t just use the trees for fruit and nuts.  Annual pruning MUST be done to maintain healthy fruit trees and to maximize production.  When we prune the trees, we save the wood for burning.  Wood from fruit and pecan trees is especially good to use when smoking meat on the grill.  We cut it into little hunks and it provides a great extra flavor when Eric smokes ribs or a Boston Butt on the Big Green Egg.  

Random Aside:  Here’s a great tip for not burning your hands when pulling BBQ pork!

So there you have it.  We just love having fresh food right at our fingertips, thanks to our wonderful edible trees!  

Do you do any edible landscaping with trees?  I would love to hear about it in the comments!  

P.S.  Leaving a comments helps bloggers feel like we aren’t just talking to ourselves.  In fact, it makes our day!

And while we are on the subject of trees, let me tell you a fun thing that is happening during the month of December!  

Green is Universal and the Arbor Day Foundation have teamed up once again for their annual Share a Tree campaign. This year, for every digital tree shared before the end of December, the Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree and for every 25,000 shared, Green is Universal will donate $5,000. They’ve created a virtual forest and people can visit the site, decorate a tree and easily share it on social media. Included in the forest are about 40 trees that were drawn by celebrities like Al Roker, Dolvett Quince and Meredith Vieira and if people don’t feel like decorating their own tree, they can share a “Celebratree” instead.

Here is one of my favorite Celebratrees, drawn by Ross Mathews!  Too cute!  (Yes, I do have a thing for palm trees!)

 

Watch the #ShareATree hashtag, too, because if you RT or share someone else’s tree, that counts, too!!

 

Click here to decorate and Share a Tree!

Here’s mine!   

The Share a Tree Program will help the Arbor Day Foundation plant trees all across the United States in our national forests, state forests, and state parks. Two places in which trees will be planted is in Michigan’s Mackinaw and Ausable State Forests.

Jack pine trees will be planted to improve the habitat of the endangered Kirtland’s warbler. This neotropical migratory songbird’s breeding habitat is almost exclusively confined to young, dense Jack pine stands in the area. Today, Kirtland’s warblers are found in only ten counties on Michigan’s northern lower peninsula and four counties in the upper peninsula. Efforts by the Arbor Day Foundation’s replanting partners have increased the number of singing males from less than 200 to more than 1,900, bringing the species back from the brink of extinction.

***As a thank you for helping promote their Share-a-Tree campaign, I will receive a gift from Green is Universal and the Arbor Day Foundation.  However, I love trees and would have shared the campaign simply because they asked nicely and because I believe in this!***

(P.S.  Don’t tell them that last bit…)