It was a pretty exciting week here as we finally got to plant our haskap section of the orchard! Our 112 little baby haskap plants actually arrived in a small cardboard box back on June 15 – but they had come straight from the nursery and had to be hardened off first. (This is a process of gradually exposing them to the outside elements of wind and sun over a period of about 7-10 days.)

However, as it happened, Alberta entered a recorded breaking heatwave just about the time these little haskaps were hardened off and ready to get out to the orchard. I decided not to plant them yet, and just keep them protected (and shaded) around the house until the heatwave passed. This wasn’t ideal, but I’m sure it was better than setting them out to bake in the sun! It wasn’t until July 5 (20 days after they arrived) that the weather cooled off enough that I felt it was ok to plant them. It was a bit overcast with a high of only about 20° – so that was perfect for planting! The rest of the week was forecast to be between 25° and 30° (not great for little plants) but I didn’t want to keep them in their little plastic bags any longer and so we planted!

The first thing I did was to mow a strip through our covercrop. Our covercrop (of barley, canola, radish, turnip, peas, clover, phacelia and several other varieties) was growing really well in that area of the orchard and was super thick! But I needed to be able to run a string line to keep the rows straight, so a couple passes with the mower cleared a nice path! With that done, I strung my line and tape measurer and my son Ben & I planted the little haskap plugs in rows of 16 plants spaced 5 ft apart. As we planted, my daughter Allison watered them in good!

There were 16 plants of each of the seven varieties I had ordered – Boreal Blizzard, Boreal Beast, Boreal Beauty, Aurora, Honeybee, Indigo Gem, and Indigo Treat. (I had also ordered Borealis and Tundra, but they were unavailable at that time – I’ll see if I can get them later this fall.) Because of the extended time before I could plant them, a handful of the plants ended up not looking well and I think I’ll lose some of them. The record-breaking heatwave is over, but the hot weather continues and some plants have had some wilty moments.

I’ve had to water them daily so far – I’m hoping to get some cooler cloudy days soon and can start reducing the amount of water they need. I also have a pile of mulch I need to apply – but so far I haven’t had a chance to do that! I think that’ll be Monday’s job!

If I could do it again, I think I would order for fall delivery and planting – mid-summer is just too hard on the plants. But I think the vast majority of plants will come through and we’ll be eating haskap berries before we know it!

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know that I’m not exaggerating when I say I LOVE fruit! Plums, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, apricots…. You name it – I love it! But the one fruit that is probably my all-time favourite of them all is haskap.

What is haskap, you say? (Actually, I get that question a lot! I even wrote an article about haskaps back in 2007…)

Haskap Berries

Haskaps are probably the most delicious berries you’ve ever eaten. Some people have described the taste as a cross between raspberries and blueberries. They are sweet and packed with zingy flavour! Both the seeds and the skin are soft, so you never even notice them – they practically dissolve in your mouth.

Haskaps are some of the earliest producing fruits you can grow – with the earliest varieties ready to pick by the end of June! The later varieties extend all the way to the end of August, so with a few different cultivars, you can be eating haskaps all summer long!

Haskap Bushes

The bushes themselves grow to be around 6 ft wide and tall (depending on your cultivar), and mature plants can produce around 7 kg of berries per plant each year. They are extremely hardy. They can survive -47° winters and their flowers in spring can survive -7° without harm! (Perfect for zone 3 growers!)

Although haskap berries actually grow in the wild in Canada, the tastier, “tame” cultivars have only been around for the last couple decades. I bought my first haskap seedlings 15 years ago when the University of Saskatchewan had just release their very first cultivars. At that time, those haskap berries were still very small and very tart.

Today, there are all kinds of tasty varieties. (Personally, I plan to plant 12 varieties in my orchard this fall.) The berries come in quite an assortment of shapes and sizes – but tend to be oblong and tubular in general. Even the flavour varies quite a bit from cultivar to cultivar. The larger berries grow to be about an inch long and weight a couple grams each.

So what can you do with the berries? Pretty much anything you might do with a blueberry or saskatoon! They are delicious fresh. Our kids love them on ice-cream and in smoothies. (They freeze great too!) Haskap jam is AMAZING and many people enjoy a nice glass of haskap wine! My personal favourite is haskap pie! (The ham ‘n’ haskap pizza we made wasn’t that bad either!)

Needless to say, I’m super excited to have an orchard filled with haskap! I’m sure I’ll be talking about them some more in the future!

But if you’d like a bit more information about haskap – check out the Fruit Program at the University of Saskatchewan. Or leave your comments below and I’d be happy to answer your questions!

As you read the articles on this website – or as you tour our farm and see what we are doing – you’ll likely notice that some of my methods might seem a bit odd. For example, as I mentioned in my last post (Orchard Planting Plan 2020), I plan to grow caraganas throughout my orchard – and caraganas don’t really even produce fruit. In fact, many people around here consider caraganas a weed! So this is definitely not a “normal practice” in most orchards.

And that’s just one example. Frankly, I think several of my ideas about how I will manage and care for my orchard & garden would strike you as being a bit backwards… or at the very least, unorthodox.

But I’m ok with that. I don’t mind being a bit odd.

When it comes to growing food, I’ve always been inclined towards the odd and unusual. I love growing fruits and veggies that are uncommon or even a bit weird. I get excited about growing haskap and hazelberts – while most ‘normal’ people have never even heard of them! And this oddness isn’t reserved only for growing things – my oddness kinda flows into other areas of life too! (Just ask me about my aspirations to become a yak rancher!)

So being odd is kinda normal for me.

At the same time, I’m always looking for new ways to grow better & more diverse fruits and vegetables as well as finding easier & more effective ways to grow them. I’m eager to push the limits of my zone 3 Canadian climate. This means I’m willing to experiment and try new things – even if they seem odd, backwards, or unorthodox.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, yes, I may do some unusual things… Yes, I may have some odd practices and unorthodox methods – BUT I do those odd things for a reason!

Actually, I do those odd things for FOUR reasons. I have four basic principles that guide my gardening/farming/orcharding and those principles inform every decision I make.

Four Guiding Principles for our Farm

1. I’m the care-taker, not the owner.
2. Work with nature – not against it.
3. People are the priority
4. Pursue joy

Over the next few posts, I’ll dig into these principles a bit more and explain what I mean. But here’s just a quick summary:

#1. I’m the care-taker, not the owner.

I believe that God created and owns everything, but He has given me the privilege and responsibility to care for some of His property for a short period of time. I want to be a good manager with what He has entrusted to me. This includes using resources wisely, being generous with what I have, and leaving my part of the world better than I found it.

#2. Work with nature – not against it.

God has designed the natural world to work really well! I’ve found that by mimicking what we see in nature, we save ourselves a ton of work. This is why I love mulch and companion planting! This is also why I choose no-till gardening and aim to minimize (and hopefully eliminate) the use of chemical fertilizer and herbicides. I whole-heartedly encourage plant and animal diversity for this same reason. This is what we see in nature – so let’s take a hint!

#3. People are the Priority.

The success of our farm is not based on whether or not we make a profit, but rather our success is based on how we’ve impacted people. We want this farm to be a blessing to all kinds of people – for our own family certainly… but also for our friends and neighbors who visit, perhaps one day for some employees who might work for us, and for those who enjoy the fruits of our labors. People will always be the priority of this farm.

#4. Pursue Joy.

My goal in life is to experience and share joy. (I believe this happens primarily through a personal relationship with God – but with that in place, there are so many ways to find joy in life!) Personally, I find great joy in eating delicious fruit! It’s a joy for me to grow strange and unusual fruits and vegetables – especially ones that you don’t expect to grow in zone 3! I’m filled with joy when I can share some of our abundance with others! It’s a joy for me to walk around our beautiful property with my beautiful wife and see our kids happy and content and flourishing. There’s a lot of joy to be had – so I’m going to pursue joy!

Ok, that got a little longer than I originally anticipated, but hopefully it gives you a little insight as to why I do what I do. And as I mentioned early, I’ll revisit these principles again in future posts with more detail.

And just to leave you with a question, why do you do what YOU do? What are your guiding principles? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

This last week I reached an important milestone in my life-long dream of establishing an orchard… I bought a SCHWACK of plants! So far, I have ordered 150 Raspberries, 200 Strawberries, 26 Cherry trees/bushes, 6 Pear trees, 6 Apricot trees, 19 Plum trees, 10 Siberian Pea Tree (that’s a fancier name for caraganas!), 5 Seabuckthorn, 10 Hazelberts, 4 Grapevines, 4 Kiwi vines, 6 Gooseberries, 2 Jostaberries, 8 Blueberries, 6 Lingonberries, and 3 Hazelnuts. I also plan to order 96 Haskaps and 20 Saskatoons before the end of the year. If I did my math right, that’s a total of 581 plants!

Now of course, those plants won’t arrive until sometime this spring, but arrive they will!… ready or not! So there is one part of me that is almost giddy with excitement – and another part that is wondering “What in the world have I done!? How will I plant and care for 581 plants this spring!?” To be honest, there is some concern that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

However, I do have a plan! I am the personality type that will research extensively and then make a comprehensive and detailed plan before ever taking a step – so for me to make the conclusive decision of purchasing all these plants, I do feel confident that I know what I’m getting into! (Although I’m not sure my wife is convinced yet…)

So what my plan? I’m glad you asked!

The Plan

Beside our house, I have measured out an orchard area of 230′ x 400′ – which works out to be about 2 acres. This is where I plan to plant all these trees and bushes… and perhaps a few more! Last fall I bought nearly 3000′ of 4ft welded utility fence which will enclose the area with an 8′ fence, so hopefully, the deer won’t be be able to turn my orchard into their personal all-you-can-eat buffet!

I’ve always been inclined towards the odd and unusual when it comes to growing things and I’m always eager to try new plants or new methods of growing. So my plan may seem a little bit different from what you might see in a regular orchard – but let me show you my plan and then I’ll explain WHY I’m doing WHAT I’m doing.

Here is my plan!

Yes, that is a schwack of plants! And you might ask – why so many!? Well, if you read my last post, I mentioned that my initial goal for our orchard is to grow enough food for 5 families. This probably isn’t quite enough for that yet, but it’s a good start! There’s an old proverb that says “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago – the second best time is today!” So even though this will be a lot to take care of in the next couple years, I really want to get things started today!

Plus, I want to see what varieties grow exceptionally well in my particular location – so I’ve planted several different varieties of each type of fruit. For example, I’m planning for 8 different kind of plums, 12 varieties of haskap, 4 kinds of cherries, 3 types of pears, and so on… But I’d never know what grows best until I try growing it! So far, everything I’ve ordered is hardy to zone 3 or colder, but as my orchard expands, I’ll likely try some zone 4 things too.

You’ve probably noticed that I have some rows that are all one type of fruit (rows of raspberries, strawberries, haskaps, and saskatoons) and then there are a few mixed rows with all kinds of different fruit growing together. This is done for a reason.

Ideally, I would grow everything in mixed rows for the sake of soil health, pollination, moisture conservation, disease control, weed control (and I’ll talk about this in more detail in another post), but for some fruits, it just makes sense to keep them all together. For example, haskaps require netting to protect the berries from being devoured by the birds – so it makes sense not to interplant them with large trees! But whenever it makes sense, I plan to interplant different types of fruit trees, bushes, and a variety of other plants.

The other thing you might have noticed is that I plan to grow caragana (or Siberian Pea Trees!) in with all my fruit trees! For most prairie farmers, this seems like a crazy thing to do – caragana’s are almost weeds around here! They don’t provide fruit – so why would I grow them?

The reason why is because I want to limit (or even eliminate) the need to use chemical fertilizer, and so I intended to grow both caragana’s and seabuckthorn in my fruit rows because both of those are nitrogen-fixing trees. As nitrogen-fixers, they can take nitrogen out of the air and put it in the soil where my fruit trees can make use of it! To this end, I will be planting one caragana or seabuckthorn for every two fruit trees. This does take up some extra space and resources in the orchard, but I believe their benefits will outweigh their costs. Time will tell!

But that, in a nutshell, is my plan for my orchard. Of course, plans always change and we’ll see by next May how much we’ll have to adapt! But one thing is for sure – 581 plants are on their way and they’re going to need a home!

Anyone want to help plant a tree or two?

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved eating fruit and fresh vegetables! I grew up on a farm in central Alberta and many of the fields were lined with Saskatoon bushes. My brothers and I would spend hours picking and eating berries – until our bellies were full and our fingers and faces were stained purple with saskatoon juice! In the farmyard we had rows of raspberries (which were probably my favourite!), rhubarb, strawberries, and nanking cherries. We had a large vegetable garden too – fresh peas and carrots were the best and I have many fond memories of pea-shelling contests with my brothers & parents – though it was hard to fill your bowl with the shelled peas when you ate them as fast as I did.

When I got married and moved out to start my own family, we were fortunate enough to ‘live out on the farm’ as my wife’s parents allowed us to pull a mobile home onto the corner of one of their quarter sections. We developed the land from a grassy pasture to a cozy little acreage yard. I planted all kinds of fruit trees and bushes as well as a good size garden. I put up a couple different greenhouses to grow tomatoes, grapes, peppers, and melons. I experimented with growing new fruits, tried new gardening methods – you can even read about all that on my old blog – (www.albertahomegardening.com).

Of course, I made a TON of mistakes and did a lot of things terribly wrong – but I sure learned a lot and my love for growing fruit only increased! After about four years of living on the farm, God led our little family in a different direction and we somewhat sadly had to leave behind our little farm.

Of course, God was good and our new home (just an hour further north) would be even more ‘fruitful’! We had a large lot in a small village, so we were able to totally re-landscape the yard and fill it all kinds of fruit – plums; cherries; chums; saskatoons; grapes; black, red, and yellow raspberries; strawberries; apples; haskap, apricots – and of course, we built a greenhouse and had a good sized garden. We were greatly blessed with incredible abundance!

Seven years later, we moved again. This time to a bigger town and a smaller lot. We again did the re-landscape thing and brought in as many fruit plants as we could – but this time there was no space for a greenhouse, only room for a little garden, and we quickly ran out of space for my fruit trees along the edges of the front and back yard.

But that brings us to TODAY!

Here we are 16 years since we first developed and lived on our original farm site and God has graciously allowed us the opportunity to move back there! The mobile home is long gone – in fact, the whole site had been abandoned for the past several years. Weeds and grass had overgrown the gardens and planting beds – the lawn hadn’t been mowed for years – and most of the fruit trees and bushes had not survived. But there are 3 acres of good cultivated land, several springs that feed a small year-round creek, a large wooded pasture area (for kids and for cows), and a beautiful building site with excellent views of the sunrise and sunset.

So starting this summer, we began the process of cleaning up the old site and we prepared to build a house for our family of six. It will still be a few months before we actually move to the site, but we have all kinds of dreams and visions for what will be.

One of those dreams is for a large-ish garden and orchard. (By “large-ish” I mean smaller than most commercial orchards, but far larger than any regular farm yard!) We believe that God has blessed us with abundance and we want to share that abundance with others! God has given us a love for growing things and a love for people – so our initial goal for this year is to grow enough fruits and vegetables for at least five families – and then hopefully expand from there! We’re not entire sure what things will look like in ten years – (maybe a U-pick, maybe going to farmers markets, or maybe just growing a ton of fruit for a lot of friends and neighbors!) but we’re sure excited to find out!

We want to grow as many different kinds of fruit as we can! Even though we are in Canadian Plant Hardiness Zone 3 and there are a few things that we simply can’t grow in this cold climate – there are SO many fruits that we can grow – so many more possibilities than you might think!

Growing fruit in zone 3 has it’s challenges, but it can be done! And over the next few posts, I’ll tell you a bit more about how we plan to do all that. I’ll explain some of the basic principles that we want to follow in establishing our farm, garden, and orchard – and as we go along, I’d love to share some of the skills, tips, and tricks that we’ve learned over the past 16 years through our mistakes and successes. Of course, I’m sure we’ll learn much more in the days ahead, and I’m looking forward to sharing all that with you too as we experiment, grow, and share the abundance!

If you’ve read this far, I’m assuming I must have piqued your interest at least a little bit, so I hope you’ll follow along in the days to come. I hope these posts encourage you, teach you something new, and lead you to share the abundance with others!

~Dave