There are plenty of fruiting plant choices that will give you a crop in less than ideal situations, but you have to allow that the flavor might be off a bit or production might be low. Most of what you read is about plants grown in the perfect spot with perfect soil and perfect light.

I moved here from the Oklahoma prairie and it was hard to have large trees cut down to make way for a garden when large trees were rare back where I was from.

Trees do more than shade out smaller plants, they also take all the water and all the nutrients - so if you plan on planting shade loving bushes under the canopy of those large trees, know that you will be watering them and feeding them a LOT (which kind of goes against the classic permaculture principles).

You can get a lot of food off of smaller plantings. One small group of blueberry bushes can provide you with plenty of berries, but you might need to tend to them and cover them to keep birds out of them. Smaller is easier to take care of.

Figs, blackberries, blueberries and muscadine grapes are all easy to grow here. They don't require a lot of soil modification (though blue's sometimes do) and do okay with our normal rainfall and weather. Figs and blueberries don't have to take up a lot of space, blackberries and muscadines tend to take over the world so you will have to manage them a bit more. I would start with berries and then try out some sort of tree fruit.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I needed to hear/read that to continue moving along in my path. We love figs, blackberries, blueberries, and grapes and will look to start with those. For now, I'll post on craigslist to see if someone is interested in taking these bushes/trees.

Thanks!

Just be careful when it comes to regular table grapes, there is a lot of disease in this region that wipes them out. Namely Pierce's disease which can be hosted by Elderberry (which grow wild here). I have been able to keep 'Fredonia' and 'Victoria Red' alive so far but every spring I think it may be their last. They are a lot like Concord grapes. I grow a lot of different figs and even though some of them die completely back to the ground in a hard winter they always seem to get big enough to make fruit before the next winter hits.

The best advice I can think of for anyone wanting to grow fruit is to get over any fears you have about pruning. To get the best crop and the most fruit you pretty much always have to prune.

It would be useful to know where you are. Clay and sand are not the same in the least. And you just got an answer from trianglejohn saying that the fruits are easy; which is easy for him to say since he manages to grow all sorts of things that cause problems for almost everyone else. I am in the clay soil in 7b. Our ag. extension agent used to say that you can grow any fruit as long as it is blueberry.

I imagine that the prickly bushes are holly bushes. They are commonly planted here. I doubt that they would be missed if you wanted something else. Many landscape plants grow rapidly.

I have the prickly leaved holly bushes too and they hurt!!! ouch..they have been there for over 22 years and more....have been pruning them every year to keep them away from the pathway.

Any suggestions on a quick and easy way to get rid off them?

I had to hand dig all of mine out and then pull the roots out with the truck. A lot of hard work. I love the look of hollies but I also like to walk around the yard barefoot and hollies do shed their leaves off and on throughout the year so there are always sharp spines in the leaf litter around them. So now i only allow them far away from any walking paths.

Blueberries for sure - they are easy here in NC, I have 12 different varieties, the best producing is Tifblue, but some were from unnamed plastic wrapped box packaged no name variety from Home Depot that grow and produce just fine. Fig trees may get wiped out with ice/snow/freeze every 4 or 5 years but will come back from the roots. They do get quite large and I hate to prune them so they are out in the way back (all 12) and are now 15'x15'. Easiest is common Brown Turkey that is prolific but the best tasting are Chicago Hardy, Black Mission. and Celeste. My biggest success was with dual variety grafted Asian Pear, but just before they fattened up the squirrels carried them all off in a matter of hours. I've learned that I have to put bird netting over all for them to tangle in, and hot pepper spray consistently when the fruit begins to be fruit and to be patient. Other than that they are pest free and don't require much care, are very pretty trees that doesn't get too tall or wide -- well worth it when the little fruits sell at Market for $1.50 each!!!!! and they make wonderful jam.

Consider strawberries for a ground cover and that vegetables don't have to be in a vegetable garden especially with your garden's orientation to the sun, carrots have lovely leaves, leeks put on quite a show, sweet potatoes are gorgeous. The dwarf tomato plants seem to keep a lot of critters at bay, and basil is a really pretty plant over all, no matter the color of the leaves. I planted cucumbers in my front yard once when I lived in a subdivision and all the neighbors went nuts watching them twirl and wind un-trellised, growing a foot a day for sure, completely covering the "decorative gravel" the HOA made us use instead of lawn. Lots of pickles were given out that year much to everyone's delight. Rosemary grows wonderfully well here without pests and replaces those ugly green meatballs the contractors plant from one end of the US to the other, still growing ugly for 50 years and totally worthless. Grapes like to take over and the Japanese Beetles love them (use BT every 5 years for easy elimination of that pest). I grow some just for stuffing into Dolmas but have not had much luck getting a crop of edible fruit all at once because the birds do too. They really have to be trained, like weekly it seems, to keep them in moderation. I had one grow up a 40' ham radio tower in one season.

One thing to think about is your lawn. Grass and all its needs for yucky chemicals is not so good for things you want to eat, and pine needles are a fire hazard. Think xeroscaping or ground covers instead. My friend asked, "When do you have enough plants?", and I replied, "When you can't see the ground."

And, think of the birds too. In the dead of winter they love the native American Beautyberry, Cotoneaster, Pyracantha, Mahonia (people edible for jam too), and lots of Viburnum in various shapes and sizes that also provide beautiful flowers pest free.

Some fruits you do not want are: Apples - cedar rust disease carrier/host because of our native red cedar trees, Peaches - heavily sprayed with chemicals is the only way to get a crop (of chemical laden fruit), Pear trees - fire blight magnet, Paw Paw - very slow to fruit and not very interesting visually, only eaten fresh and rather insipid, Blackberries - take over the world with underground roots that pop up everywhere even years later and compete with our native seedy blackberries without flavor, Crabapples - deer magnets who will come back for years and paw the ground where they were forever and ever, Raspberries - never produce fruit after the first year and die consistently without reason, Rhubarb - will never produce because our climate is too humid and we don't get a deep enough ground freeze.

To answer your question about getting rid of everything that is there now - here's my motto: "This space is mine!"

Nancy

Nancy !! Lol.

Talk about a decorative touch!!! I love the Cucumber vine showing the HOA what it thinks of the "Decorative Gravel". I am glad the neighbours were happy too!!!