Strategies for Growing Fruit on the Oregon Coast

When you live on the coast, one of the things a gardener is told is "you can't grow fruit here."  Which is bunk. Here's what you need to know about growing fruit near the ocean:

1. Pay attention to microclimates.

Most gardeners know about microclimates, little areas of your yard or neighborhood that experience radically different conditions-- like late frosts in a shady corner of the backyard, and intense heat next to a west- or south-facing wall in summer. On the coast our microclimates are intensified, especially where it concerns the effects of wind. 

Your neighbor might be able to grow a certain thing very well, but in your yard the wind comes whipping around the corner of the house and destroys the same plant. So with this in mind, a fruit grower can succeed on the coast; however microclimates must be strictly observed and can be used to advantage.

2. Carefully choose your varieties.
It's tempting to visit the big-box market an hour away from the beach and select a robust fruit tree or shrub. This can be a big mistake. Likewise, that coastal supermarket whose fruiting trees line the sidewalk for a few weeks in springtime should be avoided. I've yet to see a Bing cherry succeed here.

In both cases, you are likely to purchase a plant that is ill-suited to this specialized climate. Average winter temps are warmer than inland, and cooler in summer due to the moderating influence of the sea. Many fruit trees require cold in winter to produce a good fruit set, and long, warm summers to ripen. Choosing varieties developed for production inland may just set you up for frustration. Click here for some of the edible plants that have performed well in my Oregon coast garden.

The solution? Get to know a nursery in your community, particularly if the owner enjoys growing food. They can advise you and obtain the right plants at the right time. Locate your nearest coastal extension office-- for my location, that's in Newport. They have loads of helpful information and may even hold a seasonal plant sale with the right varieties. Finally, seek out neighbors and garden clubs in your community for advice. There's always an expert nearby if you pay attention. Read more about my choices for fruit in these articles.

3. Provide shelter from wind.
The best wind screen for your new fruiting plants is permeable rather than solid. If the wind can be diffused on its way through, the damage on the lee side will be significantly reduced. A solid barrier can actually force the wind to find its way up and over, creating increased eddies and more damage. Knitted shadecloth stretched across a frame (pictured) or existing fence can do the job nicely. I've found 30% shade cloth to be ideal, and knitted holds up in high winds better than woven cloth. Secure it with zip-ties or strong clamps. On the Oregon coast, persistent wind comes out of the north in summer and strong, gusty winds out of the southwest in winter.

A related strategy is to plant a hedge on the north side of your garden to minimize the drying winds of summer. Use coast-adapted hedge plants like these.

4. Make necessary soil amendments.
Due to heavy rainfall, our coastal soils tend to be highly acidic.  Additionally, the sandy makeup in many areas is quick to leach nutrients. Adding lime to boost pH and compost for organic matter are commonly added as topdressing, but testing your soil is a good place to start. If you can't locate a place to send samples, or the wait time is too long, get a high-quality home kit like this one for basic measurements of pH (acidity/alkalinity), nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Correcting these major nutrients-- and choosing the right plants-- will go a long way toward growing a successful garden.

What's Become of My Edible Landscape - Part 1

It's been nearly four years since my last post, and there continues to be interest in this blog. An update on the edibles in my coastal landscape seems timely, given that spring is the time for planting and planning. I'll start with some of the hits in this post, then move on to misses in part 2.

As I wrote before, planting raspberries here (and most places in the Northwest) is a no-brainer. Given their high cost at the market and ease of planting-care-harvest, they are great bang for the buck. My 'Saanich' red raspberries continue to produce mightily from one little row, filling the freezer and our bellies in early summer.

We took a big risk in cutting down the long hedge of arborvitae that provided privacy from our very-close neighbor's house, and replacing it with a row of Asian pears 'Kosui' and 'Chojuro.'  I'm happy to report they are thriving. We created a support structure of cedar posts and stainless wire on which to train our pears in a style known as "pleaching." For a great guide on this and other pruning methods, check out my favorite book on the topic.

The 'Frost' peach that was planted on the south side of our garage, trained similarly, continues producing boxes of peaches every summer. I don't weigh the harvest, instead counting the fruits, and it's usually 300+ on this single tree. The 3-way espaliered apple on my garden fence produces lots of Liberty apples, and a smaller number of Akane and Melrose. Enough for daily lunches and some processing over a few months in the fall.

Blueberries and strawberries continue producing without much trouble, and the Seascape strawberries have yielded lots of starter plants for friends and neighbors. It was great fun when the little girls next door started their very own strawberry bed from the plants I was digging out of my paths. A female Seaberry has been producing small handfuls the last two seasons (a male plant is required too).

For the first time, my Cascade hops made their way into a batch of homebrew last fall... still a ways to go learning that craft but the plants are doing well over the backyard deck. Climbing right along side them in the deck planters are an ever-changing mix of vining tomatoes, scarlet runner beans and flowering annuals. I'll have to write a separate post on the subject of coastal grapes...

Among the less-vigorous, wait-and-see plantings are the 'Negronne' fig tree, 'Red Pearl' lingonberries, cranberries and a hardy kiwi vine 'Issai.' These have all survived and show some promise but have yet to yield any food. A potted pomegranate in my greenhouse surprised me with tiny fruits last season, though they never fully matured. And for the first time I saw tiny cranberries forming on my creeping plants in the garden. Some other creature got to enjoy them but it was fun to see them at last!

Experimental Fruit 101

Last weekend I visited (for the first time) our local Fruit Scion Exchange, held by the Home Orchard Society in Canby at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds this year.

As an avid fruit grower with just a middling knowledge on the subject, it was a thrilling sight!  Hundreds of people cramming excitedly into the building for the chance to get their hands on some rare variety of fruiting plant.  Isn't it great that food gardening has become so popular?

For the novice, this event can be overwhelming and confusing with so much to choose from and little explanation of procedure. The volunteers work really hard to make it come together, so it's not meant as a criticism... but the noise level inside made it nearly impossible to ask questions. Would have liked to watch the expert grafters at work but those lines were forever long, as was the rootstock table.  I took some grafting in horticulture school but never did enough to get really good at it-- yet.

Female Seaberry leafing out

Basically the way a "scion exchange" works is that you pay an entry fee, which entitles you to as many fruit scions as you want, for free.  Scion wood is the part on your tree/plant that produces the edible variety.  That part is grafted onto a rootstock, which determines overall height and vigor of the tree, among other characteristics.  Your free scions must now be grafted onto something... so you can either stand in the long line to buy rootstock ($5 or so) and do it yourself, or pay the experts to graft it for you (another table).  Now you have a complete fruit tree to take home and baby for a year so the graft can knit together.

The other option is to take your scions home and graft them onto existing trees in your landscape.  Perhaps you have an old vigorous cherry tree that only produces the tiny sour cherries and you want some sweet ones.  Or you have an apple tree with a single variety and you'd like several on that tree.  Some folks even graft onto related plants, like a named apple variety onto wild crabapple.

Since I was unprepared as to variety information, I picked up a few scions knowing nothing about them.  Some had been recommended to me as a coastal gardener, from folks on the HOS forum.  Everything fruit-wise on the coast is an experiment, so I'm willing to give things a shot. Here's what I brought home:

Apples - Honeycrisp (a favorite), Airlie Red Flesh (also known as Hidden Rose), King Luscious
Pear - Orcas (a Puget Sound variety), Swiss Bergamotte
Asian Pear - 20th Century
Grape - Swensen's Red

Other fruits I'm growing in my home landscape in Lincoln City OR are experimental, those already bearing fruit successfully are marked in bold.  Others are quite young so it's too soon to tell, stay tuned.

Lingonberry 'Red Pearl' (OGW)
Espalier apple, 3 way: Liberty, Akane, Melrose (BL)
Espalier pear, 3 way: Bartlett, Rescue, Anjou (BL)

'Rescue' pear blossoms

spring peach blooms

Peach 'Frost', fan-trained on south wall  (BL)
Thornless blackberry 'Black Satin'
Cascade Berry, gift from our clients' Seattle home
Purple-leaf fruiting plum, unknown rooted variety, heirloom from client
Olives 'Arbequina' and 'Leccino' (OGW)
Seaberry (male & female) 'Garden's Gift' (OGW)
Honeyberry 'Blue Pacific' and 'Blue Velvet' (OGW)
Strawberry 'Seascape' (BL)
Raspberry 'Saanich' (RT)
Asian pears 'Kosui' and 'Chojuro', training into pleached form as screen (BL)
Alpine strawberry 'Mignonette'
Hops- 'Golden' (BL), 'Nugget' and 'Cascade'
Grapes - Sauvignon Blanc, 'Price', 'Crimson Bunch', 'Ortega'  (RT)
Black currant 'Crandall' (RT)
Evergreen huckleberry, native
Blueberry- 3 bushes, 'Duke' and 'Blue Crop' (BL)
Cranberry 'Stevens' - creeping groundcover type (RT)
Fig 'Negronne' - potted in greenhouse
Hardy kiwi 'Issai' (OGW)
Pomegranate (BL) - potted in greenhouse, outside summer
Citrus, unknown orange variety - potted in greenhouse, outside summer
Nanking Cherry (bush-type) - heirloom from my grandfather's garden

Non-fruiting food plants, perennial:
Rhubarb, 'Victoria' (BL)
Asparagus - unknown (BL), this will be the 3rd year
Artichokes - 'Green Globe' I think (BL)
Cinnamon vine (tuberous) 'Dr. Yao' (OGW)
Ginger -potted, from organic grocery
Wintergreen - leafy groundcover (OGW)
Tea shrub 'Sochi' (OGW) - man, do the deer love this one!
Saffron crocus (OGW)
Daylilies (for edible flowers) - several

Deer protection on tea

Jerusalem sage - not an herb, but leaves edible - (BL)

Legend: Plants purchased mail-order from Raintree Nursery (RT), One Green World (OGW) or in-person from Blake's Coastal Nursery in Gleneden Beach (BL).  Some were obtained from other gardeners.  Please note whether they can ship to your state before ordering fruit.


What kind of fruit are you growing in your landscape or garden?

Coastal Cash Crop: Raspberries

Harvesting raspberries in late July

It has become quite popular of late to try growing your own food in the backyard (or front yard for that matter). However many home gardeners have limited space, so the question becomes:  which vegetables or fruits are going to give me the greatest return for the time and money spent?

My answer, if you live on the Oregon coast, is to try raspberries.  

One of the great joys of the garden is to pick fresh fruit in season, and raspberries have to be one of the most loved.  Living in western Oregon, we are fortunate that our climate is just right for nurturing these wonderful fruits, along with many other types of berries.  Mild winters, slightly acid soil that is high in organic matter, plentiful water but low rainfall during harvest season.  They are easy to plant and care for, and easier still to harvest.  The work is mostly in the preparation and planning, and your efforts will be repaid tenfold.

Red raspberries are classified as summer-bearing or fall-bearing, to keep it simple.  Start reading on berries and they will go into all kinds of detail on the types of canes and how they fruit.  For the beginner, start with a vigorous summer-bearing type and purchase disease-free stock from a nursery.  A bundle of bare root plants is a cheap investment, usually $10-15.  Each of these rooted sticks will multiply into several canes within the first year, and bear fruit the second.  

You need to find a sunny place for a permanent well-drained row, 10' or so to start.  Pick a spot with good sun exposure for most of the day and open air circulation, and if your soil stays wet at any time, build it up into a raised (12-18" high) row before planting.  At each end you need a sturdy post 6' tall, to which you can attach a foot long horizontal crossarm at the top.  Then a couple sets of wires, one at 2' high and the others attached to your crossarms.  Then once you plant the row of starts they will simply grow up inside the encircling wires.   (See the diagram in OSU publication below.)

Provide your raspberries with a good annual side-dressing of a rich compost-- don't pile against the canes-- sometime between late fall and late spring.  I like to clean out my chicken coop and make a row of the straw-based material along the side of the raspberry row, about one foot away, in late fall.  It slowly degrades over the winter and in spring the well-fed plants are ready to grow!  You could also use well-composted steer manure or mushroom compost.  An annual side-dressing of complete organic fertilizer in spring is helpful.

My simplified pruning approach is to cut out the old canes (that had fruit on them this year) in late summer, after all the fruit is done.  It's easiest at this stage to see what's a new cane and what's old.  The new canes will be fruiting next year.  Thin out the canes somewhat, so there is plenty of air circulation.  If you want to keep it really tidy, you can loosely tie the new canes to the wires to hold them apart.  Then before winter I remove all the old leaves, top the canes at about 6' tall, and rake up all the debris underneath.  That's it for my pruning.

If you want fall-bearing raspberries you can be even lazier, and just cut them all to the ground in winter.  The new canes that come up in spring will bear fruit in late summer or fall that year.  There are more complicated ways to manage the pruning and maximize yield, but these are refinements rather than requirements.

My pick for a great cultivar of summer red raspberries is 'Saanich.'  Our 2-year old row (10' long) produced around 75 pints of berries this summer, we kept track.  And here's where I come back to that point about payback.  A few hours of pruning and feeding, casual watering as needed through summer, and I literally harvested hundreds of dollars in fruit this year.  Local berries were 3-4 dollars per HALF pint in our area.  I had berries for freezing, fresh eating, jam and still plenty to give away to friends and family.

Can your pumpkin patch measure up?

More information and sources on red raspberries:

Growing Raspberries in Your Home Garden, a publication by Oregon State University

Raspberry Cultivars for Western Oregon, also from OSU

One Green World - mail order fruit nursery in NW Oregon

Raintree Nursery - mail order fruit nursery in SW Washington state

Fruits and Berries (Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening)  a good general guide for organic berries