Leslie Fowler is a master gardener who has been growing food organically for her family for over 30 years. today she shares her successes, failures, challenges and valuable tips for gardeners to learn from.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’ve lived in this valley for 34 years, I have 3 kids and 4 grandkids. I have an acre of land on a beautiful lake. I have a 30 x50 organic garden. And a pretty large orchard there’s like 17 trees, maybe it seems big because it’s just me here, so that seems like a lot for one person!
That’s a pretty substantial size!
They’re fully producing. We’ve had the orchard in for like 20 years now.
What kind of trees?
Primarily apple, different varieties. I do have a pear tree. We had some cherries and some plums one thing or another happened and they just didn’t survive.
We did plant a peach tree one time, people around here were like you can’t grow peaches around here. It was an Alberta Peach, we planted it, babied it, every fall we wrapped insulation around the trunk, and protected it, and finally on it’s 8th year, first year it produced, it was loaded with fruit … Unfortunately there were four main branches, they were so loaded down with fruit, it started to split in the trunk. As soon as we noticed we propped each branch up with a 2×4 and try to support the trunk and we had a wonderful harvest but unfortunately we lost it.
I also have numerous
- flower beds
- raspberry patch
- root cellar to store my crops
I work at a therapeutic therapeutic boarding school and I teach horticulture there!
A favorite reading material-book, mag, blog/website etc you can recommend?
the two
Rodale’s Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening
Yep, Mike just said where’s that encyclopedia the other day though because I brought home some garlic from Theodora’s believe it or not we’ve never grown garlic before.
and
Organic Gardening In Cold Climates
I’m gonna have to try that out.
it’s got a really good section about orchard… pruning etc
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Mike's Green Garden 
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