Fruits, berries for your yard

By C.W. Cameron

For the AJC

Atlantans love a sale, and it seems they particularly love a sale that involves fruit trees and berry bushes. That’s the conclusion after more than 1,000 fruiting plants were sold in the first hour of the Atlanta Local Food Initiative’s first plant sale last January. When the dust had settled, more than 2,000 fruiting trees, vines and bushes were sold to enrich gardens around the Atlanta area.On Saturday, gardeners can augment their home orchards or start new ones with the 40 varieties of fruiting plants available at the second annual Incredible Edible Grow-It-Yourself Fruit Tree Vine and Berry Bush Sale being held on the grounds of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Some folks will be picking up pre-ordered plants, but for the rest of us, there will be plenty to choose from.

“The first thing to go last year were the berries, so we expanded our offerings of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries,” said Barbara Petit, executive director of the food initiative.

The sale will include apples, crabapples, figs, paw paws, plums, kiwis, muscadines, pomegranates and persimmons in addition to the berries. The plants come from a local grower and all were chosen for their ability to grow well without requiring intensive spraying programs.

In addition to the plants, Georgia Organics and Farmer D Organics will be selling books and garden supplies, and Cafe Campesino will offer fair trade coffee and tea. Master gardeners will be staffing an information desk and offering planting demonstrations, and Concrete Jungle will be there to register your trees in its database.

If you’re not familiar with this group, it collects unwanted food from residential fruit and nut trees and donates the harvest to the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

The information desk is something the organizers added this year to make it easier for shoppers to get their questions answered.

In addition to the master gardeners, landscape experts from Ed Castro Landscape will be on hand to help homeowners think about using fruiting plants in their landscape, Petit said.

All profits from the sale go to benefit the food initiative.

“The initiative’s
goal is to develop a structure where every Atlantan has access to safe, nutritious and affordable food that’s been raised with a minimum of environmental impact,” Petit said.

The initiative encourages community and backyard gardens, urban beekeeping and urban agriculture, including dairy and egg production.

Prices range from $5 to $20 per plant. Some plants will be sold potted, while others are bare root.

The potted plants can go home with you and wait even a year for a permanent home.

The bare root plants come packed in a moisture-holding gel and wrapped in plastic. You’ll need to plant those right away, either in their permanent home or a large container, or heel them in, which means digging a temporary trench and laying in the trees, covering the roots with soil and keeping them from drying out.

They’ll need to make it to their permanent home by the time the buds start to break dormancy, about March 15.