My favorite kind of gardening is edible landscaping.  Our little urban lot is jam packed with a variety of dwarf, semi-dwarf, and standard sized fruit trees, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, lots of veggies, a variety of grapes, and kiwi.  Over the years, I have intermingled the edible plants throughout the yard due to the limited space.  Since we are on a small lot, there was no way to fit everything I want to grow to eat into the vegetable garden in the back corner of the property.  I have experimented with a variety of methods for growing fruit trees and grapes in more confined space.  Although I do have some of my stone fruit trees planted in clusters of three, like described in some backyard orchard publications, I have found over the last decade, I prefer a single trunk tree with multiple grafts, or I just pick my favorite variety and plant that one.  The groupings with two or more trees that I have are less vigorous fruit producers and one variety always seems to dominate and shade out the others.

I am very slowing encroaching on the front yard with my fruits and vegetables.  Right now the front yard still resembles an English cottage style garden, but with less thirsty plants since we are in Southern California.  My main concerns transitioning to more edibles out front are doing it an appealing manner because it is technically a publicly viewed space, only planting the things out there that folks would not think were food,  and still leaving enough room for some grass for the children and dog to play on.  Every year I take out a little more grass and expand the beds, and eventually, I plan to have no lawn out front by the time the children are grown.  Currently out front the edibles include a wide variety of herbs, a couple of blueberry plants, strawberries, grapes over the block wall, and edible flowers.  I have also grown cherry tomatoes out front, but so far, not this year.  The front yards I have seen, with the most attractive front yards landscaped with fruits and vegetables are the ones where there are perennials (like asparagus and herbs), shrubs (like blueberries), and other permanent plantings (like a fruit tree or two) with some annual vegetables and decorative edible flowers mixed in. I also feel a few decorative structures or other architectural elements carry a garden through all four seasons.

The different fruit trees and berries around our property include:

Dorset Golden semi dwarf Apple

Anna semi dwarf Apple

Black Mission fig

Snow Queen semi dwarf nectarine

Red Baron semi dwarf peach – very pretty flowers and yummy fruit.

Desert Gold semi-dwarf peach – I don’t care for the texture or flavor of this variety, but it produces before all the others.

Babcock ultra dwarf peach (ultra dwarf is not an extra dwarfing rootstock.  It is a semi dwarf size tree from Pacific Groves, a supplier to places like OSH and Lowes.)

Panamint nectarine – a standard sized tree I got  on clearance at Target of all places.  It has been my best stone fruit to date.

Giant Fuyu persimmon

Bearss dwarf Lime

Improved Meyer dwarf lemon

Owari x satsuma dwarf mandrine orange – This is my favorite out of all my trees.

Big Jim loquat

Cara Cara Orange

Vincent Kiwi female and a second unknown variety, a male Kiwi that came with vincent

Chester Thornless Blackberry

Triple Crown Thornless Blackberry

Boysenberry Thornless

Hanbury Blackberry

Baba Red Raspberry or sometimes called a Bababerry

Indian Summer Red Raspberry

Black Monukka Grape (purple, table, seedless)

Flame Grape (red, table, seedless)

Perlette Grape (green, table, seedless)

Concord Grape (purple, table, seeds)

Canadice Grape

Venus Grape

Multi grafted semi dwarf European Plum with the four following grafts:

Beauty Plum

Burgundy Plum

Santa Rosa Plum

Methley Plum

Big Jim Loquat

Sweet Pomegrante (needs less heat and does better here than wonderful)

Sunshine Blue Southern Highbush Blueberries

Sequoia Strawberries

Goji berry or wolf berries

*Psidium cattleianum,  a Strawberry Guava, but it is in a pot and I still need to find room for it.

The Veggie Garden

The vegetables I grow throughout the year, (but not all of them necessarily every year, separately as cool season and warm season crops):

Artichokes

brocoli

Brussel sprouts

Bush beans

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Chard

Cucumbers

Sugar Snap Peas

Snow peas

Pumpkins

Many kinds of lettuce including red romaine, buttercrunch, red sails, and whatever sparks my fancy.

Purple cabbage

Tomatoes varieties I have  grown include: Sun sugar, sun gold, sugar snack, goliath, tom thumb, patio, celebrity, bush celebrity, champion, stupice, Super marzano, Lemon Boy, Better Boy, Early Girl, Health kick, Dona, jetsetter, Sweet 100, Sweet Milliion, and a few more I have forgotten.  This year I am trying: Gardener’s Delight, Bella Rosa, Big Beef, Sun Sugar, and Stupice.  ( My favorite tomatoes are Celebrity, Champion, Stupice, and Sun Sugar.)

Zucchini

Potatoes

Sweet potatoes

Yellow wax beans

Scarlet runner Beans

Pole Beans

Kohlrabi

Radish

Beets

Herbs I currently grow include:

Lots and lots of Italian Parsley

Basil

Oregano

Lemon Thyme

English Thyme

Tarragon

3 kinds of rosemary

3 kinds of culinary sage

Marjoram

Garlic Chives

chives

green onions.

(Many of the herbs are found in my front yard as part of the limited edible landscaping I have moved out there.)

Assorted Edible Pictures:

The Perlette Grape vine at the back side of the veggie garden last summer. The grape is about 5 years old in this photo.  These are usually ready to pick in July.

This is the outside view of the veggie garden, April 2009.  July 2009, I rebuilt the gate and fence taller and with more narrow spacing between the pickets to keep the hens out.  It is now classic white like most of the garden’s wooden structures.

The Vincent Kiwi flowers in bloom.  This is a female variety of Kiwi, Chinese gooseberry.  It usually flowers here in late April though mid May.