Garden and Edible Landscaping

It's already August 2nd! I can't believe how fast our summer is going by. With the end of gardening season close by, I'm already seeing that I didn't accomplish my full goal with our garden. I was expecting more out of our garden to get us thru the winter months. 

A garden only gives out what you put into it. Unfortunately I didn't have time to put much into it. We're still waiting on tomatoes and sweet corn to finish. We will have to see after the garden is finish, what the actual outcome is going to be. 

Our full goal for this year was to get enough vegetables to freeze, store or can to get us thru until the beginning of next year. This is our 2nd year having a garden, so not having the experience or expertise, we are growing and learning at the same time. Hoping within 5 years to have some things down that would make us better gardeners. This year we kept a diagram of where we planted certain items, and the seeds that we planted, if they were heirloom or not, when we planted and our crop turned out like. I'm hoping to keep this type of log for reference for us to learn from. 

This year we expanded our garden in hopes of our future being more self sufficient. We expanded it with fruit trees, nut trees, and bushes. We also added grapes and varies raspberries, and blackberries to this mix. We consider this an investment into the future. My hopes with all of this is to have enough fruit to can, and freeze for our needs and have excess fruit to sell at farmer's market. 

Our trees of choice for this year was 4 cherry trees, 2 pear trees, 1plum tree, 1 nectarine tree, 2 crabapple trees, and 3 hazelnut bushes. I'm hoping for next year to expand that to some peaches, plums, english walnuts, almonds, and pecans. Hoping to maybe get a few more grapes and kiwi fruit also. Two years ago, we planted 2 apple trees, which got their first apples on this year. By having the crabapple tree, my hopes is that it helps pollinate the other apple trees. They seem to bloom at different times of the year. 

Along with our growing garden and orchard, becomes my problem of trying to make it all look organized and beautiful. I have always wanted a nice garden with something that is functional. I love the idea of an edible landscaping. Trying to find specific diagrams of how to do it, is impossible. I have looked everywhere. 

There seems to be no specifics for basic fruits and vegetables for a beginner gardener. They have several out there for a lot of different fruits and vegetables that I would have no clue on what to do with. They are beautiful but not functional for us. The search goes on for a beautiful way of making our edible landscaping:) 

~Angela