Hello
Edible Plantscaping Benefits Everyone
We know instinctively that plants greatly improve an environment so we have 30 pages (!) of attached research clearly affirming how employers, schools and organizations can benefit from better employee and public perceptions and improved environment.
Apple Trees for Health
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
The most popular childrens' fruit are apples. Having a fruit tree present that will actually feed the children, then them participating in the growth and harvest. We provide education materials and can't think of a better way to bring nutritional awareness to kids.
churches
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
Apples are a Biblical story and churches around the country have typically been the common ground to start forest edible landscape projects, for feeding, etc., as well as a tree on-site. Your congregation and community benefits, as will local fundraising and engagement.
cafeterias & Dining
Day Care Centers & Schools from k to 12
Health Care facilities
Apples, a wide range of varieties, growing in an eating area, affordably and profusely, will help remind employees, visitors and others how you value nutrition enough to provide fresh fruit choices to those interested and to emphasize good health and diet.
Health Care facilities
Health Care facilities
Health Care facilities
We suggest a review of our blog for more information, though we doubt there is much question how a fresh fruit tree would impact clients, employees and contribute to the image of your facility as a "healthy environment".
General work space
Health Care facilities
colleges & Communities
Employers are using every tool to attract new hires and keep current ones, but what better message to send about your concern for your people, their health and your desire for them to recognize health conscious choices than having a couple apple trees on site?
colleges & Communities
Health Care facilities
colleges & Communities
College & community buildings and grounds, even inside in lobbies, meeting areas, or open outdoor areas are ideal locations for apple trees to encourage all of the good connotations attached to apples, i.e., organic fruits as better snack choices. You'll be surprised how little the cost and how great the impact of a minimum investment.
Site Content
Additional Information
Apple trees are perfect for an onsite fruit tree because apples are the most purchased and loved fruit. However, unlike other plants, apple trees need to be in a chilled environment during a dormant period, specific to the prevailing weather of our region, which allows them to recover from dormancy to cycle into the following season, and to encourage the trees to produce fruit.
Apple trees - like all trees - don't always respond well to transplanting, and certainly not twice yearly transplanting from ground to pots and from pots back to ground again for winter. To eliminate the need for recovery from transplanting, we place all indoor apple trees into large pots, including the perfect soil, fertilizing, disease and pest treatments and stabilzing the trunk to keep them stable. The trees remain permanently in pots unless the trees grow to much and are unwieldy, at which point they are planted in the ground.
In this manner we can assist our clients to either move their potted trees to an outdoor area in the winter, and back inside again by offering caster plant platforms for easy movement in and out and out and in again. Or, we can assist to choose a place to plant fruit tree(s) outdoors in the ground.
Potted apple trees don't have to be moved indoors, so if there is an outdoor area where the trees can remain year round, the tree may or may not be moved. For facilities with patios, enclosed yards or play areas or decks where the trees are accessible during production, apples can be picked by anyone who happens to be nearby.
We offer our Orchard Management program which includes fertilization, pest protection, disease control and assistance to more trees indoor or outdoor, depending upon the season, custom designed for your needs, so you don't have to do a thing! Ask us for details.
How Much Fruit Will a Tree Produce?
The perfect tree can produce 800 or more apples per year. Production varies dependent upon how the tree is cared for, the environment in which it is placed, watering, the variety of tree chosen. For small areas where as much production as possible is preferred, we recommend dwarf varieties and for even greater production, we recommend more than one tree as cross pollination between trees that are compatible pollinators. There are multiple choices of these, less expensive trees in our shop. (Sample) We will assist you to make choices that work for you.
NOTE—One method of increasing production is to choose tree stock that has had multiple other varieties of fruit which ripen at a different times during the season, grafted onto the tree, so that the tree produces fruit in more than the one, single season a single variety allows. These trees are known, and developed to be “self-pollinating”, but will still improve production as well as increasing the production of other compatible trees, and multiples of these trees, which we call 5-in-1 or 4-in-1 trees. (3-In-1 are also occasionally available.)
We Believe NE Ohio NEEDS a Food Forest
Additional Information
From Wikipedia to National Public Radio to Sustainable America you will find individual city, church, school and private initiatives designed to re-introduce edible landscaping to feed people and help re-invigorate and protect environments, educate our students and provide alternatives to limited, non-productive decorative landscaping that actually provides food, is in the news.
Referred to as agroforesty by many, are these new urban forest gardens (EXPLAINED) planted on open spaces, vacant lots and/or former lawns owned, operated and managed by schools, congregations, corporations, neighborhood associations and individuals like you and me. While taken one by one, these cannot be classified as “farms,” but all together they offer the promise of providing thousands of pounds of free or affordable, healthy, local fruit to students, visitors, employers and neighbors throughout the urban environment. Here's a link to a booklet on "how" a forest garden is developed.
In US communities coast-to-coast such as Seattle, Bloomington, Ind., Boston, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Philadelphia (MAP of dozens) these new ways of focusing on publicly responsible gardening are taking hold.
Cleveland, Ohio has lost approximately 6,600 acres of tree cover over the years, which could be replaced with edible forests thought the cost of a tree, at an avg $500 each, makes the prospect daunting vs a fruit tree. Contact us if you'd like to consider such an initiative here in NE Ohio.