When we bought our last home five years ago, it was critical to me that it had a garden, and in fact the home we bought had a small garden (28 meters) as well as a large porch. I was so grateful for that outdoor space! I had an extensive collection of succulents growing in pots on the porch, and a small border of plants and two fruit trees growing in the garden.

We are now in our new home and I am SO grateful to have a much larger yard so I can do more extensive gardening! I just love being outside and getting my hands in the dirt. I even enjoy weeding. 🙂 Which is good, because my yard is one huge mess of 4 – 5 foot high weeds.

Though I did some initial decorative planting, my priority was to get fruit trees into the ground before it’s too hot so that they can set better. I’ve spent a few weeks reading about different fruits that I’m interested in (many exotic and unfamiliar to me) but honestly got a little overwhelmed thinking about it all.

I decided to keep it simple and enjoy gradually expanding and learning new things, rather than trying to buy everything I might want at once.

Here’s what this space looked like before. I was hopeful that the tree there was a citrus, but when I asked the guy at the nursery, he said it absolutely wasn’t. He thought it was probably ficus, a large tree planted for shade with destructive roots that rip up concrete, and strongly recommended removing it. So I did and it’s now in a pot next to my front door.

As soon as the local nursery reopened for in-person customers last week, I was there first thing in the morning!

Citrus are easy fruits to grow in Israel and I bought a Valencia orange and clementine; I don’t see the other citrus options being something we would use much of. I strongly believe in planting things you will eat. It doesn’t matter how well it grows; if you won’t use it, why bother planting it?

Additionally in this 18 meter space I’ve planted loquat and persimmon. I did quite a bit of reading about spacing for fruit trees to determine how many I could plant; I was surprised that fruit trees in a home garden can be planted just 18 inches apart if they are well pruned! In addition to typical planting, there are also some cool things you can do like espalier (growing along a fence) or growing them over a garden arch.

I considered putting eight trees in this space. The choice was: more kinds of fruits but more pruning of each tree, and less yield on each tree, or more fruit on fewer trees and less pruning. I decided to go with the latter.

I got one grape vine, the Isabella, which I read is the only grape vine in Israel that doesn’t require spraying with pesticides. It’s good for eating and making juice. I only got one because grape vines spread tremendously so I’ve left over ten feet in each direction unplanted. I intend to tie it up so it will cover this very strong but not too visually appealing fencing.

A few days later at a different nursery I got two pitango bushes, which will grow into a living fence along the fencing we put in to close off the back yard. Pitango (also known as pitanga or surinam cherries) make a great hedge and also have edible berries. My preference is to grow plants that have some kind of edible output.

I also planted an Ettinger avocado in a different part of the yard (a pic of that will follow in a post regarding a different project). I planted this separate from the others because it grows much taller and I wanted it to be in a space where the shade it provides will be appreciated (ie not next to the pergolas which will be our sukka!).

When I go back to Beit Shemesh in the next couple of weeks to get the last of our stuff out and clean up our apartment, I’m going to take out the plum, nectarine and jasmine and replant them here.

Avivah