259. Part 2 Growing Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest: How to Grow Abundant, Organic Fruit in Your Backyard | Tara Austen Weaver | Seattle, WA

Today, I’m excited to introduce my guest from Tara Austen Weaver who’s written a book about growing

Growing Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest: How to Grow Abundant, Organic Fruit in Your Backyard

I know that you are going to love this because it’s got lots of great tips for anyone living anywhere not just in the Northwest and I’m super excited because last summer I was visiting Nola’s yard last summer because her blueberries were amazing and I am bound and determined to grow some this year! And there’s just so much to learn so welcome to the show!

Tell us a little about yourself.

My mom had a giant organic garden!

I guess I’m sort of a second generation gardener I actually grew up not really liking to garden I liked playing and running around but weeding seemed like drudgery to me!

I have all these very visceral memories of just being out in the garden and sunshine, my mom would pop cherry tomatoes into our mouths when we were kids, because we just picked it in the sunshine!

fruit that was warm from a tree

So I have all these really positive memories of being in a garden but not doing any work!

I was living in San Francisco in my late 20s, early 30s

I started coming back around to the idea of gardening

I remember one year for my birthday I got the idea to build these window boxes ~ I had gotten into cooking. I wanted to grow herbs.

It is so irritating to buy a whole bunch of parsley when you just need a sprig.

I lugged these boxes home and I’m dangling out this window and holding this heavy drill and I got them put up and filled them with soil and nestled my tiny little herbs and was so so pleased!

Then within a week or two, I noticed the sage leaves had this kind of white stuff on it. I was concerned and I lived on the foggy side of the city and thought oh my is this is fungus or blight on my herbs and when I went to investigate I discovered it was pigeon poop and I realized I wasn’t gonna be a gardener in the city.

It wasn’t till I moved to Seattle about 10 years ago that everything fell into place, Seattle has such a giant gardening community!

Everyone here it seems even if they just grow beautiful yards edible ones and everyone is out working and tending vegetables

I got bitten by the gardening bug

• quickly used up all of the area
• didn’t have much of a yard
• I got a community garden plot
• started studying permaculture

Eventually my mother moved up to Seattle and bought a house on half an acre!

For the last 9 years we have been collaborating

The Neglected Orchard

there were 9 fruit trees on the property but they were engulfed in blackberries