 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for today's first field of fork webinar of the season. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. In fact, this is our ninth year that we have done this series and we're really glad that you continue to join us or maybe it's your first time joining us. We have archived all of the webinars from the previous years and the link is always on the field of fork webinar page. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars, some really interesting topics and we certainly hope that you join us for these as well. The next slide shows the webinar controls and I think you've already found some of the features because of our large number of participants. We invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat and you'll notice there's a Q&A box and there's a chat box. We're going to ignore the Q&A box and just use the chat box. So in to practice, let's have you open the chat and type your city and state. Where are you right now? And while you work on that, the next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service and the North Dakota Department of Agriculture. I will ask all of you to complete a very short online survey that will be emailed right after we finish today. And as a thank you, I will be doing some prize drawings for the lucky winners. So be sure that you include your complete mailing address so we can find you. So include your city, state and zip code. Sometimes those were missing in previous years. Again, I am pleased to welcome you today and introduce our speaker. Don has been a very loyal speaker for us and I'm really happy that he's joining us. I'd like to tell you a little bit about Don. Don Kinsler is a native of Lisbon, North Dakota. He graduated from NDSU with a degree in horticulture. He and his wife operated a garden center in Fargo for 25 years. He is a lifelong gardener and he is professionally our extension agent for horticulture in Cass County. He writes two weekly newspaper gardening columns, has a weekly radio program on two stations, and he also does a podcast. So he's very busy in the media. He and his wife live in Fargo. So again, welcome to Don. Welcome to all of you and please post any questions in the chat and I will ask Don those questions at the end of his talk. Well, thank you, Julie. And it's a pleasure to be with all of you today because I get to talk about two of my favorite things. First of all, get to talk about beautiful landscapes and beautiful flower gardens and also how to grow fruits and vegetables. So we're going to together explore the wonderful world that we call edible landscaping. So come along with me on the journey. And so now when we think about our yards, most of us would like at least two things out of our home yard. We'd like it to look good. We'd like our landscape to just pop and be nice, restful, relaxing and look nice. And we'd like our flower beds to have pops of color throughout the season and to be nice, restful places that we enjoy spending our time. We also, most of us would like our home yards to produce something that we can eat, some fruits and vegetables. And a lot of us would like to be at least partially self-sustaining in producing some of our own fresh fruits right out of the garden. But growing your own fruits and vegetables can take space. For example, we don't always have room to grow our to have our own home orchard and a very large vegetable garden can take space. Especially how are we going to grow some of our own fruits and vegetables with today's smaller home a lot size? Well, we've got the answer to that. We're going to mesh the two concepts. We're going to mesh the having a beautiful landscape, beautiful flower gardens. We're going to combine that with the idea of having fruits and vegetables in that landscape and in that flower garden. So we're going to do both. So with edible landscaping, putting edibles in amongst our flowers, vegetables, shrubs, foundation plantings. We're going to get food. It's going to yield produce. And then also we're going to keep the yard's aesthetics, its beauty. For example, isn't this a pretty yard? And this isn't mine. I kind of wish it would. I wish it was. I'd like to have this in the corner of our backyard. But notice how pretty it looks. Gosh, there's roses. There's just a little daisies blooming in the foreground. But notice also in the upper left hand corner, there's corn. But it all works together. So now I can taste that fresh sweet corn right now. But doesn't that work together well? The including of the edibles in a pretty landscape. Now to accomplish this, many plants are double duty. They're both ornamental. And also it's something that we can eat. For example, take a look here at this pretty planting. Notice, gosh, it's got carrots. The ferny leaves of the carrots are pretty. It's got dark, dark kind of burgundy lettuce in there. That's pretty. It's got some flowers. A lissom it looks like. There's some spinach. I see spinach. I even see some cabbage in there. And so isn't something the way these edibles are combined with some ornamentals really look quite nice. So the idea is to mix in plants without compromising the beauty of a landscape. So in other words, we can have our yard and eat it too. All right. This is our own home in South Fargo. And we redid part of the landscape a bit ago. And so some of these shrubs in the foreground aren't real large yet. They've got some fillin' to do. But I want you to focus on the shrub at the corner of the porch, the one with the bright scarlet leaves. And this photo was taken a few years ago. That shrub has grown. But anyway, isn't that pretty in the fall of the year there? What a pretty blossoms. Or not blossoms, what pretty foliage. But also look at the fruit it bore and bears. This is the Aronia shrub. Isn't that beauty? What nice beauty in the landscape for a shrub. And now a few years after that first photo was taken, that one shrub in our landscape yielded this past year about two ice cream buckets full of these Aronia berries. And Aronia berries, of course, is one of the highest fruits in antioxidants. And you should taste my wife Mary's Aronia berry muffins. They are totally awesome. So then that's something to produce that much fruit on a nice landscape shrub. So with edible landscaping, we can help to feed the family. But also with edible landscapes, people are more engaged in that landscape. Because for example, if you've got a fruit bearing shrub in your landscape, you kind of go into that landscape more. And so as a result, you be in that landscape much better. And of course, that's a really good way to get young people involved too in gardening is to have them pick some of the fresh produce. Now it's not too early to start. Now most of our regions don't have any snow to speak of, so we can really start planning now. So even in the wintertime, we can kind of take a look at our landscape, our existing things, and see how we can start incorporating edibles into that. Now isn't this beautiful? This is not my yard. I wish that was. Isn't that beautiful? Now one of the hardest parts is to plan edibles into our landscape without totally dismantling that landscape. For example, this beautiful perennial bed, we're certainly not going to start digging some of those out and replacing them with string beans or something. But there are ways that we're going to talk about that we can incorporate these. For example, here's one that comes to mind right away as I look at this photo. Notice the fence in the background. It's got some climates and that's pretty. But look at that big bear area. We could plant grapevine in that bear area of trellis and have some great production. So next let's talk about, okay, we've got most of us probably have an existing landscape. And so where do we find the space to add in some of these edibles? Okay, well, this is back to our own front yard here. And until those shrubs, the junipers in the front, the creeping junipers, until they fill in, look at that open space of soil that we've got. Well, okay, I can envision a row of strawberry plants. Strawberry plants are neat and picturesque. And then you've got the fruit. Well, I could even plant some colorful, leaf lettuce in there for kind of an edging. And so we're going to take, we're going to look at some examples too of how people have included some of these edibles in. So the first thing is look for some open spaces in your landscape. I know we've got some in ours. One other thing is looking at the front there. I could plant some, I could have some containers of colorful, maybe some colorful peppers. Some peppers are quite ornamental, as well as being edible. I could have some planters in amongst the shrubs there. So look for open spaces. Next, replace some flowers where you've maybe usually had some flowers. We'll try some colorful edibles. Now focus on those bright red begonias down at the lower left hand. Well, they're beautiful, but we could get a similar effect by putting in some peppers that would be colorful. Maybe some of the, oh gosh, some of the lettuce colors, the assorted lettuce colors. You've got the bright greens, almost yellowish green, the burgundy colors. I can picture that. Maybe some colorful kale varieties in that. If we take a look at the planter over on the right-hand side, it's very beautiful. But we could accomplish a similar look, or close to it, by planting some of the edibles, some of the colorful foliage edibles in that. And we could leave the rest of the perennials there, but combine some edibles in with this. All right, the next spot that we're going to look to plant some edibles is this. You know, sometimes in our landscapes, we've got some shrubs that maybe just don't look so good. They're not totally dead like this, but maybe they just don't look so good anymore. And, well, maybe this is a time to take them out and replace them with either a series of shrubs that can produce edibles, or even if it's just one shrub. You know, maybe it's a, maybe it's a ragged potentilla, the yellow flowered potentilla. It's been a long time, and just has never done quite as well as you'd like. Well, maybe now is the time to take that out and put a gooseberry bush in its place. It'd probably be about similar size. All right, the next spot we're going to look for are some edibles, and this is one of my favorites. How many of us have seen backyards where the corners, the corners are just unused. Those triangular spots back in the corner, just picture a raised garden back there, maybe some fruit trees put in the corners there. So utilizing those back corners would be a good spot to find or some edibles. Now, I want you to study this photo for just a minute. Now, if a gardener got too enthusiastic, okay, you see the whole concept of edible landscaping is to combine edibles and make it all very pleasing at the same time to have a well-designed landscape and edibles mesh together. Okay, now this was a house in Orlando, Florida and gosh, that looks like a nice garden. But this homeowner got in trouble. The neighbors didn't like it that he had planted vegetable garden. It was actually a couple. They had planted the vegetable garden in the front. The neighbors didn't like it. And so the city actually made them remove it. In a little bit, we're going to look at another couple that had made a very nice planting of vegetables in their front yard. And so I just want you to remember this slide a little bit. So gosh, I love vegetables. And any garden is beautiful to me. But I think these homeowners could maybe have their garden like this, but if they had incorporated some basic landscape design principles, they could have made it pretty enough so that no one would have complained about it. All right, so to accomplish this, to accomplish both the edible and the beauty, we're going to take a look at some design principles. Some basic design principles that are going to make our edibles blend in with the landscape so that the whole thing looks really, really nice. So we're going to talk about some of these design principles. There are about 10 of them. And by concentrating on these, when you plant your edibles, we're going to make sure that everything looks good. Okay, the first principle to consider is to use strong lines in the landscape. Okay, notice how these stepping stones kind of draw your eye along through those edibles. Isn't that pretty? So the use of stepping stones in a landscape, an edible landscape. Clean edges of a small lawn. Notice the way that the little patch of lawn just kind of leads your eye along that curve. Isn't that restful? So wouldn't that be nice? And again, the point of this photo being the nice area, I don't know that they've incorporated some edibles into that planting, but we sure could. And curved lines in any planting landscaping always look so nice because most lines in nature are curving. In nature, you see very few square straight lines. So anytime in landscaping, including edible landscaping, anytime that you can utilize curving, smooth sweeping curves, curved lines, that always makes the landscape look very, very restful. Okay, the next design concept is that structures give structure to the landscape. For example, gates. So look at this edible landscape, this edible feature here. Isn't that pretty? Notice how the purple gate under that green trellis, doesn't that look nice? That gives kind of some substance to that edible landscape and fence also, good privacy, but also we're growing grapes on that. Trellises and arbors give good structure to your landscape and your perennial flowerbed. Now that's a very beautiful flowering vine, but I could also see, I could see on one side of that, usually vines are oftentimes planted on one side of it and left to crawl over. Well, we could on the other side that looks a little thinner, we could have pole beans climbing up that. Some of the purple pole type beans, purple string beans, those are quite decorative. Or how about we forget that flowering vine? And how about we plant vine in cucumbers? Have you ever seen a cucumber trellis? They're actually quite unique and quite beautiful. Or grapes, grapes would mesh very well on that. So do you see the idea? We're giving our landscape a little bit of structure and that also helps us to grow some of our edibles vertically. And look at this beautiful fence. So just look at the privacy that that gives, but that also gives us a good spot to grow fruit. Now growing along this trellis, this fence arbor are fruit trees that are being grown in the manner called espalier. And espalier means that the fruit trees are pruned so that they're flat. They hug the arbor and so it's pruned so that all the branches are in one flat plane. That takes a lot of pruning. You've got to kind of keep on your eye there. But a similar thing, a similar edible type arrangement could find grapevines along that. Wouldn't that be nice? So we could grow our fruit along the structure of the trellis or the fence. Another structural component is hedges. You know, maybe in the side yard or backyard you'd like some privacy. So a structural component is a hedge. And this is a nice kind of informal looking hedge, but look at the fruit that it produces. This is the honeyberry, also known as Hascap. We'll talk about these individual fruits a little later. But isn't that pretty? Pretty and also fruitful. Gosh, if you've never tasted honeyberry, they are a delight. Or we could use a hedge of current. The red current makes an absolutely wonderful jelly. The third design principle that will help our whole edible landscape look really nice is to use contrasting foliage color. Look at the assortment of colors in there. And also the different textures. We mentioned the fern-like carrots. Doesn't that give a nice texture to that planting and the different colors? Cabbage, the blues of the cabbage. The contrast really makes it look nice. And the fourth principle, we can add charm with flowers. Now this is a planting of lettuce and chives. But look at how the dwarf dahlias just make that pop and think color. So our edible landscapes can really be brought to life by adding color, ornamental peppers. Some peppers are kind of strictly ornamental. We can still eat the peppers, but they aren't maybe quite as good eating quality. But focus on pepper types that are both showy, as well as having a very nice eating quality to those. Pots and planters make things pop. I mentioned to you when we looked at our own home front yard porch, there are some gaps in between some of the shrubbery. We could easily use big planters full of greens. And the left-hand photo, isn't that pretty? The different lettuce colors, the textures, the herbs interplanted. Doesn't that make a nice, makes a nice landscape right there on someone's deck? And on the right-hand side, the parsley, that's probably an ornamental kale, the brightly colored reddish tin. But those are edible as well. And isn't that pretty? The person almost has a landscape right there on their patio to enhance the rest of the yard. This is a raised bed planter that is right on the edge of a patio. And isn't that nice? It brings the landscape right up onto the hard structure of the patio. Of course, it's interplanted with flowers such as the elissum, and I see some marigolds. But there's a tomato in there, a cucumber, parsley, lots of good eating and beauty combined. The seventh principle of good design is unity. A groupings of plants that are repeated to bring an orator, to create an orator into the landscape. Now look at that beautiful row of evergreen arborvites. And look at the nice structure in front of that. It's rhubarb. Isn't that pretty? This looks good enough to be a Buckingham Palace. Also, when we talk about repetitive use, kind of repetitive design in a nice arrangement, notice the way that the cabbage, the reddish-purplish cabbage, have been repeated kind of throughout this planting. Doesn't that look nice? And of course, also the yellow daffodils have been repeated throughout. But the use of repetition of plants will give kind of a unity and draw your eye throughout the planting. Next most important is to create a focal point in a landscape, whether it's the backyard or having a focal point in the front yard. Notice in this backyard or side planting, the red gate, a focal point, is the point that your eye is brought to. And if there are focal points in your landscape, you don't want too many of them. Of course, there's kind of one focal point in a certain section of the landscape. But your eye is drawn to that focal point and creates a very relaxing, very, very relaxing landscape. This is a nice, edible landscape, combination of flowers and perennials, and featured kind of in the front is zucchini. So another focal point in this area is the very colorful purple kale in the middle. Notice when you look at this, how your eye is kind of drawn to that dark, deep purple. Now, do you remember the front yard, vegetable garden, the house in Orlando, Florida, that I said they actually kind of gotten because the neighbors didn't like the looks of it. They went to the city, the city created an ordinance. They made them take it out. But this is also in the front yard. Now, take a look at this. I don't think people are going to complain about this because it has beauty. Now, look at this. It's interesting what they've included. Now, this is a perennial garden. I see hosta there. And of course, I see some marigolds in that. I see some ground covers. But I also see cabbage. And I see kale. I see some pepper plants. And so it's a nice combination of pretty edibles, along with perennial flowers like the hosta. And the tree, I'm not sure what type of tree it is, but that could very well. We could plant an apple tree and use it like that as kind of a specimen tree. Or it could be a Canada red cherry, which produces edible trope cherries, which we'll talk about in a minute. So notice how with kind of a clever combination, a pretty combination, they've created a front yard vegetable garden that I don't think people will probably be going to city hall and demanding that they remove it. Again, it's all about using design principles to make things look good. And of course, this trellis, this arbor, is a very nice focal point and feature, as well as this gate and the chair, creates focal point in these landscapes. All right, number nine disease, disease, the number nine design principle is to add some extras. You know, add a little something of interest. For example, that rabbit right beside the lettuce. That's kind of cute. I'm happy it's not a real rabbit sitting there, but yeah, kind of whimsical. Or maybe you choose something a little more traditional. A statue like that tucked kind of in between the landscape, in between the edibles, just adds a little something of interest. Okay, the final concept of design principles is to use small lawn sections. Notice in this edible landscape here, there's a little section of lawn and a little section of well cared for green lawn gives kind of a canvas on which the rest of the edible landscape can be featured. And so it's pretty, isn't it? Also, a lawn of five foot by five foot lawn section actually produces enough oxygen for one person for a day. So I think that little section of lawn would probably produce enough oxygen for both Mary and I and enough oxygen for each of us for one day. My actual home lawn is bigger than that. So I'll share oxygen. We're producing enough oxygen for some of the rest of you as well. So small lawn sections can be incorporated very nicely into these beautiful landscapes. Next, we're going to talk about some specifics. First of how to incorporate vegetables into our landscape, some specifics about to kind of work them in. And then after that, we're going to talk about some specifics of how to incorporate fruits into our landscape, some specifics. Okay, so first of all, the vegetables. Well, pots and planters like we've already mentioned work very, very well to tuck in amongst or maybe you've got a deck or some steps that just could use something instead of doing flower planters. Well, gosh, these are very pretty, aren't they? The photo on the right hand. Those are as pretty as flowers, aren't they? Well, and there are some Johnny jump ups tucked among the green lettuce there. But look at the different shades of lettuce. I think that's about as pretty as if there were flowers. And many of the vegetables do grow very, very nicely in pots on the upper right hand. Oh no, herbs do beautifully in pots. And this was along kind of a little walkway. It was a little semi shaded. Notice the ferns in the back. So this was along the edge of kind of a landscape or shaded type landscape. And notice the pots of herbs. They just lend themselves and blend so well into the landscape in the back. Now, if you are planning to grow vegetables in containers, there are special varieties of vegetables that were developed for that reason to grow in containers. They're more container friendly. They don't get so wild and sprawling. For example, the string beans in the lower center photo is an all America winner from a few years back called Mascot, M-A-S-C-O-T-T-E, Mascot string beans. Especially developed to be a heavy producer in a small container. And so whether it be cucumbers or any of the different things, if you'd like to grow them in pots, do look for the descriptions of varieties that especially say for containers. Because you can really get quite a bit of protection out of a pot. Or it does not make you hungry for radishes again. And on a deck, you know, an empty deck railings. Why not, why not beautify them? Because that will help bring the landscape up onto the deck. Beautify them like this. You know, there's some flowers of, I see some elism there also. But look at the colors of the tomatoes and the various greens that we could eat. And also on a corner of the deck here, doesn't that make a nice, beautiful, you know, flowers. You know, this rivals, I think, anything that flowers could produce. There'd be nothing wrong with tucking a few pots of marigolds in amongst those as well. But look at the different colors and textures there. We've got lettuce. I see some moss curled parsley in the upper left-hand corner. Herbs of various kinds. We can also utilize this beauty of herbs. In the upper left-hand corner, that was a dill growing that had sprouted up among our cosmos. I don't know how the dill got there, but it was so pretty when it was forming and had the lacy texture of dill. Just meshed so well in the flowerbed that we weren't about to remove that. And chives in the lower right-hand corner. The beauty of chives, the blossoms are beautiful. The long linear leaves of chives or onions creates a good contrast with rounded leaves. So utilizing the beauty of herbs, both their foliage and the blossoms, the rainbow chard in a flowerbed. Look at how pretty that is with the combination of the marigolds, the colorful stems of the rainbow swiss chard. Beautiful. And look at the cabbage used in a flowerbed. The bluish, the very bold statement that cabbage leaves make. Isn't that wonderful? And if a person planted the type of cabbage that maybe was a long season that will mature their heads towards the end of the season, those cabbage plants will stay nice throughout the growing season. And by the end of the growing season, you'd have lots of good cabbage for sauerkraut. But I have a hard time imagining that flowerbed without those cabbage. What about lettuce for a flowerbed border? Along either an annual flowerbed border, like those marigolds, or even along a perennial flowerbed, the lettuce is pretty. Sometimes by the middle of summer, lettuce wants to send up its seed head, so it needs to be cut back. Or you can kind of in between the lettuce plants, if you're afraid that that lettuce is going to start going downhill, you can seed another batch that will be kind of protected a little bit down by the old lettuce. And when the new lettuce starts, you can cut off the old. Now, we saw this photo earlier in the program here, well-designed ornamental, because we looked at the sweet corn in the upper left hand, and gosh, it looks all so nice together. But focus on the broadleaf plant in the lower front. That gives us a good contrasting texture with the rest of the plants. We see a little leaf there with the kind of long strap-like leaves. And that plant in the front just gives such a nice bold contrast. And of course, it's rhubarb. So what a good way to incorporate rhubarb into a landscaping. Here's another example. This nice corner planting, kind of a foundation planting of shrubbery, nice little hedge lung. But look at the bold leaves that give such a nice contrast. That's also rhubarb. Nice thing about rhubarb is it's best for the plant if you discontinue major harvest July 4th. So the rest of the growing season, it should be allowed to develop its leaves. So even though you've been harvesting some, the first part of the season, from July 4th on, you let those big bold leaves develop. So the idea is to embrace the beauty of vegetables. The tomatoes are beautiful, the lavender color of the ageratum and other flowers. You know, now it's interesting. Of course, I think almost any vegetable garden is beautiful. So in a backyard, even a neat, well-attended, maybe a person wouldn't go that route. Isn't that beautiful? I think it's beautiful. I wouldn't mind this in my own backyard. I especially admire the lack of weeds. All right. Now let's focus on this. This one, the fall of the year, the lavender fall asters are in full bloom and there's some perennials, the seed heads that have already gone brown. But you know, one idea of landscaping is that we embrace the fall shades of brown. That's part of the beauty of autumn. But also notice the vibrant gold colors on that ferny leaf. Doesn't that make a pretty fall look? And of course that beautiful golden color that complements the rest of it so nice is asparagus. Now asparagus also, harvest should stop after about July 4th and then the ferny style tops should be allowed to stay on and then in the fall of the year they turn that vibrant gold and the tops also should stay on over winter and then be cut back early the next spring. So isn't that a beautiful way to incorporate asparagus into a perennial flower bed? Well, and from the kind of the book of if you can't beat it, join it or I guess eat it would be, well maybe plant some flowers that you can actually eat the blossoms. Now on the upper left hand those pansies and there's some daisies. If you need ranch dressing with those they would be just delightful and I have eaten them and on the lower right hand are nasturtiums they have kind of a peppery flavor and so those the blossoms themselves are very edible. You could eat them as is or certainly combine those with the green type of vegetable. All right, next we're going to talk a little bit about how to incorporate fruits into our edible landscape. Strawberries, lots of options here we could use them on the edge of a perennial bed, maybe on the edge of a shrub landscape bed. We could put a few between shrubs make sure they get enough sunlight and we could even use them as a little bit of a ground cover in a perennial bed. Raspberries, you could make an informal hedge of those you could put a group kind of group a number of them together kind of almost a landscape shrub type grouping. I could see these growing well in a perennial flower bed. Remember that hedge that we talked about that gave structure to a landscape well that was made out of honeyberries. Honeyberries also called Hascap, a wonderfully winter hardy. It's a member of the honeysuckle family. You could plant them in the hedge like we saw but you could also plant them individually. Now when you go to the garden centers you need two different varieties for cross-pollination and to get fruit. So the local garden center will help you choose two different varieties for pollination but gosh another wonderful landscape shrub that will produce good fruiting. And this is the eronia. The eronia that we had up in the front corner of our porch produces wonderful fruit and very productive, fully winter hardy. No special care needed. Loves our soil type and in the spring it blooms very pretty. And in the fall of the year this photo is actually of that one in the corner of our porch. This was taken last fall that shrub has grown. Look at the intense colors of that. What more could you ask in a fall blooming a fall blooming a fall foliage color shrub? Currents and gooseberries make wonderful landscape shrubs. You could do a little hedge of those to divide your property. They'll get about three to four feet in height. Currents and gooseberries well adapted. The high bush cranberry viburnum. Now this gets me a large shrub can easily get to six feet. You could do a hedge of these. You could use it for a landscape feature at the corner of the house where something is wanted. Now the fruits are tart. I've sampled them. After frost they get a little maybe a little bit sweeter. They're great for jelly, not for fresh eating out of hand. They do make you pucker up that the foliage is a bright scarlet color in the fall of the year. So see the way that these can be used both edible as well as creating a lot of beauty in the landscape. Elderberry is a large shrub, at least six feet tall, produces those beautiful clusters of fruit. Elderberry wine, jellies and so if you're looking for kind of a screening or a divider in the backyard you could plant a grouping of elderberries. Juneberries, Canada they call them the Saskatoon or serviceberry. It's known as the blueberry of the north so elderberries of course don't like the alkaline soil from the Red River Valley on west, so these are just as tasty. The Juneberry, now they'll get to be a large shrub or small tree so you could easily use these at the back of the yard or along the side of the yard for some screening and privacy to give your backyard that kind of feeling of closeness. Choked cherry, very large shrub small tree depending on how you prune it how many how many trunks you let form so it's a great ornamental tree again a good screening tree or shrub this would be low-headed enough to produce some good screening and also the Canada red cherry also known as the Schubert Choked Cherry this is the common purple kind of purplish leaf that makes a kind of a small decorative type tree and prune it make a big kind of shrubby tree of it it produces the same exact fruit it's the same species as the green leaf choked cherry same fruit absolutely is edible if you look at those fruit clusters they look a little bit thinner and the reason for that is the birds have cleaned them up the birds love them and of course they're wonderful for jellies, wines but you do have to try to beat the birds to those. Cherries there are some good small small tree type cherries shrub type cherries they'll work plums if you've never tasted a a northern hearty plum you're missing the sweetness and juiciness of our winter hearty plums I can't go back to the store bought plums they're wonderful they make a small ornamental tree a good screening tree beautiful in the spring with their white flowers and we end with apples now apples ornamental in the spring gosh the flowers are beautiful but also because apple trees we need to keep them pruned because we want to be able to pick the fruit easily so pruning is just customary with apples and that causes them to be quite low headed and they're an ideal screening tree so instead of locating the apple in the middle of the backyard locate the apple kind of towards the edges or the back to help accomplish the screening and give you some privacy so now alls we've got left to do is to get growing on everything and so I really appreciate your journey with me it's fun to consider all these possibilities for edible landscaping and you know I'm still working on it you know of course all of our landscapes and yards are works in progress so thanks for accompanying me on our journey here and if you have any questions or anything that I can do feel free to jot down my email address it's donald.kinsler at ndsu.edu and now Julie we can certainly open it up to any questions of anything that you might have and I'll do my best to answer. You have a lot of questions how are erroneas and honeyberries and chokeberries related are they related? Okay first of all the erronea and chokeberry as opposed to choke cherry erronea and chokeberry are two names for the same thing I don't like the term chokeberry erronea sounds much more dignified so erronea and what was the other? Oh they asked about honeyberries. Okay the honeyberry is in the honeysuckle family erronea is in the rose family erronea and that same rose family are apples, pears, strawberries and so those are all related and honeyberry also known as the hascap would be a different family. Right so a couple questions came in what are some good ornamental edibles for shady conditions? For shady conditions I'm glad you asked that because anything that produces a fruit needs more sunshine and by fruit certainly the things strawberries, raspberries but also fruits such as tomatoes most of those should be situated in an area that will get full all day sunshine or at a minimum half day of sunshine if you've got more shade then things that you eat the leaves of are more shade tolerant things like the greens lettuce kales Swiss chard spinach and cabbage possibly and so those will tolerate more shades if you eat the root of it such as carrots or the potato tubers they like a little more shade a little more sun than the leafy type things but not quite as demanding of sun as things that produce fruit. I should also mention herbs herbs can tolerate a fair amount of shade hopefully all of those would get a little bit of filtered sun in the morning you had a number of questions and this is a good one rabbit and deer control with all of those beautiful munchies for them and okay so common question is are there some rabbit proof, deer proof things that we can plant and any time that I've investigated some well founded, well resourced lists of those plants I've always thought to myself, gosh the deer ate those in my yard and so if deer and rabbits are hungry enough they'll even go from the things that haven't been eaten in some people's yard so I hesitate to publish lists of things that they won't eat but there are some things we can do okay there are some little decorative fences that we can maybe use there are some repellents about three repellents that have a better track record than other things okay and those three are liquid fence plant skid garden centers of selveys skid is the one that soil conservation favors and then one called repell ex okay now a question around edibles make sure you read and follow the label directions on those but you don't always need to put that product right on the edible for example I don't want to put one of these repellents on the lettuce that I'm going to eat tomorrow but instead you can kind of put them on the perimeter you know keeping them away from the edibles but yet the strong aroma of those products will help deter and of course fencing is still the number one most share lots of comments that they love your pictures and I'll just let everyone know that we will be posting a pdf of your presentation on the field to fork website along with a certificate in case you would like the credit I guess if you're a master gardener for example so that is coming nice pictures someone made a comment and this wasn't a question but a comment I have chives in one of my perennial beds and they make pretty purple round flowers and it tastes great with potatoes and eggs super it does sound good I want to go outside right now and plant but it's February is there an issue with planting edibles and non-edibles there's not an issue as in that one thing would that something would poison something else you know there's no there's no toxicity in different shrubs or plants that would somehow poison an edible so they all kind of mesh together quite well and so I was just trying to think of some of the things that would be for example common buckthorn which produces a purple berry each year I get emails from people wondering is this choked cherry are these purple berries are they choked cherry can I make jelly and but buckthorn berries are toxic they cause severe stomach upset but yet there's nothing even in the roots or anything that would intermesh with an edible that would transmit that property to an edible right well thank you can you think of any ornamental plants that are already in gardens that people may not know are edible someone mentions hosta shoots and daylily blooms oh interesting yes daylily blooms you know well it's a good day I learned something new a hosta shoots I didn't know and of course I'll double check anytime any of us hear something it's always wise before we eat anything to do some good research from research universities and not that I don't trust but just as a good manner of wisdom anytime we anyone tells us something's edible we aren't sure it's always wise to double check and so hosta gosh that would be kind of fun to taste other things that people might that might be edible that people haven't tasted well if you have stinging nettle in your a few years ago I did a garden column on weeds that are edible I purposely did not include those in this because weeds tend to be weed like and I kind of purposely don't try to encourage weeds in our plantings but anyway stinging nettle if you happen to have some in the meantime while you're getting rid of it stinging nettle early in the season can be prepared much like asparagus and personally in the weed is quite edible actually quite nice with some ranch dressing but typical typical things that aren't really weeds that would be I'm I'm not I'm not thinking of anything else but that's a good concept though somebody else a couple people posted some ideas for those of you who have deer and rabbit problems I would add to get a get a couple of dogs I that always works for us but someone mentioned back to back motion detector water sprayers and they keep everything out blood meal blood meal that's interesting the one I mentioned called plant skid is blood based because deer and rabbits are both herbivores they like plants they don't like animal products and so a blood based thing cause them to have caution so yes blood meal is also an alternative along the same lines somebody asked about when the North Dakota trials are going to start in terms of the plantings seeds trials yes I bet you're I bet you're referencing Tom Cal who is an NDSU extension of culture specialist located in Bismarck and Tom Kelb his spring fever garden forms if you do an online search spring fever garden forms if they aren't already up they soon will be and that would be a good way to find a link to Tom Kelb and he does he provides you can register to participate in vegetable trial sessions very good someone else commented that they're unable to grow blueberries in the ground in Fargo I think you mentioned that how about these with blueberries it's not a winter hardiness situation because they grow up in northern Minnesota which is about as cold as it can get it's totally a soil situation once you get into the natural forested areas of Minnesota and on east where the soil is naturally acid and forest like blueberries love it from red valley on west our soil is just too alkaline and trying to adjust the soil is almost like trying to change the color of the ocean by adding some food coloring and so it is much of a challenge so here's a great question too what do we do with the gaps once the crop is harvested later in the year that's a good question because especially some of the things such as well if you planted radishes well in pots it would be okay because you could just seed another crop but if you're planted radishes for example or some of the lettuce finishes the same way by the middle of summer they start to bolt or set up their seed head and then they get kind of bitter and so the gaps that are going to occur from some of those with another crop and so you'd need to be ready have some extra lettuce seed or something on hand to reseed and hopefully to get a little new seedlings started before the old is ready to come out but a person doesn't need to be aware of that because some of the edibles by the middle of season they're no longer pretty another person commented about small lawn sections and how to keep them mowed and trimmed yeah keep the mowed and trim and of course the photos that I showed were actually trimmed shorter than they should be the recommended for a healthy lawn is to mow them during the season at about three inches high which keeps it nice and neat they grow better that way and so those small sections of lawn yeah and maybe it's such a small section of lawn that you don't even want a lawn mower or maybe it would be hard to get a lawn mower to that area and occasionally I see some of the old fashioned little push you know the clickity clickity clickity non motorized mowers sometimes I do see those on the marketplace the such as the social media marketplaces I see some of those for sale or you can buy them new small enough a little battery powered kind of a weed whacker if you kind of do it so that the weed whacking is horizontal with the grass that can do a fairly neat job of trimming as well so we had a couple questions about rhubarb and both you and I have had a lot of questions about rhubarb through the years is rhubarb a deterrent for deer or will they eat that too you know it's not because leaves of course are bitter and they do have a compound which is why we don't eat the leaves they have a toxic compound and so I've never known personally of deer eating rhubarb I don't think it's enough of a deterrent to keep them out of I know I've got rhubarb beside my garden and they've tried to get into the garden so even though the deer might not eat the rhubarb although I know they will as the last resort these stems but I don't think it's a strong enough deterrent to keep them out of the rest and then another question about rhubarb should the bolt of the rhubarb remain or be removed after July 4th the bolt the big sturdy stock that comes up out of the center and produces this big kind of flower-like thing that should be removed because that saps quite a bit of strength out of the rhubarb plant so in fact as soon as you see it forming down in the center of the rhubarb plant cut them off it causes no advantage and does take energy all right and we have a couple people who have commented that the deer love rhubarb in their gardens and they eat it down to the ground if they're hungry enough you know just like people they'll eat it sure let's see if you have any more just a lot of comments about edible weeds like lambs quarters yeah lambs quarters quite tasty I've eaten that stinging nettles awesome as a drink someone says as a tea someone commented on mums and dahlias being edible I guess before you taste any of these I'm in food safety I'd say be sure that they're okay exactly yep whenever I research something that I'm not sure about do an online search but I add at the end of what I'm searching university research so that it brings you up to some research university so that you can you can get a science based answer to your question um here's another one that I came in while I was talking can pumpkin, celery and sweet corn be growing in an elevated two by four foot planter that's two feet deep in full sun yep two feet deep is fine the full sun yep that's perfect for pumpkins there are certain types that are short vine so look for a short vine compact type of pumpkin and what was the other celery it worked beautifully is there a third vegetable pumpkin, celery and sweet corn yep and sweet corn sweet uh yeah two feet deep is plenty of root space even for sweet corn there are actually some sweet corns choose maybe one of the earlier varieties that don't have such a big tall plant but some of the earlier varieties are a little shorter as well so we talked about repelling deer and rabbits now someone is wondering about repelling mosquitoes yeah so of course one thing I was thinking about too with the rabbits and deer occasionally people will try planting marigolds in amongst things but rabbits have actually eaten my marigolds and so not only haven't they repelled it but they've they've been a tasty treat for the rabbits and deer and so mosquitoes there are different plants that are that do have aromatic oils that are known to repel mosquitoes but the trick is those plants have to be have to be so plentiful for a round of debt so one mosquito plant as they're sometimes termed is not usually going to be enough for a deck you know and there's not maybe hard science on how many plants you need but you need a fair amount of those plants to give off enough aromatic oil to repel mosquitoes so one last question and I know we didn't have time to get to everyone's but somebody is from western North Dakota and is asking about edging to prevent leafy spurge or flea beetles edging to prevent leafy spurge such as an edging that would go down into the ground I wonder all it says here and I am not sure some of the things like leafy spurge I inherited leafy spurge in our own yard but some of those have such tenacious spread that I think they're probably going to find their way below you know I think probably have to be talking about a number of feet you know one feet two feet maybe to prevent the spread of that all right well I think that brings us to our close I like to have a hard started two and an end at three so I really I've really enjoyed this I've enjoyed visiting with everyone yeah well thank you so much Don and just so everybody knows if you want to watch Don's talk again or look at his slide set that will be shortly on our our field of fork website please check that out and please continue to join us as we continue in our I think it's 11 in this year's series so thanks Don thanks to all of you we wouldn't do this if we didn't have people who joined us so please do the survey and that will make you eligible for a fun prize so we'll do some prize drawings very shortly so thanks everyone