Field to Fork 2024: How to Create Beautiful Flowerbeds and Landscapes Good Enough to Eat

Week 1 of the 2024 NDSU Extension Field to Fork Webinar Series. This presentation is with Don Kinzler, NDSU Extension Agent, Agriculture and Natural Resources-Horticulture and is titled “How to Create Beautiful Flowerbeds and Landscapes Good Enough to Eat”.

Good afternoon everyone my name is Julie Garden Robinson and I’m your host for today’s first field of work 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 to 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 a Q&A box and there’s a chat box we’re going to ignore the Q&A box and just use the 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 Market 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 uh 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 horiculture he and his wife operated a garden center in Fargo for 25 years he is a LIF long Garder 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 uh at least two things out of our homeyard 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 um 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 lot sides well we’ve got the answer to that we’re going to mesh the two concepts

Okay 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 toh do both so with edible landscaping putting Edibles in amongst their flowers vegetables shrubs

Foundation plantings we are going to get food it’s going to 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 you know 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 uh there’s some little daisies blooming in the foreground but notice also in the upper leftand corner there’s corn but it all works together so man 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 uh pretty planting notice uh

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 lissim it looks like uh there’s some spinach I see spinach I even see some cabbage in there and so is that

Something the way these Edibles 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 um 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 filling to do but I want you to focus on the shrub at the corner of the porch the one with the bright scarlety leaves okay and this this photo was

Taken a few years ago that shrub has grown but anyway isn’t that pretty in the fall of the the year there what what a what pretty blossoms not blossoms what pretty foliage but also look at the fruit it bore and Bears this is the aonia shrub isn’t that beauty what what

Nice Beauty in a 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 aonia berries and aronia berries of course is one of the highest fruits and

Antioxidants and you should taste my wife Mary’s aonia berry muffins they are totally awesome so is that 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 you just kind of you 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 any snow to speak of so we can really start planning now so even in the time 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 I wish that was isn’t that beautiful now one of the hardest parts is to plan Edibles into our landscape with totally without totally dismantling that landscape for example this

Beautiful perennial bed that we’re not going to we’re certainly not going to start dig some of those out you know and replacing them with string beans or something but there are ways 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 Claus and that’s pretty but look at that big bare area we could plant grape vine in that bare area of trellis and have some uh grape production so next let’s talk about okay we’ve got

Uh 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 uh front yard here and until those shrubs the junipers in the front the creeping junipers until they fill in

Look 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 Lea 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 um thing is look for some Open Spaces in your landscape I know we’ve got some in ours uh one other thing looking at the

Front there I could plant some I could have some contain containers of colorful um 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 Bonas 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 uh oh gosh some of the lettuce colors the

Assorted lettuce colors youve 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 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 maybe 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 potent Tilla the yellow flowered potentilla it’s spent 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 a gooseberry book in its place probably be about similar size all right the next spot we’re going to look for some edibles and this is one of my favorites how many of us have seen backyards where the corners the corners are just unus those triangular spots

Back in the corner uh just picture uh a raised garden back there uh 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 garden 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 uh the neighbors didn’t like it that he had planted a 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 uh 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 um gosh you I love vegetables and any Garden is beautiful

To me but I think these homeowners could maybe had 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 use strong lines in the landscape okay notice how these Stepping Stones kind of draw your eye along

Through those Edibles aren’t that 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 leans your uh leads your eye along that curve isn’t

That restful so wouldn’t that be nice uh 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 uh 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 uh 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 look at this edell landscape or this edell uh feature here isn’t that pretty notice how the purple gate uh under that green trellis doesn’t that look nice that gives some 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 uh your landscape and or your perennial flower bed now that’s a very beautiful flowering Vine but I could also see I could see um on one side of that usually Vines are often times 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 you know 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 so uh 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 uh and look at this beautiful fence uh so just look at the Privacy that that gives but that also gives us a good spot to grow fruit now growing along this um this trellis this uh 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 t takes a lot of pruning you got to kind of keep on your eye there but a similar thing a similar

Uh edible type Arrangement could be find grap Vines along that wouldn’t that be nice so we could grow our fruit along these structure of the trus or the fence another structural component is Hedges you know maybe in the sidey yard or backyard you’d like some privacy so a

Structural component is a hedge and this this is a nice kind of informal looking hedge but look at the fruit that it produces this is the honey berry also known as hcap we’ll talk about these individual fruits a little later but isn’t that pretty uh pretty and also

Fruitful gosh if if you’ve ever never tasted honey berry they are a delight or we could use a hedge of currant the red currant makes an absolutely wonderful jelly Okay the third design principle that uh that will help our 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 light 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 the dwarf delas just make that pop and think color so um our edible Landscapes can really be brought to life by adding color ornamental peppers some

Peppers are kind of strictly ornamental you 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 uh pots and Planters make things

Pop I mentioned to you when we looked at our own home uh home front yard porch there are some gaps in between uh some of the Shrubbery we could easily use big planters full of greens look on the leftand 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 uh the harsley the uh that’s probably an ornamental kale uh the brightly colored uh a reddish tin but those are edible as well and isn’t that pretty so a person

Almost has a landscape right there under 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 it’s interplanted with flowers

Such as the alysum and I see some merry Golds but there’s a tomato in there a cucumber heart ly lots of good eating and Beauty combined the seventh principle of good design is Unity uh groupings of plants that are repeated to bring an order to create an order into the landscape now

Look at that beautiful row of Evergreen Arbor vites and look at the nice structure in front of that it’s rhubarb isn’t that pretty you know this 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 uh 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 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 uh in a certain section of the landscape but your eye is drawn to that that focal point and creates a very relaxing very very relaxing um 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 uh in this area is the very colorful purple taale in the middle notice when you look at this how your eyes is kind of drawn to that dark Deep Purple

Now do you remember the the front yard vegetable garden uh 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 I don’t think people are going to complain about this because it has Beauty as now look at this it’s interesting what they’ve been included now this is um a perennial garden I see hasta there and of course I see some

Molds in that I see some ground covers and but I also see cabbage and I see kale I see some pepper plants and so it’s a nice combination of gretty Edibles along with granal flowers like the hasta and the 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 um Canada red cherry which produces edible choke cherries which we’ll talk about in a minute so notice how with kind of a clever uh combination a pretty

Combination they’ve created a front yard vegetable garden that uh I don’t think people will uh 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 uh trus 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 uh 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 I’m happy it’s not a real rabbit sitting there but yeah kind of whimsical or maybe it choose uh something a little more traditional a 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 uh concept of design principles is to use small lawn sections notice in this edible landscape here uh there’s a little section of lawn and a little section of well cared for Green Lawn uh gives kind of a canvas on which the rest of the edible landscape can be

Featured so it’s pretty isn’t it also a lawn of 5 foot by 5 foot lawn section actually produces enough oxygen for one person for a day so I think that little SE the 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 uh I’ll share oxygen I’ll I’ll we’re producing enough oxygen for some of the rest of you as well so Lawns can be 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 of how 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 plants well gosh these are very pretty aren’t they the uh photo on the right hand you know 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 photo Earth hers do beautifully in pots and this was a long 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 a 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 planting 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 sprawly for

Example the string beans in the lower Center photo is an All-America winner from a few years back called mcot Mas C tte mcot uh string beans specially 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 uh do look for descriptions of varieties that specially say for containers because you can really get quite a bit of protection out of a pot or doesn’t that 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 alysum 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 flowers uh you know this Rivals I think anything that flowers could uh could produce there’d be nothing wrong with tucking a few pots of marry golds 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 leftand corner uh herbs of various kinds we can also utilize this beauty of herbs uh in the upper leftand 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 uh when it was forming it’s got the Lacy texture of Dill just meshed so well in the flower bed that we weren’t about to uh remove that and chives in the lower right hand

Corner the beauty of chives the blossoms are beautiful the uh the long linear uh leaves of chives or onions creates a good contrast with rounded leaves so utilizing the beauty of herbs both their foliage and the blossoms uh the rainbow chard in a flower bed look at how pretty that is

With the combination of the merry Golds the colorful stems of the of the rainbow Swiss chard beautiful and look at the Cabbage used in a flower bed the bluish uh 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 cabb 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 you know I have a hard time imagining

That flower bed without those cabbage what about lettuce for a flower bed border along either an annual flower bed border like this merry Golds or even along a perennial flower bed 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 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 uh in the in the program here uh well-designed ornamental because we we looked at the 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 just a good um contrasting texture with the rest of the plants I see Diles 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 in incorporate

Rhubarb into a landscaping here’s another example this nice Corner planting uh kind of a foundation planting of Shrubbery nice little hedge along there but look at that uh look at the Bold leaves that give such a nice contrast and of course 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 the 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 along with the uh 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 you know maybe

A person would go that route isn’t that beautiful I 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 in the fall of the year the lavender fall asers are in full bloom

And there’s some perennials 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 that’s part of the beauty of autumn but also notice the vibrant gold colors on that ferny Leaf doesn’t that PR do that

Make a pretty fall look and of course that that beautiful golden color that complement the rest of it so nice is asparagus now asparagus also uh Harvest should stop after about July 4th and then the the fern f ber style tops should be allowed to stay on and uh 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 uh on the upper left hand uh those pansies and there’s some daisies um gosh you wouldn’t even need ranch dressing with

Those they would be just delightful and I have I have eaten them and on the lower right hand are Nims 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 B 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 informal hedge of those um you could put group uh kind of group a a number of them together and form 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 honey berries honey berries also called hcap a wonderfully winter hardy uh 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 they do need two different varieties for cross-pollination and to get fruit so the uh the local Garden Center will help you uh choose two different varieties

For pollination but gosh another wonderful landscape shrub that will produce good fruiting and this is the aonia the aronia that we had up in the front corner of our porch produces wonderful fruit and very productive fully winter hearty no special care needed it 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 you what more could you ask in a fall blooming or fall

Blooming a Fall Foliage color shrub currs and gooseberries make wonderful landscape shrubs you could do a little hedge of those to divide your property uh they’ll get about 3 to four feet in height currs and gooseberries well adapted the highbush cranberry viburnum now this gets to be 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 taller is wanted now the the fruits are tart uh you know I’ve I’ve sampled them after Frost they get a little maybe a little

Bit sweeter they’re very they’re great for jelly you know not for fresh eating out of hand they do make you Puck her up uh 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 6 fet tall produces those beautiful clusters of of fruit uh Elderberry wine uh jellies and so if you’re looking for kind of a screening or a divider uh in the backyard you could plant a grouping

Of Elder berries juneberries Canada they call them the Saskatoon or service Berry it’s known as the blueberry of the north because blueberries of course don’t like the alkaline soil from the red 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 Choke Cherry very large shrub small tree depending on how you prune it

How many uh how many um trunks you let form so it’s a great ornamental tree again a good screening tree or shrub this would be lwh headed enough to produce some good screening uh and also the Canada red cherry also known as The schuber Choke Cherry this is the common purple kind of

Purplish leaf that makes a um kind of a small decorative type tree or you could 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 Choke 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 uh 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

Uh small tree type cherries shrub type cherries they’ll work plums if you’ve never tasted a a a a northern Hardy Plum you’re you’re missing uh the 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 uh ornamental and the spring gosh the flowers are beautiful but also because Apple trees we need to keep them pruned uh 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 lwh 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 journeying with me it’s fun to consider all these possibilities for Edible Landscaping and um 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 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 um you have a lot of questions how are aronas and honey berries and chokeberries related are they related okay um well first of all the erone and

Chokeberry as opposed to choke cherry aonia and chokeberry are two names for the same thing I don’t like the term chokeberry aronia sounds much more dignified uh so aonia chokeberry and what was the other oh they asked about honey berries honey berry okay the honey berry is in

The honeysuckle family uh aonia is in the uh Rose family aronia in that same Rose family are apples pears strawberries uh and so those are all related and um honey berry also known as a hcap would be in a a different family right so a couple questions came

In what are some good ornamental Edibles for shady conditions for shady conditions uh I’m glad you asked that because anything that produces a fruit needs more sunshine and by fruit okay you certainly the things you know 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 um Swiss chard uh spinach and uh 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 uh a little more Sun than the leafy type things uh but not quite as demanding of Sun as things that produce fruit um I should also mention

Herbs herbs can tolerate a fair amount of shade hopefully all of those would get a little B 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 a common question is is there something you know are there some rabbit proof uh deer prooof things that we can plant and anytime 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 uh haven’t been eaten in some people’s yards so I hesitate to publish Le 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 um there are some repellants about three repellants that have a better track record than other things okay and those three are liquid fence plant skid garden centers sell these plant skid is the one that Soil Conservation favors and then one called repel X 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 repellant 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 can help deter and of course fencing is still the number one Mo share lots of comments that they loved 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 uh 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 ah super gu that does sound good it does I want to go outside right now and plant

But it’s February uh is there an issue with planting Edibles and non-edibles uh there’s not an issue as in that one thing would that’s something would Poison Something Else uh you know there’s no um there’s no toxicity in different shrubs or plants that would somehow poison an edible so uh they all

Kind of mesh together quite well and um so I was just trying to think of some of the things that would be oh for example common Buckthorn which produces a purple Berry and each year I’m I I get emails from people wondering is this Choke Cherry are these purple

Berries are they Choke Cherry can I make jelly and but Buckthorn berries uh 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 uh that property to an edible all right well thank

You um can you think of any ornamental plants that are already in gardens that people may not know are edible someone mentions hosta shoots and dayy blooms oh interesting yes uh dayy blooms you know well it’s a good day I learned something new uh hostage shots I

Didn’t know and of course I’ll double check anytime any of us um hear something um 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 uh of wisdom anytime we anyone tells

Us something’s edible and we aren’t sure it’s always wise to double check and so hasta gosh that would be kind of fun to taste uh other things that people might that might be edible that people haven’t uh haven’t tasted well if you have stinging nettle in your a few years ago

I did a and col them on Weeds that are edible I purposely did not include those in this because uh weeds tend to be uh weed-like and I kind of purposely uh don’t try to encourage weeds in in our plantings but anyway stinging nettle if you happen to have some uh in the

Meantime while you’re getting rid of it stinging nettle early in the season can be prepared much like asparagus and um P Lan the weed is quite edible actually quite nice with some ranch dressing but typical uh typical things that aren’t really weeds that would be um Bo I’m

Uh I’m not I’m not thinking of anything else but that’s a good concept though um somebody else a couple people posted some ideas for those of you who have deer and rabbit problems yes what worked for them get a get a couple of dogs I that always works for us but

Someone mentioned backtack motion detector water sprayers and they keep everything out blood meal um 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 uh causes them to have

Caution so yes blood meal is is also an alternative along the same lines uh somebody asked about when the North Dakota trials are going to start in terms of the plantings SE the north qu trials yes I bet you’re I bet you’re referencing Tom Kell who is an NDSU extension

Horticulture specialist located in bismar and Tom kelb uh he um 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 um he does he

He provides you can register to participate in vegetable trial trial sessions very good uh someone else commented that they’re unable to grow blueberries in the ground in Fargo I think you mentioned that how about it was blueberries it’s 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 uh once you get into the natural forested areas of Minnesota and on East where the soil is naturally acid and Forest like uh blueberries love it uh from uh Riv 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 it 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 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 were planted radishes for example or some of

The lettuce and spinaches 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 um the gaps that are going to occur from some of those uh would need to be filled with

Another crop and so you’d need to be ready have some extra lettuce seed or something on hand to uh Reed and hopefully to get a little new seedling 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 uh you know 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 them mowed and trimmed of course uh 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 3 in high which keeps it nice and neat they grow better that way and so those small sections of lawn um yeah and maybe maybe it’s such a small section of lawn that you don’t even want a lawn

Mower or maybe it’d be hard to get a lawn mower to that area and occasionally I see some of the old-fashioned little push you know the clickey Clickety Clickety non-motorized mowers uh sometimes I do see those on um the marketplace of the U uh such as the uh

Social media marketplaces I see some of those for sale or you can buy them new uh small enough a little battery powered kind of weed whacker uh if you kind of do it so that the weed whacking is uh 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 um is rhubarb a deterrent for deer or will they eat that too you know if they it’s not at the top of their list um because the 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 I’ve never known personally of deer eating rhubarb I don’t think it’s enough of a deterrent to keep them out of why know I’ve got rhubarb our garden and

They’ve tried to get into the garden so uh even though the deer might not eat the rhubarb although I know they will as a last Resort at least the 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 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 uh 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 they’ll eat it sure uh let’s see if you have any more just a lot of comments about edible weeds like Lamb’s quarters yes lamb’s quarter is quite tasty I’ve eaten that

Stinging nettle is awesome as a drink someone says as a tea someone commented on moms and Del as being edible guess before you taste any of these I’m in food safety I’d say be sure that they’re okay exactly yep uh whenever I uh research something that I’m not sure

About I I do an online search but I add the at the end of what I’m searching University Research so that it brings you up to some research universities 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 2×4 foot planter that’s 2 feet deep in full sun yep two feet deep is fine the full sun yep that’s perfect uh for pumpkins um there are certain types

That are short Vines so look for a Short Vine compact type of pumpkin and what was the other celery it worked beautifully was there a third vegetable uh pumpkin celery and sweet corn yep and sweet corn sweet uh yeah two feet deep is plenty of root space even for sweet

Corn and there are actually some sweet corns uh 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 yes and of course oh one thing I was thinking about too with the rabbits and Deer uh you know occasionally people will try planting merry golds in amongst things but the the rabbits have actually eaten my Merry Golds and so not only haven’t they repelled it but they’ve they’ve been a a

Tasty treat for the rabbits and deer and so mosquitoes there are different plants that are that do have um aromatic oils that are known to repel mosquitoes but the trick is those plants have to be uh have to be so plentiful for round a deck uh so one mosquito plant uh as they’re

Sometimes termed is not usually going to be enough uh 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 uh edging to prevent leafy spurge such as in an edging that would go down into the ground I wonder uh all it says

Here ah and I am not sure some of the things like leafy spurge I inherited leafy spurge in our own yard um but some of those have such tenacious spread that I think they probably are going to find their way below you know I think it would probably

Have to be talking about a number of feet you know one feet two feet maybe um to prevent the spread of that all right right well I think that brings us to our close I like to have a hard start at two and an end at three so

I really want really I’ve really enjoyed 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 slides set that will be shortly on our our field to 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