Garden goodness

I’m so excited, my Dwarf Mount Royal plum tree came today in a very tall and skinny cardboard box. I’ve never ordered a tree through the mail before so I didn’t know what to expect. Right now it’s planted in a big pot until the rain lets up and I can dig it a proper hole in the yard. The description says that it is self fruitful, so I shouldn’t need two.
I already planted a Profusion crab apple on the south side of the house. When I was at our local river cleanup event, they were giving trees away, so I picked up the crab apple for me and a dogwood for my neighbor who lost a beautiful huge cherry last year in a storm. In a couple of years I should have a nice bit of shade in the summer for my dining room and kitchen. I’m looking forward to trying my hand at grafting as well with the crab apple. I have visions of grafting two or three different kinds of apples onto that tree and having apples in the fall too.
I’m hoping that next year I can get a Dwarf Korean Chestnut from Oikos Tree Farms. It only grows to 20 feet tall, in 20 years, instead of 50 feet like the standards. Best of all, it grows true from seed, which I see as a big bonus. So few fruit and nut trees are able to be reproduced without complicated grafting and rootstock, it’s exciting to have found one. Oikos Tree Farms also has a Russian apricot that grows true from seed, but it’s currently out of stock. I truly hope that they have more available next year. Food security is something I worry about. So much of what we eat comes from California, if oil prices increase, food prices would increase as well, from transportation as well as fertilizer and tractors, and pretty much every other aspect of modern food production. On the other hand, with our deflating economy and China owning a huge chunk of our debt, I could see a hungry population in China getting fed with American grain before the Americans. So no matter how I slice it, local food is a good idea. So trees that I could plant their seed to get more trees that bear edible food sounds great.