I had a dream that I planted the most delicious fruit(some kind of spikey lychee) but it got so big I couldn’t reach high enough to harvest it. I felt an immense amount of guilt. The lack of control over my responsibility. Fruitflies galore from unmanaged fruit. Being punished for it somehow because my family punished me over nonsensical things, simply for the joy of of abusing and controlling me. To the point I was trained to automatically control myself without them needing to punish me anymore.
I had to keep the entire house so neat and tidy that it made me want to scream everyday. Or else punishment for not being a good servant. I wasn’t allowed hobbies, and if they let me do anything I liked, it was to keep me more on edge because they would go “see you can’t handle this. Now we’re taking it away forever. You will never be allowed again. Also you’re being punished for not keeping a picture perfect job at this thing we gave you the PRIVILEGE of doing!”
I think this is about my need to escape my old programming. I love the idea of planting fruit trees. However I can’t get over fear of lack of control over how big and fruitful they may get. I would like to stop feeling guilty. I love plants and homegrown food and I’d like to let go of control over how big plants can get. And let go of the possibility of some excess rotting food. Just let it happen, you know?
Wildlife need food too
an apple slice a week keeps the fall-wasps happy too
I give big grocery bags of lemons and grapefruit to friends and neighbors. They’re always overjoyed with it.
How do you give it to neighbors? My social skills are lacking and I’m not already friends with any of them. Do I just knock on doors?
“Hey, um, I live just down the hall and we have this lemon tree. Would you like a few lemons?” rinse and repeat until you’re out of lemons.
It’s usually just anxiety, most people will politely take lemons even if they won’t use them. De-escalate, seem self-effacing, and back off if you think people are getting weirdly aggressive about rejecting lemons.
You will likely be known as the lemon person.
It’s people I already know yeah. You could put them in a cardboard box and set them near the curb if that sounds more appealing
As a gardener, that feeling never quite goes away. In the case of fruit trees, freezing and jams are always an option. Maybe make a syrup out of your lychees? Homemade sodas and steamers are the best creature comforts out there, imo.
Lychee jam sounds great
I grow a lot of stuff and some of the plants here grow more than I and my immediate family can handle. For the most part, this is a a good problem to have. I share with people, make preserves for the off season, and encourage people to come over and help pick for themselves.
There are some actual downsides. Rotting fruit is gross to step in, so you need to clear pathways at least. Rotting fruit is also often part of the disease pathway for pathogens that go after trees, so again, good to clean up.
Wildlife will eat a lot of windfall fruit but this isn’t always easy to manage. We have lots of deer in the area and deer fucking love apples. However, deer also love everything else, so I have a fence around our garden so that I could also grow other plants without them devouring things. Before putting up the fence, I could rely on them eating windfall apples, but now I need to do more work. I’ve done my best to encourage biodiversity but this contradiction (deer are good for windfall management but bad for most everything else that is trying to establish) is just the nature of trying to rewild
You might try planting a pollinator garden. It’s a chaotic system which teaches you new aesthetic values while supporting an entire ecosystem. You get to grow a beautiful mess that only becomes more disorganised with time, but that disorder means more calories and habitat and trophic layers. Doing alternative landscaping has really radicalised me against that kind of suburban obsession with control/productivity/perfection. If I plant a sunflower instead of a rose and that sunflower falls over, that’s what they do. Now it’s a house and food source for an entire community I get to learn about, without a single seed going to waste because that plant isn’t an object for my sole benefit.
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Sets up a stand in her driveway, posts on local message boards, and just lets people drive up and grab the bags.
Any ideas for when you live in an apartment and you can’t use any land outside of it?
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Balcony can take tiny trees. I think maybe kumquats. I’ve seen them fruiting at just a few feet tall.
Have you considered fruit wine or fruit brandy?
We brew, but not wine or brandy. My boyfriend makes kombucha. He lets room-temperature black tea brew with the bacteria(scoby). Then he bottles it with a lil blob of fruit smoothie so the tea’s culture eats well and carbonates. It’s delicious. We prefer it as more of a carbonated vinegary juice, but if you leave it for long enough the yeast dies and it becomes increasingly alcoholic.
This means I can be lazy and not bother to juice. I can just brew using smoothies.
Why, do you brew?
I would like to brew if I had lots of fruit and time to drink wine.
I used to brew beer when I was younger. That was a very good time.
We rent a small place on an old farm that still has a little orchard that’s fenced off from the deer. We throw fruit over the fence all year.
You’re supposed to give excess fruit to your neighbors.
How do you think new plants are grown?
Once you removed scarcity for yourself, use the excess fruits of your labor to plant new trees. But make sure your own house is in order first so you don’t fall behind on your responsibilities and let the fruits of your labor go to waste.
Seems like a stress dream, but also some pearls of wisdom. Perhaps your overextending yourself a bit.
