I love my garden. Every year I collect the harvest. On bad years it is enough for our self-sufficient annual nutrition considering vitamins. During the autumn, winter and spring we hardly ever buy vegetables, only potatoes and bananas. At home garden we grow red currants, black currants, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, honey berries (not a great success at all, they are about to leave), apples and saskatoons (= amelanchier, shadbush, shadwood, shadblow, serviceberry, juneberry, sugarplum, wildplum, chuckleypear.... it seems to have many names).
This year I planted more blackberry, blueberry and grape vine. I do also have many rowans (mountain ash) but usually we save all the berries for the birds. I love waxwings who love rowans. We save the rowans and rose berries for the birds also to secure their surviving over the winter. We need birds in our garden. The are important because of the biodiversity. Birds eat bugs that would destroy my harvest. But they also call for hawks etc. to take care of the pack of little birds don't grow too big. I have had this garden for 12 years and had never need to use any pesticides so it is very organic but needs that biodiversity to stay in that way also in the future.
Our apples don't grow big, neither do apple trees, or any other tree. It is because of the arctic climate. On the other hand it is good because then I can fit more species in my ca. 0,27 acre garden.
Of course growing our own food demands a lot of work during the year. Not to mention when harvesting and producing it all to the form it stays good over the winter.
Every year we also collect blueberries, lingon berries and cloud berries from the wilderness. It is quite a huge amount of berries to pick up and preserve.
I have had a juicer for years but now I have also a steam juicer. Before my mother-in-law has steamed our berries for us but now I can do it myself. This is a great pal in my kitchen.
PS. If you are not able to grow your own food look around. It is more planet friendly to buy from local small farmers than transport anything from the other side of the world. If you live in a city you can also use those services that aim to reduce food waste: ask from restaurants, super markets etc. Even around here some shops collect "stop food waste" bags or baskets and sell them out at very low cost. Be early or late bird, it depends on their system when they put them out on the sale. It is also an excellent way to protect the planet earth with extremely low cost budget.
