Grow Your Money
There’s an old adage that “money doesn’t grow on trees”, which means that if you want money you need to work for it. You won’t just naturally get money for doing nothing. But when it comes to fruits and money, fruits do grow on trees. Though you do need to do some work to research cheap fruit trees and help the trees along, fruit trees are much hardier and easier to grow than most other food-bearing plants. Don’t fret, Homestead Earth is here to break it down.
So, yes, money doesn’t grow on trees, but fruits do. Fruits cost money, so by equivalency, money grows on trees, kind of. I’m not saying that it’s a good idea to quit your job and become a full-time fruit farmer. However, I do think it makes sense to start growing at least an edible berry bush for yourself. While you won’t make any money with just 1 plant, you could save some money by not buying as many berries at the grocery store. Balancing fruits and money this way can be quite beneficial.
Moreover, consider the balance between fruits and money as you make these decisions. Plants can be expensive to start, even a cheap fruit tree or shrub like a blueberry bush costs $25-30. However, you won’t get $25 worth of blueberry for a few years. One thing that can help is to propagate any cuttings so you can grow more plants for free. Hopefully, you will get a better return on your investment in a few years.
Some finance folks call saving money in this way a “cost avoidance”. It’s an important concept to understand in personal finance and permaculture. You don’t want to get sucked into spending a lot of money on tools and supplies to grow your food. Growing berries is a good step in that direction because all you really need is a plant and a sunny spot of land, or a pot. Remember that fruits and money are linked through this cost avoidance concept.
Time is Money is Maturity
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – when it comes to fruit trees you can buy time. All this really means is that you can buy fruit trees at any level of maturity, but you’re going to pay for it. So, I think it is best to plant your orchard first. Many investors say that the best time to start investing was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. The same goes for permaculture. Start now so that in 5-10 years you’ll have big crops of fruit! In essence, you are investing in both fruits and money through your permaculture efforts.
Just like with advanced financial products like options, there are advanced fruit tree products. Seems weird to relate fruit trees to financial products, but have you seen Trading Places? Orange futures are central to the plot. Much like options in finance, planning your orchard carefully links fruits and money.
How To Buy Cheap Fruit Trees
Anyway, I’m not talking about abstract products like options and futures for fruit trees, I’m talking about more advanced propagation and growing techniques for fruit trees. There’s obviously the basic “buy whatever cultivar your local nursery has on sale”, then selecting high-yielding and disease resistant cultivars, then grafting rare scion wood to hardy rootstock (this is how orchards clone fruit trees), and then you can also breed your own fruit (clearly, this is very time and effort intensive). The more advanced you get with your growing, the more value you can add to you homestead, and community.
For instance, buying a small 2ft to 4ft Honeycrisp apple tree on Gurney’s (lets be real, it’s gonna be barely 2ft) is a fairly cheap fruit tree at $50, but you could buy rootstock for $5 and scion wood for $13. So, that’s 1 tree for $18 instead of $50. But it gets better. That single scion wood piece can be used to create more than 1 tree if you buy multiple rootstocks. 5 is a reasonable number of trees for 1 scion, so that gets you 5 trees for $38! The math works out even better when you start growing your own rootstock and can prune your trees and use those cuttings as scions, showing how smart planning of your fruits and money is possible.
Fruits For You
Now what fruit trees should you grow? Well, that depends on where you live and what you like to eat. So, it doesn’t really matter what types of fruit you grow. However, you should be careful about selecting varieties. For example, some apple tree varieties are highly susceptible to diseases and pests, but other varieties are nearly maintenance-free. Clearly, if you’re growing your own calories you want to expend as few calories as possible to grow them. This means working smarter, not harder. Selecting trouble-free varieties of plants goes a long way in reducing the cost and effort of permaculture gardening. By doing so, you optimize your relationship with both fruits and money. Then you can add chickens to the mix…