Fall Plants to Add to Your Back Yard
While fall is mostly dedicated to winding down, amending the soil, and harvesting your final produce, there is one more thing that can be done… planting berries.
Fall berry planting produces more the following year
Personally, when it comes to ROI, I can be a little impatient. I want to supply everything I need for my family, now, but it takes time and I’m constantly reminded of that. So, to quell my impatience I plan and dream a little on the side. If you’re like me, raspberry (or blackberry) bushes and strawberry plants will give you the quickest return on investment. And fall planting makes your first yield a little better than spring planting.
When you plant in the fall, spring and summer harvest is better
Planting in the fall allows the roots to establish well before they need to sustain a plant in producing fruit. While planting in the spring is possible, the first few months will be focused on root establishment instead of fruit production. Ideally, you will pick off all flowers the first year to allow root focus to happen. When you plant in the fall, you do not have to do this and the plant will produce a smaller yield. The following year, you will be able to harvest a mature crop of raspberries, blackberries or strawberries.
Fruit is pricey, even when utilizing a U-pick farm
Another reason I find berry bushes and plants an excellent addition to any home is that they can take up little space, they produce well for minimal effort, and they yield quickly. Apple, pear, peach trees and blueberry bushes take a few years to produce and the wait can be hard. Part of the reason our family grows food is to cut down on cost, but also to have minimally sprayed foods. While this may not be the priority for everyone, to us, organically grown foods are worth it and mostly why we do what we do.
Low spray U-pick farms exist and greatly reduce the cost of bulk produce, but it is still a large up front cost every year to pick 100+ pounds of each type of produce berry, which is what our family requires for a year worth of berries to freeze or can. This may sound extreme, but I challenge you to review a year and consider what and how much your family actually consumes of each food type.
How to calculate how much fruit your family will need for a year
Preserved fruit, that is not of the long term storage variety, such as apples, will need to be dried, frozen or canned in some way. I first think about how much fruit our family will eat in a day for regular meals. We typically always have a fruit with breakfast, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries or peaches. I calculate how much fruit is consumed in one meal, how often we will eat that in one week, and then I multiply that by 52. Then I do that math for each individual fruit. And there you have your math for how much fruit your family will consume in a year. From there I think about how much I could grow with the space I have, average yields per plant variety, I consider plants with higher yields or two harvests (like ever bearing raspberries and strawberries).
I recently transplanted 34 strawberry starts aka runners (these are baby plants that grow from mature adult plants), in addition to 50 new Chandler strawberry plugs. Add that to the 90 mature plants I already had, I am hopeful for a minimum of 100 pounds of strawberries for 2026, if all goes well, I hope to harvest 200 realistically. Our family needs a minimum of 100 pounds of strawberries for a year, this covered our strawberry jam and frozen berries that can be eaten at breakfast or utilized in baking.
Start small if you need to!
All of this to say, if it does not serve your family best to outright plant 80 strawberries this fall, plant what you can, and expand each year. Being able to harvest fruit from your own yard, no matter how small will be an exciting motivation to keep going and grow your yield. For me, the upfront cost of planting a large amount of strawberries was worth it. I will still end up saving $73 in just one strawberry season and I will not have to drive to a U-pick low spray farm, I can collect berries while the toddler naps, and I now have berry plants and bushes that will produce year after year, increasing my savings.
If you are looking for quality places to purchase red raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry plants, feel free to leave a comment or reach out!
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