This is a YouTube video titled "Tips & Tactics: Planting Fruits & Vegetables" created in September 2022. It features a single speaker, J.D. from Dothan Nurseries, providing detailed advice on planting various fruit trees and vegetables suitable for southeast Alabama, including tips on seasonal planting and cold weather considerations. The content is educational and focused on gardening guidance.
Hey, J.D. with Dothan Nurseries again, going to talk to you a little bit about fruits and vegetables. We get a lot of questions about what's the best fruit tree to plant my yard. Everybody wants a fruit tree in their yard, and that's great. There's lots of different kinds you can grow peaches, pears, plums, apples, figs, blueberries, persimmons, muscadines. All kind of fruit you can plant in your yard. Some are easier than others. Everybody have. A lot of people really want an apple tree in their yard, and that's great. We have apple trees that will work okay in our area. But really, if you want a lot of fruit in your yard, there's some things that are easier than others. Fig trees are really easy. Blueberries, probably the easiest one, and this kind of an oddball one are persimmons. I've got one in my yard that's got 50 persimmons on it right now, and I've never done a thing to it. Those don't produce until the. Until the fall. But that's a really, really easy to grow fruit tree. We get a lot of question. Citrus. Citrus can be grown in Alabama. You know, we have to worry about the cold weather. And there's two things that you can plant that will tolerate the cold weather better than most of your other citrus trees, and that's the satsuma and the kumquat. Those will tolerate some cold weather, but you know, you just can't get one and plant it in your yard in December and then us have 22 degrees, it's going to die. But what we usually ask people to do is if they're going to plant it in their yard, get it and plant it in their yard in the spring or summer. And then it's got a little time to get some age on it. So it can take some of those cold weather snaps better. But it's really just a roll of the dice to what's going to happen with those if we really get some severe cold. When your tree's young, the ones we don't want to plant in your yard are lemons, grapefruits, limes. We sell those, but we ask you to plant it in a pot so when it gets really cold, you can bring it in the garage, put it on the front porch to keep it out of the worst of the cold. You'd be amazed how something that does not take the cold does if it's sitting out in your yard or as opposed to sitting up next to the house. You wouldn't believe it's, you know, it's 8 degrees warmer just being up next to the house. So being able to move some of those citrus is a really good thing. But the time to really plant these fruit trees, we like to plant those in the spring and in the fall. And the fruit trees are a little harder to get, especially since we've had Covid. Everybody's been wanting to get more food in their yard. They don't have to go and buy from the grocery store. So we typically get those in the fall and then again in the spring. Spring. The other thing to talk about are vegetables. And that's what's going to go in a vegetable garden. There's kind of two seasons for those. There's the spring and summer season. And that's what everybody thinks of when they think of vegetables. Tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, hot peppers, you know, anything like that, that's what you grow in the warm weather like this. And we have all kind of that stuff. And really the season to plant that is in the early to mid spring. After, you know, it's like anything, some of that stuff starts struggling when it gets really hot. And then the next season for vegetables is in the fall. We call these cool weather vegetables. And that's kind of all your leafy stuff. Lettuces, kales, cauliflower, broccoli, that kind of thing. That's what does well in the fall. So we have people come in and if somebody comes in in October and asks for a tomato, we're like, you're going to have to wait until April. But if they come in in April and ask for broccoli, we tell them you're going to have to wait until, wait until the fall. Because those are just two different kind of groups of vegetables. And you got to know what you're planting for that time of year. So most all those vegetables are really easy to do. And like I say with the fruit trees, some are a little trickier than others. But probably my three easiest are the figs, the persimmons, and then like the blueberries and muscadines. Muscadine is a southern grape. Those are pretty easy as well. The others can be done, but you know, you got to do a little more trimming, a little more spraying, a little more, keeping your eye on them. But you can easily do some fruit and vegetables in southeast Alabama.
