Actually its 14 Zucchini plants. The reason I planted so many is that with my terrible clay soil on a hillside I usually am lucky to get even one Zucchini from a plant. But now that I can water them without the water all running downhill they can finally grow properly. You don't know what a pleasure it would be to have even 200 square feet of flat ground to work with. I have no level areas on my property. I also dug the planting holes much bigger this year, about a foot and a half square and about 9 inches deep and mixed in a lot of steer manure and shredded wood with the clay to break it up. I have given up trying to amend the whole garden. Over the course of the last 10 years I must have put in over a thousand dollars worth of compost, mulch, steer manure, and gypsum into the 40 by 50 foot garden area, and a year later it all disappears and goes right back to pure clay. So now I only amend the exact spot I am going to plant something in. Well with the zucchinis growing so well this year maybe I will rip half of them out and plant something else in their place. I also planted 29 tomato plants this year. Usually I have to plant about 31 to barely get enough tomatoes to eat because they produce so poorly or get diseased. Another factor may be this year I already pulled over 11,000 weeds (I counted) from around the plants instead of letting them take over. My soil is infested with weed seeds from the supposedly weed free compost and mulch I put on it. Don't believe them when they say weed free.

I was in a very similar situation 8 years ago, having just moved to a place where I expected to only stay about as long as you're talking about. I went ahead and planted as much as I had space for with little or no thought about bearing age, and I'm glad I did. I might have gotten some apples my last year there except for a severe late freeze, so I never got any apples, but the trees I planted -- I only paid $3 each for fresh grafts -- were worth much more than that just as a learning experience in pruning and training. They were also a lesson in record-keeping: if I hadn't failed in keeping track of which tree was which, I would have found them a valuable source for scionwood. And if I had moved just a year earlier, I think I might still have transplanted them to my new place. There were other things that I did successfully take with me (whole blueberry bushes as well as some runners I separated, some serviceberry runners, layered figs and muscadines...) Perhaps most valuable, having apple trees led me to think about and explore fruit things further, so when I moved again I planted a lot of other/new things that I'm very glad I have now but that I probably wouldn't have planted if I hadn't already had a little experience with the more common things. So based on my experience, my recommendation would be to just plant the things that most interested me, and I think that will likely prove the most valuable (in wiser decisions about what to plant in 3-4 years, in better understanding of how to care for (and possibly propagate) what you're most interested in, in transplants/layerings/scionwood/seedlings..., etc.)

First-off, impressive as ALWAYS, Kiwifruit! I should have thought to drop you an email. Btw, I think you said you were looking into picking-up a certain book (forgot the subject matter) a few months back that I should drop you an email for your review of it - maybe that wasn't you? I didn't know that chokeberries, pears, and mountain ash could cross with serviceberries (just knew that serviceberries chould be used as rootstock for them). What I gather from what you've written, even if hybridization occurred between the various native hawthorns, various native blueberries, between pear-serviceberry-[some]chokeberries, etc. these would likely be infertile donkies. I guess that apple orchards have made it impossible to know if your average crab apple (such as Malus coronaria) doesn't have some Malus x domestica in their lineage since they hybridize, or would the union between M. coronaria nad M. x domestica result in a sterile hybrid? Kiwifruit, I don't want to do embryonic rescue, since I don't want any native/non-native hybrids. As for sterile hybrids, I can deal with that; i.e. say if my Sorbus americana (American mountain ash) hybridized with my pears - at least the offspring would be sterile and I will not risk diluting the gene-pool of my native Aronia spp. and Sorbus americana plants. I don't mind non-natives crossing with non-natives, such as with pear types, as I will not be breeding non-natives, just having them for fruit. You say that different chromosome numbers and sterile hybrids would be the biggest problem - well, I would not mind sterile hybrids that are easily identifiable as hybrids (since they will not be mistaken for a distinctive native, but rather a hybridization between native/non-native), but I don't know what is meant by different chromosomes counts? John & theloud, Well, although I will be doing controlled (amateur-level breeding), I wouldn't exclude the benefit of having random chance seedlings pop-up in the woods and meadow should the fruits be superior. So, in this case, I would highly prefer to KNOW that there is not ANY realistic chance that native/non-native hybridization has occurred. theloud, Although Fragaria virginiana is a parent of the common garden strawberry, that doesn't mean that this was a natural union, etc. Thanks, Steve

Looks like a chokecherry to me. The other one that looks like it is P. padus. P. pensylvanica bears oblong-lanceolate leaves and produces flowers in subumbellate clusters. Bailey (1949, Manual of Cultivated Plants - Revised Edition) separates out the three PADUS, Racemose cherries this way: D. Sepals persistent at base of fr.: large trees with fls. appearing late, and with hard-glossy lvs...38. P. serotina DD. Sepals deciduous: small trees or bushes with very early fls. and soft not hard-glossy lvs. E. Hypanthium pubescent within: fls. in wide-spreading or drooping racemes: petals twice as long as stamens...39. P. Padus EE. Hypanthium glabrous within: fls. in upright or ascending racemes (at first); petals scarcely exceeding stamens...40. P. virginiana