GROW YOUR INVESTMENTS

Think money doesn’t grow on trees? Kate Marshall suggests you plant fruit and berries and watch the returns roll in.

Why plant fruit? Why not plant something easy like griselinia and ‘Icebergs’? Well, partly because they are boring… but also because you’d be missing an investment opportunity.

Value

Fruit trees add value to your property, especially once they are well-established on larger properties and lifestyle blocks. Prospective buyers appreciate being able to pick a crop sooner than if starting from scratch.

Growing your own fruit is not only healthy and satisfying, it’s also cheaper in the long-run than sticking to supermarket-bought fruit, even when factoring in a bit of fertiliser and pruning time.

While edible plants can take just a couple of years to produce a decentsized crop, the productive life of a fruit tree is at least 10 years, and possibly more than 50 years! A single apple tree can produce up to 40kg of apples in a season, so over a productive life of (let’s say) 20 years, that’s a lot of fruit.

At a rough price of $2/kg, the tree delivers around $1200 of value in its 20-year lifespan. Planting several varieties with consecutive ripening will provide fruit for six to eight months of the year, to stock the family lunch boxes from March through to September. So for an investment of only about $120 for the trees, there is at least $3600 of value in fruit produced (and we have not even factored in inflation!).

Planning

When space is limited, choose high value crops and the types of fruit you and your family love. Plan to utilise every inch of space with edible hedges, vines on the pergola and espaliered fruit trees on the fences. Make a calendar with the harvest months for each variety, to try to spread the harvesting throughout the year (with a likely lull in spring when you will be relying on preserves or – gasp! – store-bought fruit). A small garden could include a dwarf peach, a dwarf apple, an espaliered pear, a feijoa bush, a blueberry bush and a couple of raspberry canes. They would provide fruit from December to August or September (when you would be out of stored apples and pears).

With an initial outlay of around $200, plus a bit each year for fertiliser, the value of the fruit over 20 years is a whopping $16,000! How’s that for a tax-free return on investment?

Home grown fresh fruit is a great savings on the weekly grocery bill, but also consider how much is spent on canned fruit, frozen berries for smoothies, plus jams and chutneys. With a few fruit trees and berry plants, these can be struck off the shopping list. You just need to add in a bit of sugar and malt vinegar to the list, and start collecting jars.

Get the best bang for your buck by choosing fruit that are expensive, such as passionfruit, avocados (if your site is frost free), blueberries (one plant for the price of four punnets of fruit), raspberries, tamarillos and figs.

Growing your own fruit also means you can grow tasty heritage varieties which aren’t commercially grown. Ditch the common varieties such as ‘Braeburn’ and ‘Royal Gala’ – impress your family with tonguecurling varieties the likes of ‘Peasgood Nonsuch’ and ‘Belle de Boskoop’.

Backyard fruit trees aren’t just about growing some cheap organic produce, and the savings to your own back pocket though.

Consider also the cost of “food miles” for store-bought fruit – both in dollar terms and to the environment. Plus your trees themselves are beneficial to the environment – filtering the air, conditioning the soil, providing nectar to bees and providing welcome shade in hot summer months.

And when your fruit trees have completed their productive lives, turn the wood into firewood, timber or even wood chips for smoking. Apple wood chips are particularly good for smoking fish and meat.

Growing

For maximum productivity, choose appropriate fruit types that suit your climate. Stonefruit varieties such as ‘Moorpark’ apricots and ‘Stella’ cherries require a cold winter to be most fruitful. They grow well if you get at least a few decent frosts each winter. Planting these in the mild Northland climate wouldn’t be recommended. Instead, plant varieties with “low chill requirements” (‘Lapins’ cherry or ‘Trevatt’ apricot) or those which are ideal for warmer weather (citrus, avocados, tamarillos).

Plant edibles in sites with full sun and free draining soil, to ensure healthy and highly productive trees. Shaded and poorly drained spots can lead to diseases, pests and weak growth – meaning much less fruit production and shorter-lived trees.

A small, well-planned garden could provide fruit for most of the year; fresh, dried, bottled or preserved.