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Fruit
Growing Sites
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Garden Clubs and Organizations |
| Backyard Fruit Growers - a Pennsylvania hobbyist group similar to MidFEx. Members meet four times yearly (Winter, Spring Grafting, Summer Orchard Tour, Fall Apple Tasting) to share ideas and fellowship. Their newsletter, Backyard Fruit Grower, has a circulation of about 200. The web site is small but captures their enthusiasm. The highlight is a great picture gallery of fruit and growing methods. This includes over 24 pawpaw pictures, espalier fruit growing, assortment of early ripening apples and more. This site also has a large list of fruit related links. | |
| California Rare Fruit Growers - a large amateur fruit growing organization with emphasis on fruits for California type climates. They publish The Fruit Gardener, an excellent full color magazine. Their web site is outstanding; an excellent resource for backyard fruit growers. The Fruit Fact pages contain detailed information on over 40 not so common fruit. Another index has brief descriptions of 250 rare and unusual edible plants, wow! | |
| North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) - a club with over 3,000 members devoted to sharing information on cultivating fruit. They communicate with each other in the Pomona, a superb quarterly printed journal. Their web site includes a list of special interest groups, a very informative page on fig growing, and information on the quince. To get a flavor for the Pomona (which is a fun read), visit the back issues' table of contents pages. NAFEX also sports a great fruit link page. | |
| Northern Nut Growers Association (NNGA) - a non-profit organization with a diverse membership of people interested in nut tree culture. Their web pages provides supply sources, nut recipes, a few articles, links list; a contact page titled "Ask Our Experts" to access their nut, persimmons, and pawpaw culture experts, and an index of lending library books and articles available to members. | |
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Government & Universities |
| National Clonal Germplasm Repository at Corvallis - a USDA gene bank and repository that preserves invaluable plants. Stop by the archive to see the latest new, cool, weird, and unusual fruits. Use the huge GRIN database to search for detailed scientific information on a specific fruit variety. Color plates of fruits from the 1920's are online. Taken from the books "The Pears of New York" and "The Small Fruits of New York", there's images of 80 pear varieties, 40 strawberries, 23 raspberries, 14 gooseberries, 14 currant and a few more. | |
Chicago
Region's Gardening Sites
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Botanical Gardens and Horticultural Libraries |
| Cantigny Park - is composed of five areas: the McCormick Museum, the First Division Museum, the Gardens, the Visitors Center and the Golf Course. Their web site is sparse. They host MidFEx's grafting workshop. | |
| Chicago
Botanic Garden - MidFEx recommends visiting this magnificent world
class botanic garden in person. They're located in Glencoe Illinois,
a northern suburb of Chicago. Don't miss the wonderful Fruit and Vegetable
Garden on it's own 4 acre island. Highlights include uncommon fruiting
plants like kiwi, paw paw, elderberry, juneberry ; examples of espalier
fruit growing; and a series of identical apple trees growing on different
dwarfing rootstock. There's also a horticultural library (with 17,000
books) that's open to the public, and they host MidFEx's grafting workshop.
Their web site contains lots of information about the gardens, tours, educational classes and upcoming events being held there. However except for the "Illinois Best Plants" section, there's not much information for the home gardener and even less about fruit growing. |
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| Morton
Arboretum - a 1700 acre botanic garden located 25 miles west of
Chicago in Lisle, Illinois. They specialize in the display and study
of trees, shrubs, and vines. Not a place to see edible fruiting plants.
Web site is an overview of their grounds, research, classes, and programs. There's also information on Sterling Morton Library, a horticultural library that's open to the public and has over 28,000 books! |
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Gardening Clubs and Organizations |
| Gardeners of the North Shore - a general interest gardening club active in the northern Chicago suburbs. Meets monthly at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Web site features a monthly "Brown Thumb" column, event calendar and more. | |
| Illinois Orchid Society - an orchid growing club with several hundred members, they meet monthly at the Oakton Community College in Des Plaines. Web site has a wealth of links for orchid enthusiasts. | |
| Midwest Bonsai Club - a Bonsai club that meets monthly at the Chicago Botanic Garden. They host the annual Mid-America Bonsai Exhibit, one of the largest shows in the United States. | |
| West Chicago Garden Club - a general interest gardening club that meets monthly at the West Chicago Library. | |
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Magazines and Newspapers |
| Chicagoland Gardening - Come here to learn more about their excellent printed magazine for Chicago area gardeners; features Table of Contents from current and previous issues, but not articles' text. Except for Calendar of Coming Events and their monthly tip page What to do in the Garden, it's a slim site for gardening information. Note- The Sept/Oct 1996 issue has an excellent article on growing apples and MidFEx. | |
| Chicago Sun-Times Gardening - full text from gardening articles that appeared recently. | |
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Miscellaneous |
| University of Illinois Extension's Hort Corner - a wealth of gardening information tailored to northeastern Illinois. Visit the Apples and More page for a list of nearby apple orchards. Send your gardening questions to the Ask the Expert web page and receive answers from University educators. Read two informative online newsletters written by experts: Stateline Yard & Garden a weekly, and The Green Line which is published 6 times a year. Their back issues are also on-line and have articles of interest to backyard fruit growers. | |
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Copyright 1999 - 2004 Midwest Fruit Explorers all rights
reserved |
