Customer Reviews

Growing Fruit in the Upper Midwest

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Home and commercial growers in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas) face major challenges in getting steady crops of quality fruit. Tree fruits, berries, and the like are better adapted to warmer areas. Most commercially available cultivars are not well adapted to the cold climate in and around Minnesota.

In this volume, Gordon combines the history of fruit growing in the area, basics of culture, and hardiness history of major varieties. This last piece of information is not available in any other source I have seen and by itself is worth more than the purchase price of the book to anyone contemplating a new planting of fruit trees, vines, or bushes.

Hardiness information is broken down by regions within each state, providing a more detailed look at the winter survival characteristics than can be gained by USDA hardiness zones alone.

In addition, Gordon provides some interesting historical ancedotes and cultural information. The cultural recommendations are the same as for other parts of the country, by and large, but the information is useful to the beginner.

This is a horrible little book that borrows material liberally from Cooperative Extension bulletins from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. You would be far better off to purchase or download the original materials from the websites of these states than to purchase this book if for no other reason that the Cooperative Extension Bulletins are updated regularly while this book is now horribly out of date.

I think that there is a neweer edition. Valuable resource if you want to grow in the region covered.

Don covers all the basics of all fruit varieties you can grow in the upper midwest. A book of reference fro anyone interested in growing an orchard in their yard