Nature and Gardening

We have 2 apple, two plum, two pear, three American persimmon, roughly a dozen seedling pawpaw, hickory, and chestnut trees, plus others that are more 'ecosystem service' than production trees. The apples and plums are the only ones at production age at the moment. I prune the trees to maximize airflow and sunlight, and train branches to achieve near-horizontal angles. One of our apples is at around 45 degrees relative to the ground and I trim the branches that would grow into the soil.

For shrubs, we have four varieties of raspberry (R. idaeus) and one variety that's R. oderatus, but maybe 6-10 of each currently. I like to leave three canes upright but will pin last year's canes to the soil to propagate. The R. oderatus I'll prune with heading cuts to stimulate suckering. We also have blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries, haskaps, hazelnuts, nan king cherries, spicebush, carolina allspice, elderberry, serviceberry, bayberry, and several kinds of fruit-bearing Viburnum. We've also got some grapevines, hardy kiwi, and passionfruit (P. incarnata). We like to mix annual veg into these spaces alongside our perennial herbaceous plants like sorrels, sage, comfrey, bergamot, mints, and others.

We make compost from our poultry bedding, which is mostly made up of wood chips that we get from a number of arborists in our area. We also use the chips for our foot paths and will use last year's paths as additional mulch on the gardens they border.

We're in USDA zone 5, but I really prefer the Trewartha climate system, which places us in zone Dca. I also think the Köppen climate system, which Trewartha is based on, is pretty nifty.

While I don't know just how popular they are here, the replies so far are heartening and food/fruit forest and other permaculture/regenerative gardening posts will be welcomed for as long as I'm allowed to be one of the mods

Cherries, apples, plums in the northern edge of the temperate zone. Recently added buckthorn and blackcurrant although they are not really trees.

I bought an old property with ca 35 year old apple trees and 15 year old cherry / plum all of which had been left abandoned for about a decade. Their size is a problem. The apple trees are very tall and making contact with the building. I have a 7m long saw for trimming them amd I tend to take off one big branch per year and lots of small ones. Really big ones get the chainsaw, which is used to process the branches into firewood.

The cherries produce a lot of small bushlings. I manage them with a clearing saw.

We built a composting toilet which we use to process human waste. That one is emptied to an enclosed thermal compost for about 1-2 years more before being used. Last year we don't add more stuff to ensure it's safe to use. Kitchen and garden waste goes to an open compost. When we mow the "lawn" which is more like a field we let the clippings fall where they may to keep the nutrients in.

We process wood and sticks into mulch we use with paper to protect the bushes from weeds.

I apologize for my lack of gardening vocabulary.

South Floridian here. We have 2 varieties of avocado, 2 of mango, 2 of coconut (6 trees in total), blood orange, lemon and grapefruit. When they're in season there is too much fruit to even give away, since many neighbors have some of the same growing as well. I use stake fertilizer twice a year on the citrus and keep them mulched as they're still a bit small. The others are well established and take no maintenance other than occasional pruning.

Something is up with my avocados though. They were great producers for years (one is quite old, probably 60+ years, the other is probably in its 30s but not sure), but these past two years there have been so many blooms but almost no fruit. So you get the downsides of massive "rains" of pollen when there's a slight breeze, but none of the upside of free avocados :/

I also have about 2 dozen pineapple tops that have been propagated and planted. Many of them are pretty young, but we get around 3-4 teeny-tiny pineapples per year. Again no maintenance once they're going (I usually propagate them in water until the roots are a good 6-8" long before putting them in the ground).

I'm thinking about adding a banana shrub, but have also thought about sugar cane since then between that, (once I learn how to process and distill it) the coconuts and the pineapples I could realize my life-long dream of making a fully home-grown piña colada.

Sort of, but it's just getting started. I've got a cherry tree with three varieties, two tiny apple trees, a bunch of blueberry and huckleberry bushes (sadly, the huckleberries have not yet been productive), a couple of salmonberry shrubs, and a few thimbleberry shrubs.

I'm in western Washington, zone 9a.

I haven't needed to worry about size yet but will definitely have to prune the salmonberry and thimbleberry regularly before long. So far, I've just used mulch, but I'll be adding compost at some point.

Edit: I forgot about my yuzu.