Penny Harper

These are my people! I've done so many of these. I have the worst, barren, salty, native Mojave Desert hardpan soil. But people want to buy my transformed garden soil!

You might be a Permie if it's hard to throw anything away. Maybe it could be used for compost or mulch, to feed the chickens, buried in the hugelkultur pit, start a woodstove fire, given to someone in need. Anything but send it to the landfill.

Is there an American fruit and nut tree list for those of us who don't live in Canadian climate?

Here in southeast California, Mojave Desert, winter has many sunny days. I just check the weather forecast before washing clothes in my electric washing machine. Then I hang them outside on the clothes lines like I do all year. They won't dry overnight as in summer, so they have to be on the line before noon.
If it's cloudy, rainy or too windy in the winter, I can always hang a small batch of laundry on the two 15 foot lines in my nice dry basement.
We don't all live in humid or snowy areas.

I am greening the high desert outside of Barstow, California at 2200 feet. I took the PDC last year and am applying many perm methods to my 10 acres in the Mojave Desert. After 23 years living here using organic methods, I have created a little oasis that is attracting a lot of birds. I grow veges and fruit trees, raise chickens, cats and bees.

Elaeagnus species is nitrogen fixing. I plant Russian olive (Elaeagus angustifolia) here in zone 7 in Mojave Desert. There isn't enough water here for them to spread. So they aren't invading or taking over land. Invasive species can be beneficial in a controlled permaculture environment.

I am a permacilturist who owns a 10 acre property in the Mojave Desert, in Southern California midway between Los Angeles and and Las Vegas. I"m 77 and no one in my family is interested in inheriting my home and living here. How do I connect with people with permaculture skills? The PEP program and badges sound great.

I will commit to planting 100 trees on my 10 acres in the Mojave Desert, California, over the next cool 5 months. My small team and I planted 120 here trees in 2016. So 100 is doable. Only planted about 20 trees a year since then.
Last year three owls moved into my little 11 year old forest of tall windbreak trees windward of the veg garden. My trees are getting noticed!
I bought 19 potted trees last week, mostly from a community College Ag Dept sale, many desert natives and 8 are nitrogen fixing.
The other 81 trees I will start from seeds and cuttings. I've been collecting tree seeds as I see them as I drive by. I hire a strong teenager to dig the 24" holes below the caliche level.  I start cuttings in their permanent hole in the soil using a rooting hormone and a mycorrhizal innoculant blend. Each new tree in the ground gets a cylinder of rabbit wire around it and 2 dripline emitters. We elevate the driplines on stakes or tree cylinders to a height the rabbits can't reach. They just get to nibble off low branches that stick out through the wires.
I start the tree seeds in the house and move them out to the solar heated, non-freezing greenhouse when they get too crowded in here. We will transplant them outside in late winter.
I'm just starting to get into Russian olives for nitrogen fixing and evergreen windbreaks. I've seen only 3 of them locally and there's no evidence of their spreading or being invasive around here. They take our extremes of temp, high winds, alkaline soil and salty well water. I harvested handfuls of mature seeds last week by the rosdside and will see if I can get them to sprout.

I own 10 acres with house and water well in the Mojave Desert in Southern California. It gets up to 137° F in the direct summer sun and down to 10° F in the winter. For fruit trees, I grow pomegranates, mulberrys, pistachios and jujubes in the direct sun and wind successfully. When I have grown apples and apricots out in the direct sun, they die of sunburn. So I erected a 50% blocking shade cloth on a framework overhead with slat wind fence and planted these sun sensitive semi-dwarf fruit trees under it. This year I added 2 peach trees that survived the intense summer.
I am just offering this shade cloth idea as a way to jump start a food forest before the shade trees are large enough to protect the sensitive fruit bearers. Now my plans are to plant shade and leguminous trees among the apple, apricots and peaches.
Alan, what do you think of this idea?

In any case, you will have to learn advanced Desert gardening. Learn what the locals do, what they grow and when to plant. Your PNW methods mostly won't transfer. Study local gardening methods at  community Collegeclasses if available. That's what I had to do after repeated garden failures moving from coastal Los Angeles to Mojave High Desert near Barstow.
Woops. I didn't realize I was looking at a 5 year old post!