State-Journal.com - Fruit trees added to Governor's Garden

Photo By Kelly MackeyHalina Ruble, president of the Western Hills FFA, holds a stanley prune plum semi-dwarf tree as Jonathan Miller, secretary of the Finance and Administration Cabinet, shovels soil into the hole.

The addition of 24 fruit-bearing trees to the Berry Hill Mansion garden will provide a continuous supply of diverse fresh produce in several years, according to the project manager.

Steve Meredith, an agricultural expert, said the trees will begin producing bushels of apples and gallons of cherries in five or six years.

The produce will be donated to the ACCESS Soup Kitchen and for meals at the Governor’s Mansion.

The trees, which also will bear plums, pears and peaches, were purchased from Hardin County and cost $245.

On Thursday, students from the Western Hills High School FFA helped plant several trees at Berry Hill Mansion near the entrance on Louisville Road.

State employees had drilled 24 holes using heavy equipment earlier in the week. The students planted “whips,” small branches with growing roots.

They used shovels to bury the trees with soil and compost. Meredith said the compost protects the trees from being damaged by the heavy wet earth.

“Normally, we wouldn’t have done it today,” he said. “But all the essentials were arranged and we were able to move forward with it.”

Adding fruit trees was a natural extension of the Governor’s Garden, which began in May with corn, green beans, squash and cucumber, Meredith said.

The project was also a chance to put a small plot of land to better use, he said.

“We were mowing the lawn and invested in maintaining appearances,” Meredith said. “This demonstrates the fact we can take under-utilized property and do something productive with it, as opposed to purely ornamental in nature.”

The project was also a good hands-on learning experience for the WHHS FFA members, said Meredith, a former state and national FFA president.

Halina Ruble, president of the WHHS FFA chapter, agreed and said the project taught them a lot about planting fruit trees.

“We’ve never planted them before,” she said. “This was brand new for us.”

Club members helped plant trees along the Kentucky River this summer, but the fruit “whips” were more fragile and smaller, she said.

After planting the trees, Ruble and several other students helped harvest several head of broccoli and many softball-sized turnips from the Governor’s Garden. She’s never planted broccoli before and didn’t know what to expect.

“It turned out a lot better than I thought it would,” Ruble said. “We got a lot of turnips, I wasn’t expecting that many.”

Ruble said she enjoys eating turnips raw and broccoli with cheese.

The garden is modeled on first lady Michelle Obama’s plot at the White House. So far the Berry Hill garden has furnished 565 pounds of produce, more than half of which is donated to the ACCESS Soup Kitchen.

“It’s going to be a great help to us,” Linda Brown, director of ACCESS previously told The State Journal. “We hardly ever have fresh vegetables.”

The Governor’s Garden was launched as part of the Green Team initiative to promote local produce and environmentalism.

Plans for the Berry Hill garden are available at agricultural extension offices in all of 120 Kentucky counties. Meredith encouraged residents to plant their own garden and fruit trees at home.

Although the 24 trees planted at Berry Hill take up more than 400 square feet, Meredith said a normal backyard could accommodate one or two fruit trees.

“It could make a very significant contribution to their diet of fresh fruit and vegetables,” he said.