This story was featured on our KVNF Farm Friday on our KVNF Regional Newscast for Friday, February 7, 2025
Lisa Young: Here we are at the Western Colorado Soil Health Food and Farm Forum in Montrose, Colorado, and I have a guest here. I'll have you introduce yourself.
Vanessa Harmony: Hi, I'm Vanessa Harmony. I own and operate a plant nursery and consulting business called Colorado Edible Forest based in Spring Valley of Glenwood Springs.
Young: Wow, what a, what a beautiful area out there. I'm really curious about what you do. Let's just kind of go through the process of what you do.
Harmony: I graft fruit trees and I especially focus on heritage fruit trees growing in our area and I also sell berry bushes like currants and gooseberries and raspberries and elderberry and goji berry, things that grow well outdoors and you only have to plant once and are edible or otherwise useful. And then I also offer perennial vegetable plants like horseradish and sunchoke and stinging nettle, things like that.
Young: That sounds really interesting. What is the altitude like in the growing season where you're at?
Harmony: It's at 7,000 feet and many of my plants are even hardier down to like zone three, zone four. So they're very versatile.
Young: Yeah, that's really amazing. A lot of people probably think, well, if you're at 7,000 feet, what in the world can you grow? You talked about some zones. I heard you say a zone three and a zone four. Tell me about the zones.
Harmony: So the zone is based on the low temperatures in the winter time. So a lower zone would indicate a colder zone. A lower number would indicate a colder zone. And actually I even have something called an arctic raspberry or a ground cover raspberry that is supposedly hardy down to zone zero.
Young: Wow. I mean, that is really pretty remarkable. Again, there's people who would love to grow some of the things that you're growing, but don't think they can because of the altitude. But I'm hearing you say, no, you actually could do this.
Harmony: Absolutely.
Young: And tell me a little bit about our clients. Who comes in and what are they interested in and do you do trainings with them? What type of other things do you do?
Harmony: Many of my customers are homeowners who are looking to grow some backyard fruit. In addition to supplying them with the plants, I'm also coaching them on how to plant the plants, how to maintain them, and how to increase their relationship with nature. In fact, my motto is to grow food, build soil, and nurture nature. Um, you're not only nurturing like pollinators and birds by creating habitat, but you're, uh, intensifying your own relationship with nature around you.
Young: How did you get involved in, in doing what you're doing?
Harmony: Well, I would go to summer camp when I was growing up in the Rocky Mountains, so that kind of solidified my passion for being in the mountains and my ethics for nature. And um, also finding wild raspberries and strawberries growing along trail sides. So that stuck with me and I heard about something called permaculture design as an adult and that really intrigued me. But made me realize that I had no knowledge about working with plants. And so I quit my cubicle job and I went to work as an apprentice at a farm and studied my plants really hard and eventually after a few years of experience in the industry, felt qualified to start my own nursery business.
Young: Yeah, that's amazing. Tell folks how they can get a hold of you, uh, you know, your contact information and then anything else you'd like us to know about your business.
Harmony: Okay, well, they can go to my website, coloradoedibleforest.com, and you'll find my contact information there. The nursery is open from about March, would be like on the early side, all the way through to the end of October. Everything's grown outdoors, so I don't have any plants artificially ready early in the season, so around like June, July, I have the majority of my plants available. We are offering a series of free fruit tree pruning workshops this spring.
So there's a page on my website about workshops if people are interested in signing up for those workshops to learn how to prune fruit trees.
Young: Yeah, that sounds really fun. And it's a great place, a great area to go if you just want to kind of hang out and visit between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale. Check them out. I think you'll be really amazed at what you find there. Thank you, Vanessa, for joining us today.
Harmony: Thank you so much, Lisa. Great to meet you.
