How To Choose & Plant Fruit Trees

An orchard is an investment, a permanent planting that will produce for years. I feel like an orchard should also be a an inviting place within view of your home.  Fruits trees provide more than just fruit they give you beautiful spring blossoms buzzing with pollinators from flies, bees, to butterflies.  In summer, they provide a canopy of shade and hopefully developing fruit.  In fall, the colors are spectacular with a carpet of fall leaves. Every season there is wildlife from rabbits, turkeys, deer, to birds (which are as anxious for fruit as you are) So in planning your orchard make it a place to gather and enjoy.  Too often I see small fenced orchards with little room to get ladders and sprayers around to care for the trees and then no inviting place to sit, stroll, and enjoy their beauty.  

Preparing the Site:

-Choose an area with 8-10 hours of sunlight which is required for growth, pollination, fruit development, and fruit ripening.

- Do a percolation test to be sure you have good drainage.  To do this

dig a hole 1 1/2' to 3' deep and 12" wide, fill the hole with water and let it drain, fill the hole a second time and measure how much water drains per hour.  One to 2" of water per hour is ideal 

- Clear the area of weeds.  You can till the area wait a few weeks and flame newly emerging weeds.

- Remove large rocks

-  Organic matter can be incorporated into the whole orchard prior to tilling with you want.

- It's a good idea to have a soil test to be sure you can amend the soil

-Either fence the entire area leaving room to maneuver a tractor, ladders, and equipment or have the individual trees surrounded by a small fence.  My orchard is not fenced. I intentionally have taller trees because of the deer. I don't mind the ladder work and love the large trees. 

Irrigation System

-  The goal is to get water 8 inches deep at the drip line of the tree.  To test use a prob or dig with a shovel 8 inches down.  The soil should be moist but not wet. For young trees this is not hard, but you need to design a system that can accomplish that for a mature tree. Obviously water wells will have to grow with the tree.

Choosing Varieties

This is the fun part.  I love reading about the different cultivars.  Heirloom varieties have such fascinating histories. You can plant Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple variety, a Spitzenburg.  You can choose from dessert types, fresh eating, and storage length. Also it's fun to choose cultivars developed in various countries. Do some research and ask local growers.  Visit farmers markets and do some taste testing.

 So in choosing a cultivar you must choose the rootstock and the scion wood which will produce the fruit and is the name of the cultivar (Gala, Bing etc.) 

Nursery purchased trees will not tell you the rootstock just the size which is usually semi dwarf.  I prefer to purchase bare root trees because you have so many options and can sometimes choose your root stock. Also I believe they do much better than potted trees.

Rootstock is important because it determines the size of the tree.  Tree sizes include dwarf, semi-dwarf, or standard size. It also is helpful in choosing soil type and suckering tendency.  Things to consider when choosing a size are available space, if you have deer, if you want ladder work, if you have fencing, and the size of harvest. 

Dwarf trees are not a good choice in our area. However they would be nice in a sheltered location or patio type garden.  They need to be staked and don't do as well in the wind.  The larger the tree the longer it will live and larger the harvest, but standard trees take longer to begin producing.

I suggest semi-dwarf or standard if you have room. 

Spacing of Trees

Basically you space a tree the same distance as it's potential height or the height you will maintain through pruning.

    Dwarf:  8 feet tall

    Semi-Dwarf:  16 feet tall so 12-16ft apart

    Standard:  25-30ft un-prunned but you can prune to a smaller size        

Pollination

When choosing varieties you must keep in mind that most fruit trees except sour cherries require or produce better with a pollinator.  A pollinator must bloom at the same time.  To determine this you can look up pollination charts or search on the web.  

Planting Potted Fruit Trees

- Dig the hole as deep as the root ball and twice as wide.

- Backfill with native soil

- Mulch and water

A bare root tree

Planting Bare Root Fruit Trees

- Soak bare root trees for 1/2 hour

- You will plant with the graft union 3" above the ground level.  The graft union is where the scion wood was grafted to the rootstock.  

- Dig a hole as deep as the roots and twice as wide

- Place a mound of dirt in the hole

- Spread the roots over the mound

- Back fill with native soil

- Mulch and water deeply.

Do not let plantings dry out.  Remove tags and labels to avoid girdling. Record your rootstock and variety in you records.

Fruit trees are a lot of work but they are also very enjoyable.  I love being in the orchard  pruning, and thinning or just enjoying the miracle of fruit development. 

I thought I would share some of the varieties I have planted in my orchard,

Apple:  Gala, Sundance, Black Arkansas, Ashmead Kernel, Honeycrisp,  Spitzenburg, Belle de Boskop, Rubinstar Jonagold

Pear:  Bartlett, Packman's Triumph

Plum: Santa Rosa, Shiro

Cherry: Bing, Tartian, Van, Montmorency (sour cherry) 

Peach: Allstar, Blushingstar which are white peaches and Elbertas 

Apricot: Perfection, Sun Glo

There are hundreds of cultivars to choose from so take time and do your research and enjoy the process. This ensures you will get the right variety for the uses you have in mind.