More than 40 years ago I lived on land out in the country. In the front yard were two very old apple trees. One needed to be cut down, which made me sad, but the other flowered and fruited every year. Come fall I had a brother-in-law who got very excited because he knew I was about to start baking apple pies and he was on the list of people to gift them to. I have wanted fruit trees ever since then and this may be the year.
We moved our Marine from Florida to Georgia. On the trip home the Google took us on what felt like back roads through Georgia and South Carolina. We drove through miles of pecan and peach tree orchards, it was beautiful. For awhile now Bill and I have been talking about having fruit trees. A decade or more ago we purchased a dozen or so apple trees with the hopes of having a little apple orchard down in what had been a fenced in grazing area for horses. None of them survived, but we also did nothing for them it was live or die your choice, and they chose the latter. One day Bill came home from work with three pear trees and two plum trees. We planted them all and even got some flowers the next year. One by one the plum trees died, but not the three pears. For almost ten years these three trees have lived but never gifted us a pear. Two years ago we finally decided to give them fertilizer and a trim. Standing out there after the work was done we told them, “Next year if you don’t fruit it will be time to let you go.” This summer one of the trees gave us two pears. Now it’s on us to up our game. We fertilized them in the fall and we were out there again last week working on them. The South Carolina peach/pecan trees have inspired us.
This area across the driveway from the garden clings to the edge of the ravine. I’ve tried putting wooden raised beds over there and growing veggies. The woods threw branches at them and ate the veggies. I’ve tried taking a section of chicken yard fence we replaced and putting it behind the trees, then planting morning glories on it. In my mind it was going to be beautiful. Glorious flowers reaching up to the sky bringing in all the pollinators to help the garden and the fruit trees. Reality is the morning glories didn’t do great there but they seem to have loved the rest of the place because now I can’t get rid of them.
When we don’t know what to do with a plant it goes over there and some, like the black eyed susans and purple cone flowers, have found their own way. This past fall we finished off moving black berries from this spot to the big garden area. I dug up what I could recognize of the flowers and replanted them into the new raised beds. Then I covered the whole area with cardboard and landscape fabric to smoother the weeds. In between each tree I put metal raised beds, hundreds of tulips, and red twig dogwoods. Come spring I will put more flowers in those beds again trying to lure in those pollinators. Plus I like flowers. All of this is going to come with the addition of auto watering even though the trees have roots deep enough to take care of themselves.
The part that made me really nervous was the trimming. For years I had falsely labored under the illusion that the more growth the better the tree. It seems that pears and apples like a good trimming. Last year we cut them back a bit but nothing to severe, this year it was a lot more severe. The goal is to keep them about 5′ or 6′ tall, very open in the middle, no cross branches, no water sprouts, no dead or sick branches, and get them down to about 3 main branches. Gulp.
It’s a little difficult to see how wild the trees got over the summer just because of all the trees in the background. Take my word for it, they put on a lot of growth over the summer.
Here is what it looks like after the trimming. We cut the landscape fabric away to the dimension of the diameter of the branches. This allowed us to put down what felt like an extraordinary amount of slow release fertilizer around the drip line. We did not put down bone meal but probably should have and the only fertilizer we had on hand was a 12/12/12 which is potentially too high in nitrogen. However, it’s what we had so it’s what we used. We then put down a 3″ – 4″ thick layer of compost. Our homegrown compost is mostly leaves, branches, chicken poop and some green from the garden. It’s been sitting in the bin for about a year working on becoming dirt. Over top of that went mulch in the form of wood chips. That layer was also a good 3″ – 4″ thick. Hopefully that will be enough to smoother weeds because after pulling up the cardboard and fabric weeds were still trying to grow.
It might be hard to see from these pics but there was a lot of “water sprout” growth, those are the thinner branches that you see going straight up. You might also be able to see that a lot of the branches crossed over each other. We look at each branch to see how many “spurs” were on the branches and then removed the one that either didn’t have any spurs, looked like it was growing towards the tree or other branches, was dead, or was young.
The lumpy looking nubs are spurs (at least that’s what we believe them to be). You can also see that some of the branches looked older than others. Our understanding is that the pears will come on branches that grow horizontally, are more mature, and have spurs. They also like airflow so cleaning up the middle makes the tree healthier. We don’t want them to get tall so we topped them off at about 6′. Removing crossing branches or ones that grow towards the middle should help not only airflow but also stop branches from rubbing against each other to prevent disease or damage. That’s the theory as told to us by Youtube. Am I nervous? You betcha. We trimmed all of our grapes according to the experts and lost almost every single one. Bill says this is just coincidence because we also had been watering them to much and since they were sitting on their drain holes the water wasn’t able to get out. I know this is true because I lifted one and watched the water flow like a stream from the pot. Intellectually I know the water situation killed them not the trimming. The part of me that likes to draw conclusions blames the trimming.
The job is done now and all that’s left is the waiting to see what happens. I’m going to go throw up now.
Inspired by the peach orchards and videos we have been watching showing that fruit trees do not have to be huge, we are expanding the orchard this year. This weekend will be a trip to a local nursery that had lots of fruit trees last year, just to take a look at what they have. Sure. We are just looking. Really. Even I do not believe me. We have talked about putting three apple trees up by the house in the middle area. We have talked about doing columnar apples in pots between the front raised beds. We have talked about putting an in ground orchard to the side of the garden in front of the castle. Going back and forth about keeping the orchard in the fenced area or leaving it outside the fence. We have also talked about adding at least two more raised beds for grapes outside of the garden fence.
Last year we took the grapes out of their tubs and put them in these raised beds. The thinking was the tubs that seemed to do best were next to the driveway. Maybe it was because of the heat radiating off the driveway so let’s keep the beds close. We also put down black fabric to help keep weeds down and maybe help generate or retain some heat. We put a grape on each end of the bed and then ran wire so that each “arm” can be 4′ in each direction. We have two runs of wire to help give each grape enough room. Inside each bed we also planted hundreds of tulip bulbs. Our old Concords made it but the new Niagras all died. We ended up ordering grapes from Indiana Berry & Plant Co., based on a recommendation from Purdue. We went and picked them up rather than having them shipped. We got Vanessa, Reliance, Mars, Marquis, Himrod and Everest. Got them home and did everything according to directions and lost almost all of them. It may have been the cold, wet spring. I ended up later finding more grapes on clearance at the big box store in town. They lived all summer hopefully they will come back this spring, after all we didn’t trim them. All of the ever bearing strawberries from Indiana Berry did great and we love them. I’d be willing to order from them again. We also want to do more with propagating and testing growing in a greenhouse vs out in the open.
Back to fruit trees. I watched this video today How to Grow Your Own Micro Orchard Ben, from GowVeg, was touring Frank P Matthews Orchards in the UK. This got me thinking about that fence line behind the grapes (which is how the grapes got dragged into the conversation) looks like it would be a great place for a micro orchard. We are thinking about:
- Stella or Lapins cherry – I like the Lapins because it is self pollinating like Celeste.
- Ambrosia Apple (because it’s Bill’s favorite) but needs cross pollination. The experts say apples and Pears can be trained using as espalier.
- Honeycrisp Apple which will cross pollinate the Ambrosia and is good for baking as well as eating.
- MP-29 semi dwarf root stock Peach either Reliance or Redskin Peach
- Black Ice (needs cross pollinating), Methly (self pollinating) plums. I’m leaning towards the Black Ice because it has a large, sweet fruit and is the only one that says it does well in colder climates. Zone 6 is weird we get hot/humid and we can get pretty darn cold.
- Chicago Fig, I’ve grown to like fig jam and that’s my only reason.
The Food Forest Nursery website was used for research on trees for zone 6. Minnetonka Orchards was used to find types of fruit trees that are Columnar or can be pruned to that style. I was also looking at Starkbros nursery one thing that bothers me is that lots of their stuff is proprietary and I’m really looking for information. Some of the types recommended by Frank P Matthews I could find for zone 6 such as the Stella Cherry but others may either not be zone 6 or they maybe a UK only tree. Before we buy more research will be done and it will require spreadsheets and data and then cross referencing and finally the throwing of a dart.
I’m not sure if any of the apricots or nectarines will work here because of size and zone. It would be fun but I’d rather have things that have a reputation for working in our zone. Plus if we can keep them at a reasonable size that makes the whole thing even more doable. Just getting two pears felt amazing. Having enough grapes to make juice plus eat feels amazing. All the berries we have going on allows us to eat them whenever we want, share them with the birds, and put away enough for winter which we both love. I am so excited about the plans for this year, fingers crossed it all works out.
To add to the happy we have a plan for all the strawberries that survive the winter and Bill bought me two different kinds to grow from seeds. I’ve never had luck getting the seeds to germinate but I’m really looking forward to trying again.
