Questions about trees and planting them :D

[WeasleAcres]

We are planning out our orchard that we want to get planted in the spring. We have a section of our property that we are working on clearing, etc. What do we need to do as far as old tree trunks, etc? What should we be doing to prep the land now?

[Mike in Ohio]

What kind of trees, what sort of quantities and do you have deer?

Mike

[WeasleAcres]

We are looking at dwarf varieties of apple, peach, plum and regular varieties of cherry and pear.

I'm not certain on the deer. When we first moved here in April, I would have said yes, as we had tracks EVERYWHERE. But, I haven't seen ANY since moving out here. None this season. But, it is Texas, so we have to assume that they are always nearby.

[Mike in Ohio]

I'm not familiar with TX growing conditions. If you are irrigating you could get the pipe laid out.

For deer we use circles of field fence attached to t-posts. Deer will scour the leaves off a cherry overnight. We plant a variety of dwarf, semi and standard. Standard trees will survive deer once they are mature. You need some sort of trunk guard though because male deer will rub antlers on trees each year.

We plant 10-15 fruit trees a year plus nut trees.

Mike

[WeasleAcres]

Do we need to make sure to remove as many of the old stumps as possible, or is that not critical?

[Mike in Ohio]

I think removing stumps from any sort of field is a good idea. How will the stumps affect your ability to mow around your fruit trees?

Mike

[motdaugrnds]

Most fruit trees require a 6-6.5 pH; so you will need to test your soil and add as much "agricultural" lime as is required. (I would doze the tree trunks out, burn or bury them, add the lime and disc the area well.)

Fruit trees do better if they are at least 100' from forestry; thus you will want to plan your planting accordingly.

You did not specify how large the area will be or how many trees you will want to plant. This will pretty much dictate how you need to protect them from deer.

I can tell you what we did. We only planted half a dozen fruit trees "inside" our acre+ garden area. We encircled each individual tree with 2 rows of wiring 2-1/2' apart. The deer jumped our garden fencing and got more of our garden this year than we did; but they did not touch the fruit trees we had encircled this way. (We are presently in the process of adding another 4' on "top" of the regular fencing surrounding our garden, letting the top of it lean over about 1-1/2'. This should keep the deer out of the garden entirely. If it does, we will be taking down the doubled fencing we presently have around our individual fruit trees.)

Another problem new fruit trees contend with is voles and moles wanting to chew on their roots (and mice/rats wanting to chew on their tender trunks). We poured Castor Oil around each tree making sure it got down at least 6" into the ground. We believe this will deter the Voles; then to deter the Moles, we buried utility wire 6" around each tree (letting it stand about 6" above ground). So far we have not been bothered with field mice/rats ... probably because we have many black snakes; but I understand you can get tree guards to help protect the tender tree trunks.

On our "grown" trees that deer (and our goats) love to strip bark off or rub against, we tripled wrapped those trunks with 2x4 welded wire. This worked!

Hope this helps.

[LittleRedHen]

I am working on the same thing! I did get a little ahead of myself this fall when I found Lowes with some clearanced trees But I am planning on putting in more this Spring. What I did was look around at neighbors to see what they were planting and the distance of their trees. I just have 2.24 acres and all my trees will need me watering them so I had to take that into an account. I am going to be gardening in between the trees while they mature so I made sure the ground was all soft and tilled up before I planted.
If it was me, i'd get the stumps out of the way now as it will never be easier to remove them. IF they become a hassle later on it might not be so easy to get rid of them. We have a lot of orchards around us and when they go to put in a new orchard they seem to rip up everything )all stumps and old trees)

[Dexter]

Assuming you need to mow the grass/brush around your future orchard then yes get out the stumps.
A backhoe could prepare the area in short order.