Starting a New Orchard - Need Thoughts

I would suggest planting them as a food forest garden, underplanting with plants to draw in pollinators, beneficial insects, nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators..if you aren't sure how to do this read the book Gaia's Garden..it will be very helpful and make your orchard much more useful for you.

I live in zone 4/5 and I have had some problems with plums and cherries, peaches do well most of the time but have lost a few peach trees in the past to winterkill.

My apples and pears do really well. You might also consider things like nuts, mulberries, goumi, buffalo berry, large fruited hawthorne, elderberry, cane fruits as a windbreak hedge would be helpful..I have hazelnuts and chestnuts in my hedgerow around my food forest garden and wild plum and asparagus, blueberries and cane berrries..

I have cherries growing, new trees last year..so I'm not sure how they are going to do, but we lost ALL of our blossoms to the freeze on mother's day this past spring..20 degrees for 3 days

__________________
Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

We have similiar weather. I was zone 3b upped to zone 4 a few years back. I experimented with some of the supposedly cold hardy peaches and they all croaked. I recommend Bali Cherry...if you leave the fruit until very ripe, they can be somewhat sweet and tasty.

__________________
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. - Winston Churchill

Varieties that need a pollinator. This area has lots of apple trees, mostly wild or untended. I have apple blossom over a wide time frame.

Dwarfing rootstock isn't hardy enough and while full sized trees survive in the sometimes wet, always heavy soil, none of the semi-dwarf did.

Just a couple of things I would add to the suggestions already made. I would recommend something other than the black plastic stuff for protecting your trunks from rabbits. The black plastic can heat up the trunk a lot in the winter sun, and this could cause cracking and sun scald on the trunk...not good for the trees.

When you plant the trees, be sure that you do not bury the bottom graft, where the tree is grafted onto the rootstock, this could be the problem someone had with their trees dying after five years. They should send a diagram explaining proper depth to plant along with the trees.

You can purchase potted trees and they will do fine. Just be sure that you root prune before planting if the roots have started to circle around in the pot. If you do not cut these circling roots, they will eventually girdle the tree under ground, causing an early death. There are lots of sites online that explain how to do this. You can find a great deal of info from the many Extension sites online, for how to plant and care for your fruit trees. You may also want to check with your local Extension office for advice on which varieties of trees do best in your area, what diseases to watch for, classes on gardening and raising fruit trees, along with many other topics.

Best wishes with the fruit trees! Oh, and you might want to try planting a few trees each year, and spread your planting over a few years, rather than doing it all at once. This way, if you have a horrible summer next year, or you have to make a sudden trip and can't water them, your investment will not be lost all in one shot.

Oh, I forgot to mention...whenever you are purchasing trees in pots or balled and burlapped, you want to make sure that the trunk does not feel loose in the soil. This could mean that the roots have been broken off below the soil line. Since you are ordering through the mail, you will probably be getting bare root trees, which will allow you to inspect the roots before planting.

My question was actually for the original poster....

geo

Consider doing a few semidwarf trees in each type to get an earlier start on fruiting (unless convinced they won't thrive in your area- me in 8a only my semidwarfs at 3-4 years on are fruiting...).

If I were you I'd plant my favorite shrub- hazelnuts. Even planted them here but will probably never nut- if they even survived this summer not enough chill hours (not an issue at all for you).

__________________
US Army veteran, military retiree spouse, and military; civilian; British NHS; and VA doctor.

You're missing berries, blue, rasp, black, elder. Currants and gooseberries also are supposed to do well in zone 4, 3 with protection.

Since the thread is FIVE YEARS OLD; how're your trees doing, WoM?

Our apple orchard is 100 year old standard trees. We are registered as an orchard with the USDA, Farm Service Agency, and we open the orchard for You-Pick most years. The FSA gives us grief because the orchard is standard trees, which is what was routinely planted back then, rather than dwarf, which is the size of choice for commercial planters now. They can be planted more densely, and begin producing much sooner. An acre of densely planted dwarfs will produce more apples than an acre of standard trees.

There are other benefits to dwarf trees. You can keep your feet on the ground while picking, pruning or doing anything else you need to do to your trees. From a liability standpoint, that is huge! Nobody will be falling out of a dwarf tree.

As for what variety to plant, I would look at other orchards in your area to see what does well there. Ask around, and look at their trees.

Here is something to consider. If you buy trees from any commercial orchard, it will be the variety that you choose, grafted onto a vigorous root stock. If you decide you don't care for the apples from your tree, eventually, over time, you can graft it into an entirely different variety. Sometimes commercial orchards do that when they have healthy trees in a variety that no longer curries favor in the grocery store.

__________________
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

I thought the exact same thing when I saw that. Glad to know I'm not the only one who thought that

Dwarf trees are not so great if you live in deer country. Deer are always able to get to many of the shoots because the trees are short. This really hurts fruit production. Because you want fruit, the cost of fencing and protective devices really cuts into the budget. For me, full size is the way to go...fruit and tender branches eventually end up out of reach. Full sized trees usually have a tougher rootstock...this is important in colder regions.

__________________
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. - Winston Churchill

Interesting, I just noticed...Raymond resurrected this thread from 2005!!! I wonder how WOM made out with his orchard?

__________________
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. - Winston Churchill

In order... WIHH, my user name used to be "Red Devil", so I edited my own post.

Jen... we never planted any! I did however help a neighbor plant, and his apple trees bore well after 4 years. Pears haven't yet, and cherries seemed like they did from the beginning... just not a huge harvest.

We've had the most success with rhubarb and raspberries

__________________
When faced with issues in life, where do you look for the problem; out the window, or in the mirror?

I'm in zone 4a (MN) and I have a neighbor with a small orchard. He included apricots and crabapples in his selections, along with those you listed. Sweet cherries don't do well at all here, but the sour/pie cherries like Montmorency & North Star do okay. His pears stay pretty small, think italian plum size, but they bear alot of fruit. All of his trees are dwarfs.

After watching how the neighbor does it, my biggest advice would be to invest in netting for the trees and plan a good spray program.

We are moving in the next year or so, and I'm already sketching an orchard/berry garden for the land I haven't seen yet

We have the same zone- had to plant orchard 3 times- due to gophers! They eat the roots....(now have wire screens) The St Lawrence trees were hardy, though- I think only one left now. Another way we lost new orchard trees- to protect the trees from gophers, we dug them up- while they were growing. Bad call- lost most of them- should be dug up dormant. Another point- while some varieties are supposed to do good in our zone, and are raved over, they just didn't perform here like other areas (like Honeycrisp). If you can check out local apples, and find a variety that tastes good, that would help. Here the Sweet 16 and State Fair are excellent. Oh! on plums- we have a few trees out there- and even though some bloom early for our zone,they dont make it, lose their blooms to late frost, while others a little later blooming, do better. (Toka didn't make it- lost blooms, Stanley did)

How old are you?

Now that I am older I have no business being on a ladder, and I really appreciate the smaller trees! I do have a long-handled picker but it is slow and often awkward.

I REALLY appreciate the smaller trees, now, where most of the fruit can simply be picked without ladders and pickers.

On the DOWN size, a dwarf costs as much as a standard tree and bears rather less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For me it is worth it, though!

Like Rocky mentioned, deer love dwarf trees. I'd never plant any, unless it's in your front or back yard. An orchard should have room for "real" trees.

First thing I'd think about is the soil, then the drainage, and then will I need to fence this in to keep deer out?

I had problems the last couple years with coons stripping my orchard. This year I stripped the coons, and now it's late October, and I still have pears on the tree.

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Fences here in Kansas do a lousy job of keeping deer out.

You are correct that dwarf trees need to be in the back yard, though. That is where I have mine, with a fence around the yard, and (this is what makes it work) a dog who likes to spend time in the yard.

My dog is a 22 pound Cairn terrier, but he does a most excellent job of keeping the deer out: I haven't seen one in the yard since we got him!

The coons are annoying, though. They don't strip the trees: they get into peoples garbage and they try for the hen house.