need advice on multiple fruit orchard

wow thanks for the great info Ronbre I will deff. check out Gaia's Garden and buy it if I can't find it at the library. The part about adding forest soil and rotting wood is something I would never have thought of, my orchard will be located in a hayfield that has been such for probably 60 years. So I am sure the right kinds of bateria etc, are very scarce

Here is the issue with adding rotting material vs rotted material. Essentially the material that is rotting is consuming huge amounts of nitrogen from the area around it. So you will need to either add nitrogen to the soil first or rot the stuff and then use it.

It all seems to depend on how you do it. I've had great luck in burying logs & branches that were cut/cleared during the site prep process. I have not had to add "huge" amounts of nitrogen to account for this practice.

I have a lot of fungi colonizing my orchard berms (hugelkultur) including chanterelles and morels. Trees work well together with other plants around them. As Ronbre stated above, add a diversity of plants around the trees (dynamic accumulators) instead of just grass. I feel that it allows for a lot of nutrient distribution to occur within the soil.

http://wellheeledhills.wordpress.com...kultur-part-2/

Point well made. Hugelkultur has shown itself to be very effective in improving the productive area around the berm by shedding nutrients over time and holding moisture (I use it also). Whereas amending some dead, non rotted, material to the soil directly around the trees to be planted has not shown the same benefits and is reported to be detrimental due to the decay cycle.

I have 11 apple trees, 5 peach, 2 nectarine, 2 fig, 4 pear, 3 cherry, 5 plum, 5 pawpaw, 4 japanese persimmon trees, along with 7 grapevines, countless strawberry, thornless blackberry, and raspberry vines all planted together. I have them grouped (all the apple trees together, for example) and different varieties of each, for cross pollination. All of that in a fenced in orchard. I do all my spraying by hand, and have no problem with that, in that it might not help a persimmon tree to get sprayed for plum curculio, but it certainly will not hurt it. I did follow guidelines as to how much space each tree needed, but now wish I'd given them more space, because it seems crowded now. I usually take potting plants there to harden off, putting them where they get some sunlight through the budding leaves of the fruit trees, and slowly dragging them out into full exposure. In the past, I've had many plants in 5 gallon buckets that I set in between the fruit trees also.

When picking cross pollination varieties, check that the bloom windows overlap. If you have an early apple and a late apple, they may not bloom at the same time and might not cross pollinate. Ideally for home use you'd get a series of overlapping bloom windows so you get cross pollination without having to harvest them all at once.

You may want to look at this thread from another forum. Canada may have import rules on fruit trees from the US, and it is probably best to pick proven Canadian varieties anyway, because of climate. http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/fo...ad.php?t=61173

There are several catalog suppliers that may give you information and fruits more suitable for Canadian growers.

Keep in mind that Zone labeling in Canada may vary from US, due to the fact that Canada has tried to include actual cold days information and real climate data, not just average number of days of a low temperature.....

And your Province Department of Agriculture will have lots of growing information for your area(similar to Ag Extension agents in the States.)

Hope this may help you.

geo

Crwilson, how old are you?

I ask because, while still in my 50's, I am planting dwarf trees so that I no longer have to climb ladders to pick. We all age! And, a full size tree for me is now a lousy idea!

I am 32 years old so will probably be planting mostly full size trees but will probably plant some dwarf trees as well so they start producing a little sooner.

If not already mentioned, some orchards in regions with late season frosts are planted on the north side of hills. This forces them to bud out late, less likely to be hit by frost.
I'd research this before planting- it may/may not work where you are.

You are getting good advice so far.

Plant only varieties that you really really like. You don't want to wait three years to find out you don't like the fruit a particular tree produces. I realy love Honeycrisp apples so I have planted them and a pollinator.

You can plant a different variety or varieties for making cider and pies. Some apples are better for a specific end use than others. Some apples store better than others too.

Don't plant fruit trees in a low area. It will be colder there than anywhere higher, maybe a whole growing zone colder.

Do plant fruit trees on a north faceing slope. Here in really cold country the sun can heat the trees on below zero days and cause damage.

Even at $20 each on sale at the big box stores an orchard can be spendy if you buy all the plants. Once you have some trees, propogate them yourself. Apples need to be grafted to suitable root stock you purchase. Pears and plumbs can be started by rooting a shoot. Cherries can be propagated by cutting off part of the root and rooting it. Peaches don't grow here.

Nimrod, around here plums pears and cherries are on rootstalks, just like apples. I wouldn't grow shoots or root cuttings out for fruit production unless I were sure it was an 'own root' cutting.

Just as another question of interest there are alot of green crabapple trees growing around where I live, would they make suitable rootstock to graft onto or are they suseptible to disease?

Thanks everyone for your info and comments

There are a zillion kinds of crab-apple, any variety of tossed apple core can produce them. Can't say one way or another about some random particular one. I think the only thing to do is try.

The commercial rootstocks come in several dwarfing varieties. This reduces total harvest, but makes the fruit much easier to pick. Your crab-apple rootstock is probably not dwarfing. Up to you if that's acceptable?

yes you can generally graft apples onto crabapples..

some great advice above..

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

Fireweed,

Rooting cuttings of plum and pear do work. If you start with a shoot the young plant will be a clone of the parent.

http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_6737297_pr...lum-trees.html

You can graft onto a rootstock but you have to buy them and I am frugal.

You are right about being sure the cherry plant you take the piece of root from is not grafted.

I think Fireweed's point was that taking a sucker or piece of root from a grafted tree will only give you a clone of the rootstock. Just something to be aware of. It can be challenging on older trees to tell if the tree was grafted in some cases.

Rootstocks are relatively inexpensive to buy and are also easy to propagate. Here is a link to how a stooling bed is set up (apples in this case, but other types behave in a similar way). This is also a way to make use of a rootstock where the graft dies back for some reason on tree, but the rootstock lives on. I have several of these in my orchard.
http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/apple72.html

I think we have a problem with the defination of "shoot". I took it to mean the new growth on a tree. Apparently the roots can send up shoots away from the mother tree too. These are clones of the root stock, if any, but not the tree.

yup - sorry for any confusion.