Backyard Fruit Tree Basics

delicious hi I'm Tom Spellman with Dave Wilson nursery and this morning we're going to walk around the nursery a little bit and I want to talk a little bit about backyard orchard culture I think one of the most important things to understand when it comes to backyard orchard culture is it's not commercial orchard culture in fact it's about as different as it could possibly be a great example my first example look at this row of trees this is a walnut orchard here at Dave Wilson nursery we use it for seed stock and bud wood I could land a plane in this row this is this is spaces all in here for one reason the space is all here for equipment needs if you don't need to run a John Deere tractor through your backyard you don't need to space your trees like a commercial orchardist so if I was a commercial grower of walnuts here in the San Joaquin Valley I would absolutely require that much space in my orchard I need 20-foot roadways I need 20 feet in between my trees I need to be able to get large equipment and tractors trucks a crew of people harvesting equipment all that needs access all that needs to be able to maneuver around freely through the orchard if I'm a backyard grower it's a completely different situation the only thing I need space for is myself or maybe a small piece of garden equipment I don't need 20-foot roadways I don't need 20 feet or 18 feet or 16 feet in between trees all I need is enough room for me I don't have a commercial expectation of my harvest I don't need hundreds and hundreds of pounds of fruit per tree I just need enough for myself and my family so small trees come into play I don't need to grow a 20-foot fruit tree I don't have a commercial expectation I think another really important concept to take into consideration is what's important to a commercial grower isn't always important to a backyard grower for example if I'm a grower of Asian pears this is a beautiful piece of fruit the size is nice it's not too big it's not too small it's perfect its blemish free it's just freshly harvested off the tree and it has eye appeal well the way commercial fruit is sold in the market is by eye appeal when you go to the market you don't taste the fruit in the market you don't smell the fruit in the market you look at it and if it looks good you buy it now under backyard conditions I'm not necessarily concerned with the same aspects and a piece of fruit I like a perfect piece of fruit but if it has a blemish I don't care if it has a little split I don't care if it has seeds that doesn't bother me all I really want is flavor if it tastes good I know I'm getting what I want out of my backyard trees and if I have to spit out a couple of seeds or cut out a worm occasionally it's not really that big an issue to me I don't have to have perfect fruit I just have to have flavor another important backyard concept is tree size control we're here in our newly planted backyard orchard style project that's been in now for about eight months and when we put this project in our little Santa Rosa plum here was stub back to about knee-high we came in and did a southerly summer pruning on it where we cut it back here to about thirty inches so now it's September now the trees grown out again so now it's back up to over six feet tall so as a young tree I can come in now and check this again I may not need to do any winter pruning on this tree but I can come in now and choose a size that I want for almost a predetermined height on this tree I can allow it to flush out one more time and that's going to be my final structure so by this time next year this tree will be as big as I'll ever let it get so we can come in now about maybe 18 inches above our last cut and start to take out a little would always kind of pruning so that our next flush of growth is going to come out words so we're not we're not going to prune every branch we're going to prune the major major branches we're just going to take this growth back just check this growth so that we have a nice controlled size so that we have an easy to manage small tree I may come back in the winter and do a little bit of detail work on it I may thin it out a little bit I may open up the center a little bit but I'm not taking that into consideration now really all I'm taking into consideration now is just where my cuts are going to be so that my next flush of growth is going to give me that finish size and finished shape so that's really all I'm going to do now so they're really three main important considerations to backyard orchard culture and they're all pretty simple and common-sense number one control tree size so it's manageable for you and there's no standard for that it's whatever is manageable for you for me I like that seven seven and a half foot tree because I can reach it from the ground if you want something a little larger you want a ten foot tree you want a 12 foot tree and that's manageable for you that's fine for me I want it all to be able to all my work to be able to be done from the ground so that's probably the most important concept control tree size so it's manageable for you number two you don't want to think like a commercial grower a commercial grower wants all this fruit to ripen at once they want to come through with their trucks and their equipment and their people and kick the entire orchard and take the fruit to market that's the last thing you want as a backyard grower you don't want a lot of fruit in any one given time you want a little bit of fruit all the time so you're going to grow multiple varieties in the same space a commercial grower would grow one tree you're going to grow three or four or five and they're going to be successive ripening varieties so you can pick over an extended season three or four peach varieties a May pride and Eva's pride mid pride in an August pride there's four months worth the peaches put the four trees together in the place of one standard sized orchard tree keep its size controlled every month for three or four months you've got 75 100 hundred 25 peaches that you can enjoy so control tree size grow successive ripening varieties and also really important grow what you like grow what you're going to use grow things that you can work into your daily culinary lifestyle things that you'll use in the kitchen things that your kids enjoy things that your neighbours enjoy because you'll probably still have plenty of fruit to share even growing under controlled conditions like that so control tree size grow successive ripening varieties grow what you like and what you use another really important concept to understanding backyard orchard culture is know your microclimate and I'm not talking about your USDA zone or your sunset zone I'm talking about your individual piece of property you want to understand everything about the weather conditions on your piece of property understand where your hot spots are where your cold spots are understand where your wet spots are in the soil where the heavy soil is where the sandy soil is where the dry soil is understand where you have a frost sheltered area where you have wind sheltered areas once you know your individual microclimate then you know what you can put in what particular place if you have an area that is windy and and cold and stays too wet you're certainly not going to plant a subtropical like a papaya or a mango in that spot if you have an area that is dry and hot there's your perfect spot for pomegranates or jujubes if you have an area that stays wet say close to along where the water ends up then you want to make sure that you're planting a tree on a rootstock that's adaptable to heavy wet soil so understand your particular microclimate know everything about your piece of property once you know that then you can intelligently start to put trees out and place them in an environment where they're going to be able to live and thrive for many many years along with understanding your microclimate once you know we know where you can put a pomegranate and where you can put a citrus and where you can put a plum tree on citation rootstock then you really want to understand rootstock don't don't use root stocks because they're semi-dwarf inor standard don't lose root stocks for size control it really doesn't matter what roots taka trees grafted onto whether it's a semi dwarf or a standard this this peach tree ons on citation semi dwarf or on NEMA guard standard you're looking at a tree that's going to be 15 feet is a semi dwarf 20 feet plus as a standard well that's still too big for me I still am NOT going to consider that root stock for size control I want that root stock for its adaptability to my particular soil condition and my geographic area so if I have a heavy wet soil I'm obviously going to plant that peach tree on citation if I have a sandy fast draining soil I'm going to put it in anemic guard and then I'm going to determine the size of the tree I'm not going to allow the root stock to determine the size of the tree I'm going to determine that size by pruning so summer pruning for size control a little bit of winter pruning for detail and I'm going to choose a size that works for me and keep the tree control to that size indefinitely now you always have options here's a great option if you have a really heavy wet soil it doesn't drain well just create a small raised bed you can build a raised bed out of anything you want you want to use brick block railroad ties river bed boulders or just a simple 2 by 12 frame anything you can do to get the root system 8 to 12 to 14 or 16 inches up above grade is going to make a huge difference in how these trees perform cherries and typically don't like wet heavy soil but just giving in this little 12-inch raised bed will make all the difference in the world on how the root systems function the water has an opportunity to get away from the root crown the root the soil and the root system will be able to breathe and oxygenate well if I planted this tree at grade and it was a wet heavy soil this cherry is probably good for a year to 3 years and it's going to be gone in just a simple raised bed situation like this it's going to live a long healthy life no home orchard project is going to be complete without some sort of a problem arising from time to time maybe you have an insect problem maybe you have a disease problem something that you can't really properly identify we get emails like this all the time our facebook page has questions every day you know I have black spots on my walnuts I have browning on the foliage of my cherry what's my problem well it's almost impossible to determine what your problem is through a Facebook page or an internet photo so here's what you need to do if you have a problem you can identify and you feel that there's a need to treat for that problem you want to take a sample down to a local retail nursery somebody that you trust somebody that you have faith in that will be able to help you out with a problem and let them identify it for you but don't just drag a tree branch down there or a handful of leaves or some infected fruit make sure to do one thing and the retail nurserymen that watch this segment will shake my hand for this seal up your sample get yourself a nice ziplock baggie select some some average samples on the tree there's a cherry problem I don't really know what that cherry problem is so one leaf to leaf three Leafs in the bag seal it up don't wait til tomorrow don't wait till next week take it right down to a local retail nursery and show the nursery professional what your problem is they'll take out a loop or a lens or just you know be able to take a look at that leaf and tell you okay this is you know black spot or this is some sort of a fungus problem or an insect issue they'll identify your problem and they'll recommend the proper product to treat for it and oftentimes you don't need to use a chemical spray or a pesticide if it's a crawling insect like scale or mealy bug or a 'thus sometimes you can just take your hose in a high-pressure nozzle and just blast it off the tree I personally am always going to look for the organic alternative chemical spray is the last possible solution in my arsenal I only do that if I absolutely have to do that one of the most important things to be successful with backyard gardening in general really any type of gardening and here's my philosophy on it if it's not concrete or lawn in my landscape it gets mulched so anything that's bare soil is going to have a mulch on top of it and mulching does four really important things for us number one it keeps the ground temperature an average of 10 to up to 20 degrees cooler than a nun mul soil so all of your fine feeder roots can function well at the surface without being damaged during the hot summer months number two it can make better use of your irrigation water by up to 50% that's a dollars and cents savings you're going to save a substantial amount of money on irrigation because you don't have to irrigate as often with a good layer of mulch on the ground number three it brings back the bio activity to our soil it brings back micro Raizel activity earthworms all the beneficial insects and fungi that help trees to feed in a more natural and efficient form so if we're if we bring back the bio activity we can really limit the amount of fertilizer we have to put on that bioactivity the decomposition of the mulch provide most of the basic nutrients that the tree is going to need to survive and do well and number four weed seeds won't germinate through two to four inch layer of mulch so any weed seeds that are on the surface when you put that multi layer on they're not come through the exception would be not seeds but rosacea grasses things like Bermuda grass if you have Bermuda grass and you put a multi layer on top of it the Bermuda is coming right through so before you put mulch on an area that has Bermuda grass make sure to control the Bermuda grass so there's four great reasons to mulch keeping the soil cooler making better irrigation use of your irrigation water bringing back the bio activity keeping weed seeds down less time weeding the garden and a good mulch to me is something like this I'm not looking for really fine little pathway bark I'm looking for something like this it's wooly biodiverse it's lots of different types of wood products it's lots of different sizes of wood chunks it's anything from six inches long down to little microchips that has biodiversity and that has the ability to breathe well all those chips and chunks of wood fall at different angles and that the soil can oxygenate well it doesn't create an anaerobic condition where water stays on the surface and isn't allowed to move freely through the soil so the soil can oxygenate and breathe well and you create all kinds of microbes and wonderful organisms that that help to benefit the growth of the plants and trees since you're mulching now we talked about fertilizer a little bit you can really limit the types of fertilizer that you're putting on nitrogen nitrogen becomes my enemy in backyard orchard culture nitrogen is great if I want my lawn to look like a professional golf course nitrogen gives us green vigorous color growth you know a lot of power a lot of flush of growth I don't want that with my size controlled fruit trees the more nitrogen I put on the more pruning I have to do and in turn the less development of fruiting wood I'm going to get so once my trees are established once I have my mulch layer on I'm controlling my irrigations to irrigate only when I need to irrigate at that point I'm going to choose a fertilizer that's low in nitrogen high in phosphorous and potash some trace elements zinc iron manganese and a humic acid base and that's what I'm going to feed with from that point on enough nitrogen to hold color but not promote vigor the phosphorous and potash will give me route stability and aid in the development of fruiting and flowering wood so I'll have more a younger age a good stable root system and less growth that I'm going to have to prune here's a really important last comment on backyard orchard culture that most people don't even realize until I bring it up in lectures this is another thing backyard orchard culture does for us that I think is really important it allows us to get back to our roots it allows us to go back to farming it allows us to get our hands dirty go out get some fresh air get some sunshine get some exercise eat some delicious fresh fruit and and do what we really enjoy doing if let's face it if you didn't enjoy backyard gardening in general you wouldn't be watching this video and more than likely you'd have a gardener come and do all your work for you and you wouldn't pay any attention to it but you're different you enjoy that you like to go out and work in the yard you'd like to spend some time out with mother nature and be able to eat fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and and smell wonderful fresh roses and look at beautiful flower gardens so if if you didn't enjoy it you wouldn't be doing it now you're getting a great benefit out of it you're getting health benefit the fresh air the sunshine the exercise it all it all makes it worthwhile it all brings it together it's a great way to spend quality time with your family quality time in your yard and enjoy what you've produced you

Channel: Dave Wilson Nursery

Views: 901,587

Rating: 4.9142828 out of 5

Keywords: tree spacing, growing fruit trees, picking fruit, pruning fruit trees, planting fruit trees, how to plant, how to prune, successive ripening fruit, mulch, dave wilson nursery

Id: ZV2kr50K7Is

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/PlantyHamchuk]

Solid video from Dave Wilson Nursery, based in CA but the info applies everywhere.