First Ever Home Orchard Tour!

2 and 1 half years ago I planted 10 fruit trees here in my backyard with two main goals in mind one was to be able to share the entire process of creating and maintaining my backyard Orchard through videos here on YouTube and on Instagram but the main goal was to be able to harvest delicious tree ripened fruit for my own backyard every single day of the year so I chose different varieties that would fruit from Spring through fall then Citrus to car me through winter and now after only 2 and 1/2 years these trees are full of fruit and for the first time in my life I will indeed be harvesting fruit from my own backyard every single day of the year in this video I'll take you through the orchard to show you some of the things I've been harvesting this [Music] year This Is My Oh Henry peach tree and it's a delicious yellow Freestone Peach that fruits in late summer so the Evas pride is my early summer Peach then the O Henry I'll start harvesting about the first week of August and I'll Harvest this all the way into September so we're about halfway through the season right now I have probably two dozen Peaches on this tree and they're just one of the most delicious peaches I've ever had so let's cut into one of these beautiful red orange Peach really juicy really large peaches and one thing I love about them is that the skin actually peels off really easily if you want to can them so you don't even have to really blanch these peaches look at that bright red and orange and yellow on the inside let's give this a taste so watch this the skin will just peel right off of these things which I mean obviously you can eat the skin but it's kind of cool to have a peach variety where the skin just peels right off without having to blanch it but like I said sometimes it's nice to peel your peaches definitely want to peel them for canning so there you go super easy to peel very juicy M super sweet I think this is actually my favorite Peach variety it's so good oh Henry Peach this is my panach fig also called tiger stripe fig and if you've been watching for a while you've probably seen me talk about this fig before because this is my favorite fig variety and I've probably tasted around a 100 different varieties of figs this is my favorite one for a couple of reasons so first off it's beautiful right it's this yellow fig with these beautiful green stripes but look at the inside it's got this beautiful crimson red flesh and the best part it tastes just like Rasberry Jam so delicious so if you think you don't like figs but all you've ever tried are the purple varieties think again there are hundreds of varieties out there some of them them like this taste like berries I've tried ones before that taste just like a really ripe banana it's amazing how many different flavors you can get from this one fruit so I think you're going to love this one but try some different ones see what you find out there another reason this tree is extra special to me is that I actually grew this tree from a cutting that I propagated from a fig tree at my previous Urban Farmstead fig trees are super easy to propagate from cuting just take a branch put it in soil it's going to root up this thing was 10 in tall when I planted it 2 and a half years ago and each year I take like 4 feet off of its growth in winter time when I prune it very vigorous growing super easy to propagate if you're interested in learning more about propagating fig trees I have a video on my channel that I'll link here that shows everything in the process very easy anybody can do it so check that out this is my Lee Juju be it's the first Juju be tree I've ever grown and if I'm honest when I planted this tree was the first time that I realized that Juju be was actually a fruit and not just some stale candy that you get at the movie theater but I'm glad I found it because this fruit is absolutely delicious and the tree is incredibly productive after the first year it had a really nice crop on it and this year it has like 3 to 400 fruit and they are so good the closest thing I could compare this to would be an apple because it has the same crunch as an apple and a similar flavor in fact I think they actually taste like apple pie but I'd say the biggest difference is that it does not have the juice of an apple it's very dry but in a really Pleasant way not like an apple that's dry and mealy but like you're biting into a crispy styrofoam that has this very sweet apple sugar cinnamon flavor to it so so pleasant and on the inside there's just one tiny little pit the Pit's about the size of a large Olive Pit so really not a big deal one of the really cool things about this tree aside from being very delicious and very productive and thriving in warm dry climates like here in Sacramento is that if you leave this fruit on the tree it will actually dry and preserve itself on the tree like a peach that's just going to fall off and rot on the ground you can bring it inside and can it if you want to or dry it or do whatever else but most other fruits will not preserve themselves on the tree the juju be will and that's why it gets the nickname of the Chinese date because if you leave these fruits on the tree they will dry on the tree and they have a similar texture and similar flavor to a date so it gets the name Chinese date for me I love to eat these when they're at the size and color that they are right now or that most of them are becoming they'll be green yellow with a little bit of brown on them and they'll still be nice and crispy and sweet but certainly you can keep them on the tree to dry up and turn into a Chinese date they're still delicious like that some of these will because I have so many of them but such a Delicious Fruit versatile fruit crisp sweet a little bit tart this thing is incredibly productive with very little attention at all I don't fertilize this thing I do a little bit of pruning but it just thrives in this hot dry climate but I know you can grow Juju be in other climates that are not as hot and dry as it is here in Sacramento so if you're growing Juju be in a different climate tell me where you're at what variety you're growing and is it as productive or even more productive than this one this is my Blackjack fig definitely one of my favorite fig varieties to grow in a small space for a couple of reasons one reason is that it naturally stays pretty small because it has kind of these weeping branches they get loaded with fruit they come out laterally and they kind of hang down so I do very little pruning on this and you don't have to prune it any specific way but the main reason it's great for a small space is because it has a very long harvesting window most of the trees in my yard their harvesting window is a month or less but this tree I start harvesting this in Late July and I'll Harvest it all the way through October basically once it starts to freeze then this will stop fruiting if you look at the branches right now they're loaded with fruit that's ready to harvest they've got some that will be ready in a few days some that will be ready in a few weeks and they're continuing to put on more and more fruit and that's exactly what it did for me last year I was harvesting figs all the way into November and that's incredible there's nothing more that I love than fresh fruit straight from a tree so having one tree that I can Harvest fresh fruit from for 3 or 4 months is amazing on top of that the fruit's really good as well so there you go looks pretty similar to your common Mission fig but flavor-wise has a lot more Berry notes to it than the mission fig the mission fig has kind of a Jammy spice flavor to it but this one has a really mild Berry Jam flavor to it not as much of the berry notes as the panach Fig but certainly a lot more Berry flavors than your common Mion fig Blackjack fig is a great one for a small space this is my Pink Lady apple tree and the fruit that's set on it is not quite ready to harvest yet but the fact that it has fruit and lots of fruit is very exciting for a very specific reason the reason is that this is the one and only apple tree I have on my property my neighbors don't have apple trees so this tree set all of its fruit on its own it was self-pollinating which is contrary to what a lot of people have told me when I bought this tree from the nursery the tag said self-pollinating so I trusted that but after showing this tree in a few videos people told me that this definitely requires a pollinator so I did a bunch of research and most of that research also said that pink lady apples require a a pollinator so this spring I grafted on two branches of Fuji apple which is a great pollinator from Peak ladies but those branches have not flowered yet and it still set all of this fruit almost every flower that's set on this tree has turned to a beautiful Apple so why why did all of these people and all of these sources on the internet tell me that this requires a pollinator but it's clearly self- fruitful well I actually ran into at a fig Festival a gentleman by the name of Ed livo and he used to be in charge of the Apple program at Dave Wilson Nursery so the one of the very first things I asked him was about this tree I told him I had this tree and it was supposed to be self-fruitful but a lot of people said it wasn't and now it's got fruit why is that he explained to me that the only state that they have the tags on the pink lady apples that says self-pollinating is California and the reason is that this tree is only self-pollinating in California now we don't know why obviously it must have something to do with our climate here something with the weather I don't know all I can say is that the Pink Lady apple is probably going to require a pollinator in most parts of the country but here in California clearly in my own backyard this tree required no other pollinators I've got one apple tree this tree has about 50 apples on it right now and I'm really excited to taste this fruit in about a month when it starts to ripen up also this tree right now is overdue for a summer pruning so I'm going to prune it right now well that's a pretty dramatic difference from where we started but we shortened up the laterals so they can bear fruit close in and support that fruit took the Vigor off the top to keep the the tree small and manageable and if you want a small manageable tree this is how you do it summer pruning we'll prune this again in Winter you probably noticed that one thing I did not do on this tree that I should have done is thin the fruit back to one apple per small Branch like this I thin all of my fruit trees and it's really important for the quality of the fruit and often the health of the tree if you let too much fruit on a branch it will bend the branch down and possibly break it that wasn't a concern for this tree because there's not that much fruit on it and also being my first time growing this variety of apple and really not growing a lot of apples in general I just kind of wanted to see what would happen if I didn't thin most of the fruit so I did thin some of it got a couple clusters on here they seem to be doing fine but ideally you would thin this fruit back to one apple per little Branch like this this is my spice Z necta Plum it's a nectarine Plum cross and it has a lot more nectarine characteristics than Plum and this is actually the first year that it's fruited it's only a couple of years old but it's been growing very vigorously finally put on a nice crop I did thin this pretty heavily because there was such big crop in Spring I probably removed about 30% of the fruits from this and there's still probably about 60 fruit on this tree I've been harvesting it for about a week now and I'll probably be harvesting this for a few weeks more into mid August let's get some fruit here pretty good size on the fruits they have a really nice kind of pink pink blush color to them very juicy and white on the inside so I'm assuming it's a white nectarine cross but the flavor is not as much like a white nectarine because it has the plum characteristics I personally don't really like white peaches and white nectarines that much because I don't think they have the acidity that I appreciate from a yellow peach or yellow nectarine h but these kind of gain the acidity back from the plums that they're crossed with so they have a really nice balance of a mild sweetness with a mild acidity super juicy tons of Flesh to seed ratio on there as I said the tree itself is a very vigorous grower and I think that's part of the plum characteristics typically plums are much more vigorous growing than some of the other Stone fruits so I actually already pruned this thing once in early summer and took about 3 to 4T off the entire tree that was about a month ago and it's already grown back 12 to 18 in so I'll be pruning it at least one more time this summer to maintain the size so I can always manage prune Harvest this tree from the ground without having to use a ladder that's what summer pruning is for it's for size management really important but also really easy if you're interested in learning more about summer pruning why to do it how to do it how easy it is I have a couple couple of videos on my channel on summer pring fruit trees so I'll add a link to those here this is my double Delight nectarine it's a couple of years old now had a small crop last year and this year it's had a really nice crop I thinned about 40% of the fruit from this tree in Spring just to relieve the weight from the branches then started harvesting fruit from this in early July probably harvested about three dozen nectarines already from this tree and it's got about 10 more on it that'll finish off this week this is by far the sweetest nectarines that I've ever had from any nectarine trees that I've grown I've only grown a couple but sweetest from any of the trees I've grown and definitely sweeter than anything I've ever gotten from a store beautiful orange flesh super juicy the fruit tastes like jam it's got so much sugar in it one of the ways to be sure you're harvesting sweet fruit is to not Harvest right after you watered I only water these trees about every 3 weeks or so and the last thing I want to do is water them and then harvest the next day because once you water the sugars drop all the way down or after the rain the sugars drop all the way down so you want the soil to dry out a bit that helps the sugars build up in this fruit and it will be very very sweet especially if you have a great variety like this double Delight nectarine that's a good one this is my flavor Delight aprium it's late June now but I actually started harvesting the fruit from this tree in early June and probably harvested about two dozen apriums from it already so let's see how it's tasting got a nice cluster right here that I probably should have thinned this fruit is very much like an apricot it is an apricot Plum cross but it has a lot more apricot characteristics than it has Plum characteristics so it's a little bit fuzzy not quite as fuzzy as most apricots pretty smooth very soft to open small pit on the inside that looks just like an apricot pit very very sweet a bit sweeter than any a cot that I've ever tasted pretty soft the skin has a little bit of tartness like apricots will but not nearly as tart as most apricots and it does have some of those sweet Plum flavors in there as well so really small pit this fruit was smaller than some of the other ones that I've had because it's in a cluster that I didn't thin so that'll cause the fruits to be a little bit smaller when they're that clustered together but still really really good fruit okay I know I've already spent a lot of time talking about this Pink Lady apple tree but it's mid October now and the apples are finally ripe and this will be the very first Apple I'll ever Harvest from this tree so let's try it wow that is delicious crisp juicy sweet but a little bit tart really nice balance of sweet and tart and just a gorgeous apple look at that pink little bit of orange almost like a sunset with some green in there love it all right so that Orchard covers me for fresh tree ripen fruit for about 8 to 9 months out of the year but what about the colder months when all those trees are dormant that's when I start relying on my citrus trees like my naval orange and my grapefruit tree and also my new sub Tropicals so so this is a lemon guava tree it's one of many guavas that I'm growing here in my new subtropical Food Forest and the guavas are one of many tropical and subtropical plants that I have these lemon guavas are awesome because not only are they delicious tropical fruits but they also do well in a marginal climate like I have here these will do really well outside they'll take a little bit of frost in zone 9 and 9B just an extreme delicious guava tastes like a tropical lemon custard great flavor great texture and my favorite thing about this though is that it thrives in a non-tropical climate clearly I live here in a Mediterranean climate it's a lot hotter in summer a lot colder in Winter than a tropical climate but some Tropicals and sub Tropicals like this lemon guava Thrive here and guavas are just one of many tropical and subtropical fruits that I have planted here so far through this summer all of them are thriving but winter is coming so we'll see I don't have any videos out yet on my new subtropical Food Forest but my very first video on this part of the garden will be coming out as my next video and it's going to be a full tour of this space showing all the plants that I'm growing here then through winter and next spring I'll put out the videos showing everything that I've done so far to create this space soil prep irrigation planting bunch of other stuff and I'll follow up with other videos Through The Years showing how I maintain this space and showing what I do to Winter protect it and see which plants survive here which ones don't um just like I've done with my Orchard I have a full series already showing everything that I've done from prepping the soil before planting planting those trees irrigation the summer and winter prunings and I'll continue to create videos for that Orchard series just as I'm doing here with the subtropical Food Forest series and of course my vegetable garden so consider subscribing if you want to see those videos If you enjoyed this video hit that like button and as always if you have any questions at all about my garden or your garden ask them in the comments below happy [Music] gardening

Channel: Urban Farmstead

Views: 329,070

Keywords: winter pruning, dormant pruning, How to Prune, Fruit Tree Pruning, how to prune fruit trees, stone fruit, orchard, easy pruning, How to plant a fruit tree, how to grow a fruit tree, Garden, gardening, homegrown, vegetable garden, organic, organic gardening, farm, farming, grow your own food, how to start a garden, gardening tips, grow food, grow vegetables, fig tree, apple tree, Persimon tree, peach tree, cherry tree, fruit tree, garden tour, home orchard, fig, garden ideas, diy

Id: xKzHFIK1-r8

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023