Cameron: Today really excited
going to be talking about high density planting, planting
multiple trees in a small space, which works really well. For the
average home gardener like myself. You see I'm here, we're
in our front yard test orchard and that's what we're going to
be looking at today. fruit trees, nine of them this
close, aren't they gonna die? Isn't the fruit gonna fall off?
How do I have all of this stuff right in one place? How do I
keep it pruned. Blah blah blah! So there are a few tips when it
comes to doing high density planting like this, like here,
I've got a pomegranate here, I've got apples. Over here, I've
got some stone fruit. And how does this type of thing work. So
a few things that will help make this work for you. One, put all
of the trees you're going to have in a single planting have
them be the same species. So in this planting right here, I've
got three apples that are going to be working together the root
stocks are similar root stocks. Over here I've got stone fruit,
that are doing that. In the space where you can fit a single
car, I've got right now nine different fruit trees that have
been productive every single year that I've done it. Another
is pruning, you'll notice that these are really small. In our
front yard, this has kind of been our test orchard, we have
pruned trees, so that they as you can see, they're kind of
smaller, they're also a little bit shaded by some of these
trees. And so that keeps them kind of naturally a little bit
smaller. The idea here is that I'm not going to let these grow
any taller ever than I'm able to reach. And so pruning has a lot
to do with your desired height. Okay, so this is a wonderful
example of how to start your canopy really low. This ghost
Apple here I'm still I'm letting these four new trees mature in
the pots before I plant them. This ghost Apple was probably
six and a half feet tall, the whip went straight up. What I
did was I cut it off right here to encourage this lower growth.
You see how it is really coming out? Look how beautiful this
looks so balanced. It actually looks better than I thought that
it was going to at this time. And so it encourages this lower
growth to branch out. And that's what we're going to build our
low canopy off of. Same thing goes with the Emerald drop
pluot, Pluerry, and the cherry back pruning has a lot to do
with your desired height, not paying attention to the root
stock. But just pruning, not letting him go any any higher
than you want them. If you if I wanted them to stay down here, I
can prune them down here. If I want them to get taller, I'll
just let them grow out a little bit more and be looking out for
structure. Normally when you go to a nursery, you'll see a stick
that's going straight up with all of these, all of these
branches coming off of it. What we've done here, because we're
wanting to keep the canopy low and started low is that we've
come in on each of these things. And when we first planted them,
we cut them down to about knee high. Now you'll see this is a
really obvious one for example, down here. See here, this is
where we cut the original and this existing trunk that's kind
of spread out here and created a canopy really low was one of the
original buds. One of the smaller branches that was coming
out. Same thing here, you'll see our initial cut here. And you
see that everything else has branched out. I can also tell
that the style of pruning here is like an open center pruning,
which for the sizes that we're dealing with, are really
convenient and fine. Same thing goes here original cut, that
everything else goes strong this is really wonderful
structure right here really solid. And it's going to support
a lot of good strong fruiting, And it's going to be low enough
where I can start reaching the fruit from knee high to as high
as I can reach, I'm never gonna have to bring a ladder out here.
Now another thing to consider with keeping these fruit trees
small or manageable in this type of setting and closed planting
setting is fertilizer. I'm making another video which will
be accessible for you. But fertilizing your trees with a
low nitrogen fertilizer is key. The nitrogen is what ends up
causing a lot of vigor and a lot of that growth. By having a
fertilizer that's low in nitrogen, high potassium, high
phosphorus will support root growth fruit and flowering, but
to not have all the explosive boom of green that just makes
these trees take off. If you believe it, these trees because
of pruning and because of location and because of
fertilizer are six years in the ground, but none of them are
dwarfing rootstocks. Not one of them. Not these apples. Not
these stone fruit back here. Not a single one is on dwarfing
rootstock, they're on full size and so these could theoretically
grow 30 feet tall. You know if they're out in the open and just
left to grow to themselves. This pomegranate. As you can see,
this is probably been the most vigorous, and I've had it come
off and and cut off the top. But pruning pruning pruning is key
to this and you can do it. So you might be wondering about the
distance with each of these trees, what we're essentially
doing, I'm going to talk about this. This is based on Dave
Wilson Nursery's, what they call their "backyard orchard
culture". And the idea here is that for the home grower, for
the person who's just growing like I am for my home for my
family, and maybe some neighbors, I don't need
commercial yields, I don't need 900 fruit coming off a tree at
one time. And oftentimes these fruit will come off within a one
or two week period. So rather than having 900 of one kind of
fruit come down all at one time, I can plant three different
varieties. And there are a few things to consider here. One is
successive ripening, you want these things that this "anna"
apple, for example, is going to be ready to harvest at the end
of June or early July. Over there, I've got a Fuji and a
gala that are going to then successively ripen after that.
So in this space where I would have one tree, normally one
fruit tree, I now have three different cultivars or
varieties. And that's going to make it so that rather than
having again 900 of one kind of Apple, I'm gonna have apples
that I can reach that are not going to overwhelm me. Maybe
we'll have 50 apples on this little small "anna" apple, for
example, we may be still flowering, but we've got maybe
20-30 fruit on this little tree even after it's been thinned.
And so what that's going to enable us to do is to have in
the space of one tree that gives us all this fruit at one time,
we're going to be able to have them successively ripen. This, then that, then that. So
if we're talking about successive ripening, we've got
four different stone fruit here we have a nectarine, and
apricot, a late peach to Faye Elerta. And in May pride peach
that thing has already leafed out and has fruit that''s
solidly growing on it, and May Pride that's a very early
variety. Whereas you've got this nectarine, you may notice here
that the buds are just starting to swell. It's not quite zooming
in focusing here. There you go. These things are about ready to
pop and ready to bloom. So bet you come out tomorrow, and I
will see some flowers coming out here. This is the idea that you
don't have to get all of your fruit all at one time, to get
some variety, all in the space for one tree would normally be
planted about two and a half, three feet on center here trunk
to trunk. So the idea is that in this space in the space of these
trees, you're going to have them grow instead of one. Just think
of this in the space. This is where one tree would grow.
You're going to treat each of these trees as though they're
like limbs coming off of the same tree once they start
growing and growing into each other a bit. And that way you're
going to prune it and treat it as though each of these
different varieties are a different limb coming off of the
tree. And that's what enables you to have some close planting
like this. Here's an example of another high density Apple
planting. It's a great example of successive ripening. Here's
this Dorset golden apple. Look at this, this beginning of April
and look at this fruit set on here. This is going to be ready
to go at the end of May. We start picking fruit off here.
Then over here. We've got I think this is a gala Fuji. Let's
see Fuji Apple here and see how this has just been leafing out a
little bit. Flowers are about ready to burst out here. And
then we've got a granny smith which is a late variety going to
be ready sometime probably in September. So we're gonna have
fruit in May, probably around August or so. And then September
October with Granny Smith can planted about two feet two and a
half feet on center. These three nectarine trees again
successively ripening over there. The Arctic star is our
earliest variety that's going to produce, I think, in June, and
then we've got this double delight nectarine, this Arctic
glow. And so each of these is gonna give at different times.
And you may also notice that we planted the earliest ripening to
the north. And so we want it to grow and get lots of sun as it's
leafing out and growing. And then next, the idea is that we
don't want the one in front of it, the one that's Southern
facing to shade out the ones behind it. So we want the
earlier varieties to be further back to get the first chance and
so that way, when this starts leaving out this double delight
starts leafing out it's not it's it's going to shade it out a
little bit, but that tree will have already had a whole lot of
opportunity in the sun. So we always plan if we're going to do
a planting of three, we're going to put the earliest variety to
the north east, or just to the north actually because there are
three of them. In the second variety I'm going to put to the
west, kind of Northwest and then I'm putting South really
anything. It's that is going to be the latest variety is going
to be south. So that's going to be the last one to to leaf out.
And that's going to obstruct the others the least of the others
are going to be have already done a lot of their growing
before this thing ever even potentially causes an issue.
I've had to cut these back so massively, I should put a pi
ture of what these looked li e last year before I really br
ught these back to make them a ittle more bushy and less le
gy high density, doing high de sity planting here with ci
rus as well. Notice here th re are a couple of orange tr
es. But this is going to su cessively ripen. Here we've go
a "Tarocco" blood, navel orange. And this thing is
growing really well this is going to give us winter fruit.
And then here's the Valencia orange right next to it. And so
that is going to give us fruit, more of more of the summertime
later months. So when this thing is done, this should be coming
right on. We're gonna allow them to successively ripen, we'll
have 100 fruit from each tree or something like that, even when
they get bigger, maybe 150. And in that space, now we get
variety, we get successive fruit, so we have fresh fruit
throughout a whole longer growing season. And the thing
is, is that it's actually really manageable with very little
oversight. The concepts in this video are
really near and dear to my heart, this front yard orchard t
e test orchard that you saw is what got me started in fruit tr
es. When I watched these Dave Wilson nursery videos with Tom
Spellman and how to do this close planting. And I thought I
could do that. And I did. And six years later, I can't believe
it's been that long. I've been able to grow in confidence, I
was able to get those trees and some of the benefits were that
it didn't take a ton of space, I wasn't devoting my entire yard
It was like a test ground for m where gave me the confidence t
then go and plant an orchard 4 times as big or however big tha
is with 50 some trees and s once you I want to encourage yo
if you've got a little bit o space, and you can take thos
principles and put them put the into practice. I think you'r
going to be surprised at ho easy and accessible fruit tree
are fruit in the backyard guy So until then, happy gardening
