How to Plant, Prune, and Irrigate Fruit Trees EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

ever since i was a little kid i've dreamed of picking and eating fresh fruit growing on trees in my own backyard every single day of the year and in this video i'm going to show you exactly what i'm doing to finally make that dream a reality [Music] i'm in the process of transforming my backyard into an urban farmstead and one of the largest and most important steps in this entire process is planting this backyard orchard so in this video i won't just show you how to plant a fruit tree i'll take you through my entire process from soil preparation to irrigation each of the fruit trees that i've selected for year-round fruit production planting pruning and painting young fruit trees and all of the other most important steps in planting and establishing a backyard orchard so whether you're planting one peach tree or an entire backyard orchard like i'm doing this is the video for you it all starts with the soil and for me the goal was to improve the composition and drainage of my heavy clay soil by building it up with a 50 50 mix of compost and loamy topsoil one way to determine whether or not you have poor drainage is to dig a shallow hole fill it with water and wait after an hour if there's still water in that hole you have poor soil drainage that should be improved before planting fruit trees next i installed the irrigation but rather than just place emitters at the base of each tree this irrigation system will irrigate the entire bed all the way to the edge of where the tree roots will eventually be which will encourage them to grow out i'm also encouraging them to grow deep because this irrigation line has point five gallon per hour emitters incorporated right into the hose every 12 inches which will allow me to keep the irrigation on for long durations for deep watering and no garden bed is complete without a thick layer of mulch that's some good mulch [Music] [Applause] on the north side of my yard i had to do a little bit of rearranging in order to make space for these fruit trees i had kale swiss chard and all kinds of other winter crops growing here and i didn't want to just have a final harvest so instead i transplanted them to a longer bed along this pathway and it actually worked out pretty well [Music] all right all of my soil is in and mostly smooth and level i added five yards on either side of this 50 50 mix of topsoil and compost and that's really going to improve the drainage for my heavy clay soil that i have here i also installed mulch and irrigation on this side this side doesn't have that yet but i'll add that all after planting so at this point i'm ready to plant but first let's go take a look at the trees my main goal for this backyard orchard is to have fruit year-round and here in sacramento california i'm fortunate to be able to do that so rather than choose a bunch of varieties that all set fruit at once giving me way more fruit than i can eat i took some time and did the research to find these 12 different varieties that would all set fruit at different times throughout the growing season so i'll have full descriptions of each of these in the video description below and i'll talk a lot more about them in future videos but today i just want to briefly describe each one and i'll go over them in order of when they fruit first up is this flavor delight aprium it's a cross between an apricot and a plum and i should expect my first harvest in early june next is the eva's pride peach this is a yellow freestone peach it already has blossoms on it and i expect to start harvesting this in late june [Music] this is a double delight nectarine it's called that because it has double blossoms so it's very beautiful in springtime when it's covered in those blossoms hasn't started to blossom yet but it will be a yellow freestone nectarine and i should expect to start harvesting it in early july this is the spice z nectaplum and it's probably the one i'm most excited about in this entire spread it's already starting to flower here but i should be expecting fruit from it to harvest in late july and this is a cross between a nectarine and a plum so it's supposed to have some really unique flavors and i can't wait this is a shinseki asian pear sometimes they're called apple pears because they're kind of like a cross between a pear and an apple they're just a little bit more crunchy than a standard pear and they're more of an apple shape and they're delicious and this one i should start harvesting about early august this is an o'henry peach very similar to the other peach that i'm growing the earlier peach it's also a yellow freestone variety but unlike that early peach this one won't be ready to harvest until late august so i'll have an early peach in the late peach and this one's supposed to be really delicious perfect for eating fresh canning preserving all that stuff all the stuff i love [Music] this is a li jujube and i've never grown jujube before but i've been hearing so many good things about jujube especially this variety that doesn't require another one to pollinate so having just one this is a good one to choose li-li it's gonna actually fruit according to the label from early september to mid-october so i'm really excited for this one [Music] the pink lady apple one of my favorite apple varieties and one that is adaptable to the chill hours that we have here in sacramento this should start being ready to harvest around mid-october and i'll probably be picking apples all the way until late november [Music] boo you persimmon so for simmon there's like a high chia and a fuyu those are kind of the two main varieties that fuyu are sometimes called apple persimmons and they're the ones that can be eaten well they're still crispy the haichia are often used in baking or cooking and you really want to leave those on the plant until they almost become like a gelatinous thing they're both delicious but the fuyu those are the ones that i really love and so i chose two different fuyu varieties for this project here i've got a giant fuyu persimmon and the fuyu zero j-i-r-o i'm probably not pronouncing that correctly but there it is for you these should both be setting fruit and sometime in early to mid-october and hold their fruit all the way until december the giant fuyu a little bit earlier the giro a little bit later i love persimmon season all right last but certainly not least the fig trees and fig trees will typically fruit anywhere from late summer until winter time august all the way until november december this is a blackjack fig it should fruit somewhere in that window and it's going to depend on your climate this blackjack fig is similar to one of the most popular figs which is a mission fig it's a standard kind of a dark purple colored fig nice and sweet and this is a panache fig also called a tiger stripe fig this one's extra special because it's actually a rooted cutting that i propagated from a larger more mature fig tree probably about a six-year-old fig tree at my original urban farmstead so i'm really excited to have a basically a clone from that tree at my original farmstead now growing here at the new urban farmstead i have a full video on how to propagate fig trees i've been doing it for about four years now and i'll add a link to that video here it's really easy really fun works really well but i am so excited the most delicious most beautiful figs i've ever known yellow green stripes bright red on the inside tastes like raspberry jam just incredible so that's it for all the trees let's go plant them now that we've talked a little bit about what to plant let's talk about where to plant it really the main priority is sunlight because fruit trees they need a lot of sunlight to grow especially deciduous trees like all of the ones i'm growing they want to be in full sun sometimes you can get away with a little bit less sun especially with the tropicals and subtropicals like avocados and citrus and you can even get away with a little bit of shade with all the fruit trees that i'm growing but you're going to have smaller fruit and less fruit if you do have that shade so find a nice sunny spot in your yard and also make sure that it's in a spot that once that tree grows to its full size it's not going to shade out something else that needs sunlight so if i've got my vegetable garden on the north end of my yard i don't want to plant a big old peach tree on the south end of that vegetable garden because my tomatoes won't get the sun they need next summer speaking of considering the eventual size of the tree when deciding where to plant it the next most important consideration is spacing but unlike sunlight spacing is more of a preference that's really determined by your plan for the eventual size of the tree even though a tree tag might give a specific spacing suggestion and a lot of them will indicate the potential size of the tree you can plant your trees ten feet apart or three in one hole it's really up to you and it depends on your plan for the size of the tree and that's really all determined through pruning which i'll cover later for my project here i want a tree that i can manage harvest prune do whatever else i need to do from it from the ground or maybe a short ladder so i don't want my tree to grow larger than eight feet high so my spacing is going to be six feet apart which should give me about two feet of growth before i get to that canopy and then basically a big six foot diameter ball of peaches nectarines plums and everything else [Music] okay so i've got all 12 trees out i'm not going to make you watch me plant every single one of them but i do want to go over my planting process for this first foo you persimmon and i'll plant all of the other ones pretty much the same and then i'll go over pruning so i'm just going to start by digging a hole about the size and the shape of this pot now before i remove it from the pot i want to check to see how it fits in the hole and this looks pretty good the soil level in the pot is just above the soil level on the ground and then the other thing i'm looking at is the graft union this is where the root stock was grafted onto the scion and i want to make sure that that graft union this scar from the graft is facing north because that's going to be a sensitive part of the tree so i want that to get the least amount of sun exposure possible all right i've got my hole the tree fits now it's time to get the tree in the hole and depending on what your tree is potted in that process is going to vary a little bit you can have a bare root tree you can have a potted tree or you can have a tree in a fiber pot which is kind of between bare root and potted this was a bare root tree about a month ago then at the nursery they potted it up put it in this fiber pot and it's just barely started to grow its roots into this soil as opposed to a potted tree which is usually in a plastic pot that's been in that soil for a year up to you know maybe two three even five years and it's become somewhat root bound so with a potted tree you want to take that out break up the roots so they go out into the soil with a bare root tree put it straight into the soil bury those roots with a tree in a fiber pot like this you want to be very gentle as you don't want to disrupt these roots too much because they've just started to grow so this type of pot is meant to be planted in the soil and it's just going to break down over time but it's going to take a couple of years for this fiber pot to break down and in that time the roots could become more root bound they could start to spiral around if this doesn't break up properly so in the very least you want to break up this pot a little bit you can break it up with a hammer just kind of disrupt the sides a bit you can slice it or what i prefer to do is remove it completely but i want to remove it in a way that's not going to disrupt these roots i'm not going to pull it out like i would with a plastic pot so let me show you how i do that take the tray outside and first i'm going to take a box cutter you can also use a saw i'm just going to cut off the bottom of the pot [Music] next let me continue that cut from the base all the way up the top of the tree and then i'll do the same another side okay the pots removed now i'm just gonna backfill the hole as i do this i want to be sure to push the soil in nice and tight around the roots i don't want any air gaps i want to be sure that i'm planting only to the level that it was planted out in the pot if i see any roots right here exposed above those need to be covered up but i don't want to fill up so high that i'm covering up that level and especially don't want to go over this graft union so keep it right here no higher no lower i didn't amend the hole with any soil amendments or fertilizers and the reason is studies have shown that if you do that and just enrich the soil around the root ball it doesn't encourage the roots from these trees to reach out to better soil they just become content with that and results in a smaller root ball for this tree so i did of course amend all of the soil this entire area with that compost and healthy topsoil didn't add any fertilizers but if i wanted to add fertilizers and soil amendments when i plant a tree like this i'm only going to add them at the end on the very top here but for this tree and all my trees i'm not adding any soil amendments what i am going to add is mulch and that's one of the most important things you can add to your fruit trees when you plant them and really any plant in your garden for the life of your garden it's something you should be applying annually adding a nice two to four inch layer of mulch to your garden at least once a year will help to reduce evaporation cool your soil suppress the weeds feed the beneficial bacteria microbes and beneficial fungus in your soil and as that mulch breaks down it will feed your plants and improve your soil composition almost this entire space after i installed the irrigation so for now the last thing to do is water it in i am going to prune each and every one of these trees after planting but it's supposed to rain tonight and it's never a good idea to prune when you have rain in the immediate forecast because that can easily spread disease and fungus and i don't want to do that to my young fragile new trees so i'll finish planting all these trees then in a couple days i'll come back and i'll show you how i prune them [Music] [Applause] [Music] well that rain did come and it actually rained quite a bit over the last couple of days so it was probably a good thing that i didn't prune these yet they probably would have been fine but i'd rather not take that risk with this many young trees in the ground but the rain actually came at a perfect time because it helped to kind of settle the soil allow these trees to establish a little bit and now the sun's out and i'm gonna prune these trees the most important pruning tip i can give you is to always start with sharp clean pruners i clean my pruners between each tree by wiping them down with isopropyl alcohol i'm going to start back at this fuyu persimmon because this tree is a really good example of how this initial pruning is a great opportunity for you to make this backyard orchard your own by taking that first step in determining the eventual size and shape of the tree the cuts i make today on these trees will determine where my scaffold begins at what height the first lateral branches come off of the main trunk and as a backyard orchard you know that's up to me it's not a commercial farm where i have to consider tractors moving through and mechanical harvesting it's all about what i envision for these trees so whether i want to make my cut a few inches off the ground and have my branching start down here and basically have a bush or clean up all these branches let it come all the way up straight here and let it branch from right here and have a giant shade tree where my branches don't begin until about head height that's really up to me for me i want to have it somewhere in between i want my scaffold to start right around knee height and that's kind of where these branches are on this tree already so all i'm really going to need to do is make one more cut to get this main leader out of the center so it'll start to branch right here and then i'll tip prune all of these at outward facing buds as i said this fuyu persimmon was a great example not only because it has a nice kind of scaffold already starting but persimmon trees can be pruned to either a center leader like this would be if i let this keep going or an open crown where if i remove this completely it would have branching just around the outside in sort of a goblet shape as you might understand peaches and nectarines and a lot of those stone fruits have more of that open vase open wine glass kind of shape a apple tree or a pear tree are usually on a center later and a persimmon tree can be pruned either way a nice scaffold should have between three and five branches all growing out at different directions from the main trunk and they should also be about 45 degrees at their angle not too steep not too flat somewhere in between this tree fortunately has all of that for me it's got three all in different sides all coming at a pretty good angle and so all i need to do now is clean up this main leader by removing it but in doing that i have two options i could either do a heading cut where i take it off right at the base of the top lateral branch that'll heal over give me that nice three branch scaffold or i could bring this up to the next outward facing bud and cut it right above that and that will encourage a branch to come out right there which would give me four branches in my scaffold because i have a pretty big section here that doesn't have a branch we've got room for another scaffold branch and that butt happens to be at a really good spot i'm going to make that cut so i'll take this cut at a slight angle just above this outward facing butt and this bud will become my next branch next i want to head off each of my scaffold branches about halfway up an outward facing bud so i've got an outward facing bud right here i'll cut just above that slight angle on this side same thing come up the branch about halfway outward facing bud slight angle done and then on this back branch here same exact thing i've got an outward bud that you can't see from there and i'll cut just above that that's it this tree is done printing until summer here's my other fuyu persimmon it's a giant fuyu and it's completely different than the other one this is what's known as a whip just a single stem no lateral branching at all and this makes pruning really easy because i don't have to decide which of those scaffold branches i want to keep where to head them off make sure they're at the right angle none of that all i have to decide is where i want my scaffold to begin because i have another fuyu on the other side and i want this one to be the same height as that one i just determined its height which was basically the bottom of my pocket so all i need to do is head this off at that height all of these little buds around the stem will turn into branches this summer and i'll have a tree that looks like that in no time all right here's my flavor to light aprium it's a nice tall tree it's almost head high it's got some nice branching and i think when a lot of people buy a tree like this at the nursery they look at it and they say wow this is a nice tree it's a big almost a full-sized peach tree i'm just gonna put this thing in the ground it's going to give me some nice peaches pretty soon and this is the tree and sure you can do that but what's going to happen then is a few years down the road you're going to have this tree that's 20 feet high and you won't even be able to get to the top of it with a ladder instead you want to cut all of this off and i know that's hard to kind of wrap your head around when you see this big tree that you paid for all of this and you don't want just some stump but believe me you do because by cutting it right here by mid-summer all of this will grow back but rather than have one center liter like you don't want with a stone fruit you're going to have this open crown and it's going to create a nice great structure with plenty of fruiting wood that's going to give you fruit for years and years and you're not going to have to get way up there on the ladder to harvest and maintain it so i'll make my cut way down here and as you can see here i've got three branches all coming out at different directions for my scaffold this one's at a really nice angle this one's at a really nice angle this one is a little bit flat and it's a little thin and that's probably because it's so flat the more vertical they are the more energy they're going to get from this tree the more flat they are the less energy they usually become a little bit spindly like this so this might work but it might not it might be too flat if it is too flat then i might only end up with two if i cut it right above this one so instead i want to go above this bud that will encourage this bud to become a new branch and sort of as an insurance policy in case this doesn't work and even if this does take and this takes then i still only have four but actually there's a nice bud on the back side of this as well and there's a big gap between these two branches so actually cut it right here above this bud and that will be a good spot okay that's three trees down i've got nine more to go and i'm basically going to continue these techniques with all of the rest of the trees so i'm not going to show you how i'm pruning each of these separately although i will record it and i'll have separate videos showing my pruning today for each tree my pruning this summer next winter and basically the entire process of establishing every single variety that i'm growing in future videos so subscribe if you want to see those but for now i'll continue these trees and then i'll show you a couple of more things that i'm doing to establish this orchard to get it ready for spring [Music] you're having cut right there [Music] so i mentioned that these are at a slightly steeper angle than that 45 degrees that i really want and i said that what i will do is cut them to an outward bud to improve that angle but another option is to take the piece that i cut off and actually make a spacer that i can put between that branch and the main stem and that will help to force that branch out to create that nice 45 degree angle i can even make a little slice in the center of it a little v-shaped slice like this you can slide this in here and that's really pushing that out to a nice 45 degree angle so maybe i'll try that out see how it works out make a couple more of those and this one's pretty good okay and that's it until summer all right all of my trees are pruned and now i need to whitewash these trees so basically what i'm doing with whitewashing is painting the main trunk of the tree up to the branch scaffold to protect it from sunburn and it'll also provide some protection against wood boring pests like termites and beetles and you can use any interior white or bright colored latex paint no oil-based paint and no exterior latex paint exterior paints often have a fungicide in them that's not good for plants or you can use something like this that's marketed for painting trees this product doesn't need to be thinned or diluted at all if you're using a standard interior latex paint for your house you will want to cut that by about 50 percent by adding some water into it so i'll just shake this up real well and then i want to clear all the way to the soil level i want to paint the entire trunk of this tree all the way from the soil all the way up to here i don't need to go higher on trees even established trees than usually where the scaffold starts because that will be shaded by the leaves when it leafs out in spring i'm not as worried about protecting the trunk in winter it's mostly the harsh summertime sun that i'm concerned about and i'm really most concerned with young trees like this because they have thinner bark just like thinner skin it's going to be more sensitive to sunburn i'm also most concerned about the south and southwest aspect the north side of the tree here isn't really getting sun so it's not going to sunburn over here this is the side i'm most concerned about but it's a thin tree so i'll just paint it all the way around there are certain types of trees that are more susceptible to sunburn than others i would say any young tree should be painted but citrus trees and especially avocado trees they have really thin skin i would absolutely not plant an avocado without painting it i have planted peaches nectarines without protecting their trunks by whitewashing them and they've been okay but it's not worth the risk all right this one looks pretty good i'm gonna go paint the rest [Music] do [Music] it's been a few weeks since i planted these trees and about half of them are already starting to break dormancy and they're looking pretty good but the other half haven't started to wake up yet and that's completely normal especially for young dormant planted trees they're usually about a month or even two months behind their normal bud break schedule and if they're still like this a month after you plant them and spring is starting it's probably okay if you're concerned that the tree is just dead just give the bark a little bit of a scratch and if it's still green underneath that bark it's still alive give it some time it'll wake up soon some of these trees will set their first fruit as early as this summer and most of them will set their first crops the following year if not the year after but i'll remove every single one of the fruits from these trees in the first two years because fruit takes a lot of energy from the plants and i want them to focus on developing a healthy root system and a vigorous canopy that's capable of producing and supporting large heavy crops for many years to come and in those years i'll continue to make videos like this showing how i'm pruning and maintaining my backyard orchard so if you want to see those videos and watch this orchard progress and if you want to see any of the other upcoming videos on how i'm creating this new urban farmstead consider subscribing if you enjoyed this video hit that like button and if you have any questions at all ask them in the comments below happy gardening everyone [Music] you

Channel: Urban Farmstead

Views: 312,475

Rating: 4.9648848 out of 5

Keywords: Garden, gardening, homegrown, vegetable garden, urban farm, DIY, how to, organic, organic gardening, farm, farming, grow your own food, how to start a garden, garden tips, gardening tips, grow food, how to plant a garden, Summer vegetable garden, How to plant a fruit tree, how to prune young fruit trees, pruning fruit trees, painting fruit trees, irrigating fruit trees, watering fruit trees, fruit tree spacing, planting an orchard, home orchard, backyard orchard, bare root trees

Id: LDHW1za8pXE

Length: 31min 38sec (1898 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021