How to Quickly Grow Fruit Trees in the Backyard Orchard

good afternoon folks Jordan here with the Nutty Nom Homestead it is the end of May 2023 we are standing out here in our Orchard getting ready to plant a couple of fruit trees so I've got four trees I need to plant today a couple of plums and an apple and I'm going to show you guys how we do this and a site that is not that great for planting fruit we actually do a couple things to our soil that actually helps our trees produce consistently for the last several years so I'm going to bring you guys in close and we're going to show you how we get this done so I wanted to show you guys some of our apples on a few of these trees we've got quite a few they're doing pretty good it looks like I'm happy with it so but what we're doing is we're out here in an old horse pasture that we've converted into our Orchard now whenever you dig a hole for your tree you want it to be twice as wide and twice as deep as the pot the tree has come in so I'm going to put you guys on the stand here just a second all right so I dug this hole we're gonna set that pot down in there you guys can see that this is twice as wide and twice as deep as our pot there's a reason we do this so you guys can see the soil is heavily weathered you guys can see that we've got a real thin layer of topsoil and then we got some clay and it's really weathered soil there's not much organic matter in it like I said this was a horse pasture that we've converted into our Orchard it has taken a lot of work in the last six seven years to get this to start producing some fruit so this is always a grass actually and we actually when we dug this out I kept the plug we're going to transplant that that stuff's going to live this stuff spreads 10 15 a year so there's no sense in wasting it we'll put it to good use now we usually do a couple of things with our holes like this first things first it's the end of May almost June there's no moisture in this ground we've not had any rain in over 10 days and as you guys can see with it being mostly clay it's not going to do that great with the draining let me show you guys this we dumped about a gallon of water into that that hole and it's going to slowly start draining out and getting absorbed that's going to take about 10 minutes for that to get out of there so I'm not not too happy about that but I really don't have any other place to put my Orchard on this Farm we've got our field that we have our crops in and then we have wood so you kind of have to make do with what you have so what I'm going to do is I'm going to add my own organic matter to it if you guys remember the video of making our own potting mix the compost perlite peat moss mix I mix up a whole batch just for planting these trees not only that I have a lot of rabbits rabbits produce a lot of manure I'm going to fill this hole with this homemade potting mix and rabbit manure that's what I'm going to plant my tree in so I'm going to get a little bit going and we'll bring you guys back in just a few minutes okay so you guys just saw there for a second let me take this out of the the grow tube it was on now I want to let you guys know I'm not impressed with how these box stores have their trees planted in these little pots the pots are way too small for the tree there's rocks which I'm not too happy about but more importantly there's no soil in this this is Pine bark wood chips there is nothing in here for this tree to eat there is nothing for it to consume this tree is starving so what I'm going to do is while I get the rest of this hole and everything ready I'm going get you guys over here I'm gonna soak it I'm going to rinse these roots off and I'm gonna go get a bag of rabbit manure that I can give this tree something I can eat kind of feel sorry for it so I'll be right back all right so I come back with about 40 pounds of rabbit manure should be enough to get at least three of these trees done I'm gonna sprinkle some on the bottom of the hole so first I put down my potting soil then I put I don't know four or five pounds of rabbit manure on top of it my tree's over here soaking you guys can see that purple three I feel sorry for it you guys see the The Roots a couple of suckers coming off those will have to get cut off here this thing is root bound they pull these whips up out of the ground stick them in these pots but this uh Pine shavings in on them and send them to the nurseries or home stores and then these things are dead in just a couple of months so we're going to rinse most of that stuff off of there I don't want to go digging around through here too hard it's got a bunch of little roots we're going to get a lot of it out but usually I would sit here and I'd work at it until I got all that bark out of it but this one is awful small put your tree right in the center of the hole now you guys can see the graph down there that's where those uh two little green Sprouts are coming from I need to build this up just a little bit to get the The graft above the soil line so I'm going to put my tree back in the bucket and I'm going to alternate layers between rabbit manure and my homemade potting mix I think one more layer of rabbit manure ought to be enough okay let me get you guys down close okay can you guys see the soil line and The graft on that tree so the soil lines right behind it and The graft is sitting just above the soil line that's where we need to be both of those green suckers coming off are below the graft I will cut both of those off because I do not know what kind of rootstock this came off of oh yeah there's a soil that came out of this hole good old gray brown Southern Illinois weathered soil couldn't have been blessed with some of that black Northern Illinois soil but that's okay we make do with what we have now in my garden any of you guys have been following us for a while will know that uh we do a lot of cover crops and a lot of soil amendments and over the last six years we've increased our topsoil layer by about 200 percent and the garden is just absolutely phenomenal we do a lot of leaf mold compost cover crops uh adding all kinds of organic matter where we want it makes a huge difference we have actually started doing that in this Orchard I do plant clover in here the Clover is beneficial as both a green manure as well as a nitrogen fixer and I believe I might actually start planting a couple other things so we don't just have a monoculture I like to have forage available for my bees which are just at the edge of my my Orchard here as well but anyway we'll get back to uh getting the street planted real quick now as you guys can see this tree is centered it's in line with the rest of the trees in this row north and south and east and west we want to make sure everything stays in the line it makes it a lot easier to uh maintain mold spray do whatever in the orchard so all I'm going to do is I'm going to backfill this in with our potting mix so these two suckers I'm going to come down right next to the tree clip them off I don't want those in there uh I don't wanna bring the soil up above this graph up to it is okay but I don't want to bring it up above it now we're going to Tamp this down slightly to make sure we have good contact with the roots all the way around we do not want any air pockets in there and I'm going to continue to backfill this with our compost all right we're going to add a little bit of water now since there's a lot of uh beet moss in here this is going to be hydrophobic for a little bit meaning the water will probably sit on top for just a couple of minutes and that's okay we're gonna give this tree a good drink we're going to Tamp everything down and then I'll top dress it one more time and then we'll move on to the next one now we do have a problem with a lot of deer in the area trying to get at our trees how we mitigate that is we try to run the deer off whenever we see them out here we do a lot of hunting as well however there are going to get some sort of running a hot wire electric fence of some sort you're just going to have to deal with a little bit of loss we do put tree tubes on a lot of our trees to prevent the deer from rubbing their antlers on them and that seems to help a little bit not all the trees are shaped properly for a tree tube which it is what it is you're going to have some losses now I much prefer planting trees fruit trees especially in the fall uh September October it's still pretty warm in this area but we tend to have the best luck when we plant them in the fall and then they get a good start in Spring now planting here in the summer we're getting ready to go another week without rain it looks like so this is going to get a five gallon bucket of water once a week until they go dormant it's going to be a little bit of work but in one to two years I'm going to have fruit on this tree get your foot in there make sure you got it good soil contact all the way around that root ball and there we have one Arkansas black apple tree planted in a row with our other ones really is that simple a little bit of TLC this uh rest of this year will go a long way in making sure this tree is very fruitful now a couple of things I do want to show you guys it appears at the nursery they were shooting for a central leader on this tree so you got this main bowl of the tree and then you have the central leader coming up you can see where they cut it off right here enforce it Sprout I'm okay with that that is the old school method for pruning your fruit trees and there was nothing wrong with that a lot of people will do these scaffoldings I will actually put some weights on this this limb and get it to go out to about a 90 degree angle you want this crotch intersection here right here to be about 90 degrees that's where it's going to be the strongest if it's 45 degrees like these up here there's a good chance that they could break if they get a lot of fruit on them so you'd have to provide a little bit of support there's nothing wrong with that however whenever you do the central leader you want to have a scaffold here a little bit of space and another scaffold of Limbs up higher uh most people are afraid to cut off branches on their fruit trees it's it's hard to over prune a fruit tree uh it if the tree is healthy it's going to come back if you make a wrong cut don't worry about it you can always come back next year and fix your mistake after it puts off new shoots walking around this tree let me get you guys in the frame here walking around this tree as you guys can see it is trying to go upwards and out and that's okay it's about five foot tall and as you guys can see right here the apical meristem terminates and we got three healthy branches one two three going up that's okay I can work with this uh I will probably leave it like this Force these three branches out and we'll go with a open bowl or an open Center uh pruning technique we do modify some of our techniques depending on the tree itself but that's for another video so well I appreciate you guys coming along for planting some fruit trees here on uh on the homestead uh I got three more to do I'm gonna try to get them knocked out before I run out of light it's about 7 30 right now so I don't have that much longer to go if you guys like this kind of content I'd appreciate it if you'd like share and subscribe if you guys have any questions feel free to leave a message down below or get a hold of us over on Nutty gnome Homestead on Facebook if you guys have any suggestions for future videos please let me know until next time get out there and plant you an orchard you'll appreciate it in a couple of years

Channel: Nutty Gnome Homestead

Views: 213,442

Keywords: backyard orchard, planting fruit trees, growing fruit trees, planting fruit trees in backyard, planting fruit trees in clay soil, fruit trees in clay soil, food forest, backyard orchard fruit trees, how to plant a fruit tree, how to plant a tree, how to plant an apple tree, tips for planting a tree, tips for planting in clay soil, easy tree planting, how to grow trees faster

Id: Dk5vgJSSf6c

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023