40 TIPS for EASY Fruit Tree growing - 35 years of experience

Do you have fruit trees? Do you want fruit trees? Do you hesitate to have fruit trees because they're too much work? Here's 40 tips to help you have low maintenance fruit trees. Maintenance can eat up a lot of time on your property, on your homestead, or on your farm. And maintenance never makes you money unless you provide a service of maintenance. I've been growing fruit trees for 30 years. The first 15 of which were a monoculture organic apple orchard with 4,000 trees, which we eventually tore out and replanted as a permaculture orchard. How can I maintain six acres of orchard with an average of less than half a day per week? That's why I'm giving you my 40 best tips to have low maintenance fruit trees. The first point about where to put your trees is where you have good drainage. Good drainage means don't plant them next to a pond. Dig. Dig at least four feet or 1.2 meters to be sure that there's no groundwater right there. Because in the end, putting trees where there is water, where it's too wet, trees will have especially disease because fungus love moisture. So avoid poor drainage and look for your best drainage. Avoid frost pockets. I can't imagine the number of people who I've seen planting their orchards or their fruit trees and then they get frosted out. Avoid the low spots on your land. That's where cold air gathers. Avoid being just above a large building or a large forest that can hold that cold air. Ideally you want to be on a slope where the water and air, especially the air, can drain freely down the slope. That's what good drainage is. Look at classic orchard sites. This isn't a classic site because we're in flat land but this is what we've got. In the end you'll use what you've got but choosing the right spot where you are is good. Avoid shady areas. Temperate climate fruit trees do not grow in the shade of a large shade tree. They just don't. We're not in the tropics or subtropics. So make sure your trees are not going to be put under a big shade tree or on the north side or south side, depending on your climate, of a big building that's going to cause shade. Fruit trees need at least eight hours. If you can't grow really thick grass then that's not going to be a good place for your fruit trees. Sun is good for fruit trees. What kind of soil? Well no two soils are exactly alike. Best is gravelly loam. A mixed soil that's got some gravel that drains really well. If your soil is the kind that really cakes into big clumps with a lot of clay that may not be the best soil. You want something that's really loose and especially well drained. Remember if you're not sure just make sure it's well drained which gravelly loams are best. How to design? The first thing is flee the monoculture. I know we had monoculture. It doesn't work to be low maintenance. If you want to put all the work in, yeah you can have like we had all apple trees. But I can tell you having both, having had monoculture and having a diversity, nature does not like monoculture. It always, look around, it always has a diversity. There's not just one kind of plant. Nature always wants to bring in other plants. They play better together. They work together. They associate together and it just works. You want low maintenance. You want to save time. Flee the monoculture. One of the most important tips for how to design is using trios. That was a nitrogen fixer. This is a cherry shrub and this is an apple tree. A nitrogen fixer. A fruit tree. A fruit tree. A nitrogen fixer. Fruit tree. Nut tree. Nitrogen fixer. Nut. Nut. You can go nuts. The key is fleeing monoculture means planting a diversity. We alternate our trios. It just works. Trust me. One of the beauties of using trios is it solves the problems before they even become a problem. Case in point, trios provide better pollination. Here's our trio with a fruit tree. In this case, Alexander apple. And then we repeat in the next trio with another apple tree. In that case, Belmack. Two trios. Two different cultivars or varieties or kinds. Better pollination. I get so many comments of people who say, I planted my one fruit tree five years ago, seven years ago and I've never had fruit. Well, most fruit trees need a partner. Fruit trees to produce need to go through fruit sex to give you some fruit. So have trios with different cultivars of the same species and you pretty well guarantee you'll have better pollination and better production. An important point about how to design is using vertical trios. Yes, the trees. Vitally important. But now let's go tree and below. Have you ever had something growing under your tree or under fruit tree that you didn't want? Well, why don't you plant things that you want and they'll keep the other plants away. So we use trees, shrubs, and these are fruiting shrubs, and then perennial plants. Rhubarb, onion, daylily, flowers, herbs, perennial vegetables. The choice is quite big and if you're in a warmer climate than we are, you even have a bigger selection of plants you can use. So plant something you choose so that you don't have to deal with plants that are coming up that you don't want. You've used vertical trios. Wonderful. Horizontal trios in the trees. Wonderful. What about a vine layer? In this case, making your nitrogen fixing tree become fruitful. Some of you may be able to grow things that you can eat from your fruit trees, your nitrogen fixing trees. If you can't, you can still make them be able to produce fruit. So we put vines, perennial vines, things like grape and kiwi to grow up our nitrogen fixing trees. In the first years, for almost five years, we were able to grow annual vegetables and using these trees to climb up. So we put things like peas and climbing beans and cucumbers so that they could use a support that we didn't have to set up. We did by planting it and gradually transform it to perennial plants like grape and kiwi. So use your trees that you've already planted and make them produce fruit for you. Another point about how to design is plant what you can finish. I didn't do that. I planted trees because we had acres to plant and we were planting trees for three years. I would suggest, and that's what we do now, is plant your trees, plant your shrubs, plant your perennials and even plant your annual vines to start just so that do as much as you can finish because the plants working together just will give you a better pop. They'll grow better while there's more light than if you wait five years to plant your shrubs or your perennials and now they get a lot less light. So it will give your plants a good start and they'll be off and running together with your trees. So plant what you can finish. A final tip about how to design and it's so important it's one of the most often comments and questions I get. How far do I space? I always say when in doubt space them out. Spacing is important. You really want your fruit tree to have all the room it needs. You don't want it crowding into your next tree. Give it room and you say well how much room? Each rootstock cultivar combination will kind of have a spacing and then add a few feet, add a meter. You're not sure? Give them room. Why? Because you can always fill in the space in between with something like a fruit, a bigger fruiting shrub but if they're too tight your trees won't get good aeration and aeration is so important. Airflow reduces disease. Solve the problem right in the beginning. That's what you want. Low maintenance. Not have to intervene afterwards. So give them the room. Figure it out. Calculate. Measure. Go check with somebody who's got the same combination and give it a little more room because in the end you'll never regret you spaced them out but you'll always regret you planted them too tight together. Now some tips about what to choose. Look around. I always say grow what grows like a weed. Why? Because how much work do you put into weeds? None. Did you water? No. Did you fertilize? No. Did you spray for it? Maybe but the idea is weeds grow without any effort on your part. What if the fruit trees, the fruit shrubs, the perennial plants you grow grow like a weed? Listen there's nothing easier than a weedy fruit tree. Look around your property. Look on the ground. Look in the hedgerows. Look nearby. Ditches are a great example of an area that's not mowed, not disturbed for a while. What comes up naturally. If you're growing, blackberries are growing and will take over your yard if you do nothing. Then I'd say grow some thornless blackberries. Why? Because they grow like a weed on your place. Here apples don't grow like a weed but cherries and grape absolutely. When we put cherries and grapes they grow like weeds. That's what you want. If you want really low maintenance, really easy and really time-saving, look around. Do your homework. Get a plant ID guide or app and have it identify plants that are fruiting or provide something else like perennials that grow so easily. Grow what grows like a weed. You'll be so glad because you'll have to beat them down. How much work is that? Well maybe a little but it's a lot easier doing that than having to intervene for all the problems they would come up with otherwise. If you have a small space, plant your fruit trees that have dwarf rootstock. Look at the tag. It should say what kind of rootstock and if you're not sure, ask around or do some research just to find out. Almost every fruit tree nowadays has dwarfing rootstock available. Why? Because you'll be able to get your tree-o's in even if you have a small space. So select dwarfing and you could put any cultivar but on a dwarfing. So the final result, your tree will be smaller. You can go much smaller than this. You can get trees that'll be your height or smaller. Try that if you're in a tight or close or small space. Another point about what to choose. Please choose disease-resistant fruit trees. It's nothing better to be easier than to have a tree that you don't have to spray for disease because they're resistant. Every tree, every fruit you look at, there are going to be cultivars or varieties that if you do the research you say oh look at this one is resistant to this disease, that disease, sometimes many diseases. That is the ideal. Plant something that you don't have to be spraying. It's so much easier, so much easier. You like that, eh? Not being sprayed? Absolutely. Disease-resistant is the way to go. An important point about choosing what you want to grow. Try if you have room for two of the same fruit tree or three, maybe you could put three trios. Try to get an early season, mid-season and late season producing fruit tree. You'll extend your harvest season. One example are apple trees. We start in mid-July to harvest and it goes right up to mid-October. So three full months we can harvest apples and you can do that. You can have a tree, some of them produce or hold their fruit for longer but do a little bit of searching. Yes, get disease-resistant. Yeah, maybe get it on a dwarf rootstock and then choose early, mid or early and late or early and middle. Whatever combination depending on two or three trees you could put in and then get that variation. It'll be so much better because you're not swamped with three trees that produce at the same time. Instead, your trees will produce over a longer period and you get to enjoy the benefits of a long eating harvest. Grow some perennial vegetables, herbs, even flowers under your fruit trees but things that you can eat are so much nicer. Yeah, perennial flowering plants. If you can eat the flowers, fantastic. But the key with perennial vegetables under fruit trees is that they tend to produce early in the season. They're spring plants and it's a great compliment. If you do a vegetable garden, you now start really early in the spring harvesting already and it goes on with your annual production. And did I say they're perennial? What does that mean? I love the idea of perennial where I'm going to do the effort of planting it once and I'm harvesting this one for 15 years. Ah, that I like. Plant a vegetable once then harvest for years to come. That's a winner. A last tip about what to choose is never stop experimenting with species and cultivars. You may have a few, that's wonderful, but don't stop unless you're out of room. But still try other perennials, try other plants. Why? Because nothing beats easy. If you experiment and you come upon a pear tree or a plum tree or an apple tree or cultivar that really does well and grows like what? Grows like a weed. Then how easy is that? You say, oh, I don't do anything. And that thing just produces and produces year after year. Isn't that what you're after? And it absolutely is possible. But you sometimes have to do the experimenting to find out what that plant is. Now you've chosen where is the best place. You've designed your planting properly, wisely, hopefully, and you've chosen what would be the best plants to put in. Now it's time to plant. I like to say plant simply. And the first tip for that is don't amend your hole. You make a hole to plant. Don't put all kinds of things in. Oh, you should put this and you should put that and you should put this. And you read about it. You hear about it from wherever you buy your trees. But realize most people talking about amending the hole or adding something in the hole probably have those things to sell you. So avoid amending the hole. That's a really time not time proof. Yeah, it is a time proven tip. The next tip is make the hole twice the size of the tree root ball, the tree pot or the roots. Why? Because you want to loosen some soil, ideally twice the size and even twice the depth of that so that as the tree roots get in, they quickly start to grow. And as you dig this soil out and you plant, put the same soil back in. And that's so important. I've seen trees die because the soil that was put in was not the same soil of what's there. And especially if you're in a heavier soil, it's pretty unforgiving if you put a lighter soil or an amendment in the hole. So make it bigger and use the same soil in the hole. When do you plant now? You're going to make the hole you're going to plant. Listen, if you've got a potted plant, you can pretty well plant it at any time. But the best time for potted trees is in the fall, just as the leaves are falling. So your tree will actually really root well before winter comes around. If you're dealing with a bare rooted, you can get them sometimes in the early spring. Those are best planted early in the spring because the tree will quickly have the start, will put on some leaves and then will grow. I used to say plant them in the fall, but actually bare root is best in the spring. Another trick for planting simply is put your amendments on top after you plant it. So you planted the tree and you wanted to put amendments and that's fine, but don't put them in the hole. Put them after you've planted with the same soil. Put those amendments on top. Why? Because when I'm in doubt, I look, what does nature do? Nature puts the amendments on top. It doesn't bury them down in the hole. Leaves fall, fruit falls, things fall on the surface. So that's where you want to put your amendments. Things like compost, any fertilizer you want to put, anything that would, that you've been sold on the idea of amending, put it on top. It will go down. Doesn't go up, it goes down. Now you're just about complete. What do you do? You put some mulch. Why mulch? And mulch could be organic mulch. It could be shredded leaves. It could be wood chips. Those are great mulch hafter. And mulch is a blanket. It's a protector. It reduces the intensity of rain. It actually reduces the amount that frost penetrates. It slows things down and it feeds the plant that you've just put in. So mulch around your trees after you plant. It'll also protect any amendments you put on. So mulch is a great low maintenance and ideally not just as you plant. Renew your mulch for a few years. I like to say three to five years after you plant so that you'll have a really well-established tree because that's when your tree grows most is the first three to five years. Mulch. You've just planted your tree. Congratulations. Now, do you stake or don't you stake? I like to say any tree that's smaller than you, don't stake, please, because staking often is put in and forgotten. And that's the worst thing. You end up with a tree that's flexible above and very rigid below. So if you do stake because your tree is taller, please remove the stake in one season. If you put it in the spring, certainly by fall, remove it. If you put it in the fall, certainly by spring, remove it. So stake is great to eat, but be careful about putting it to hold your fruit tree. Congratulations. You've gotten this far. You're planting. You planted your tree. Don't just leave it at that point. Put a tree guard around it. Guard from what? You want to guard from rodents. If you're at all in rabbit country or bull country, a guard put on that will last for years is a great bit of insurance, protects the tree bark from those gnawing rodents. And hey, we've got these for 30 years on different trees. And you know what? That's good. Plastic is good. Wire mesh is even better. Long lasting, durable and will protect your tree from rodents. Now let's look at some tips to help you maintain. I did say low maintenance, time saving. Maintenance is really where you can save so much time. One of the things is if you're having fruit trees and you have grass around them, the key is to mow infrequently or roll. We do roll aisles when the grass gets even taller. One trick is you want to get as much flowering in your grass as possible. The flowers feed the beneficial insects. The beneficial insects move to the trees and do a great job. So you can attract them with your grassy areas. But that doesn't mean mowing on a lawn schedule. It means giving the grass longer to act more like a meadow so that it'll flower. Mowing at six or eight weeks interval, at least half. So we mow half the aisles and then we come back in three weeks or six weeks to mow the other half. That gives the grass a chance to grow. Same for rolling. Once they're really in flower, we can roll the aisles. So use your grass to feed your beneficial insects. One other tip about maintaining is you will have some things to weed. So you can weed or transplant. Once your trees and shrubs and perennials get growing, they will often, because you want plants that grow like what? Like weeds. They will grow. And so here's a plum tree, for example. Well, I'm not going to just cut it out. I can dig it up and transplant it. So you will have some weeding, especially for trees, shrubs, and vines, because if you leave them in after three years, even if you cut them down, they will regrow. So take them out while their root systems are not so big that you can't remove them and either get rid of them or transplant them even better. For maintenance, I love to focus on the 80-20 rule. Pareto principle. 80% of your area will take 20% of your maintenance time. The other times is 20% of your area will take 80% of your maintenance time. So focus on changing redoing and ideally getting rid of those 20% areas that are taking a lot of time. You want low maintenance? Focus on the ones that don't take a lot of time. And whatever trick and tip you apply to save you time there, always remember 80-20. It will serve you really well. Every tree has a season. I like to say train your trees while they're young and forever. They'll be low maintenance. What do I mean by train? Well, if it's crooked, don't wait till your tree is large to bring it back into angle. Make it straight. Or when it has branches, take the time while they're young to train these branches so that they are horizontal. No, usually below horizontal. That's the simplest trick. It'll avoid so much pruning afterwards. And that's what we're looking at next. Tips to help you prune. I like Solomon's wisdom. He said, train up a child in the way he should go. And even when he's old, he will not depart from it. The same goes for a tree. That's why I start with training. If you train the tree in the first two, three, five years, while the tree is young, when it gets older, it won't depart from it. It will keep its branch angle long-term, an angle that is easy to maintain. My mentor would say, do you want a tree or do you want fruit? This being the trunk and these being the branches. If you want to grow a tree, then that's what happens when your branches are pointing up. They will grow a lot of branches and chances are a lot of growth on there will be suckers or water sprouts. You want to train them below horizontal so that for the long-term, instead of growing new branches, it will grow fruit. And that's the simple, long-term way to save you a lot of time from pruning, is train and then really focus on keeping your tree with downward branches. Except for pears, they go horizontal and no lower. The simplest three-step approach to pruning, after you've done a job training your tree, is clearing a chimney. Imagine a chimney. You want no branches, no spurs in the chimney, meaning an area from the trunk, reaching a distance, clear out everything, take it off. You don't want branches on that. A chimney lets light come in and it lets air move. Always good things for a fruit tree. And it will give your fruit tree having fruit from the beginning of the branch and not just at the end. So it will be from beginning to end fruitful, not just at the end of the tree. Clear a chimney. You do it once, you really don't have to redo that step for most often five years. So it's a quick thing to do and it gives long lasting results and it will regrow new branches where they're missing. Step two in the three-step process for pruning the tree is select 12 to 15 branches. Why not more? I want a lot of branches because most trees do not need more than that to produce a full crop. And having more than that means you'll just have branches conflicting one to the other. Which ones to remove? Because a tree will usually give you twice as many. You'll normally have 20 to 25 branches if you've never pruned the tree. Take out the ones that are the most tree-like and favor the ones that are the most fruit-like. Keep that in mind. It will save you so much time in pruning. The third step in the three-step process is to do a final polish. You've already selected. You have less branches to deal with. You don't go messing with the branch. You do a polish which is a very simple and I love this technique. You just go underneath the branch and you remove anything that's under. And how do you do it? You can just pass your hand under and everywhere you hook on a branch or a spur you remove it. That's underneath. That comes off. Why? Because now you've done a pruning and you've taken off the branches that are the least favorable and the spurs that are not in full sun. So it does prune each branch but it's a fast step. And like the chimney you do it once and you won't have to repolish that branch probably for five years as well. So that focuses your pruning to a lot less work. Focus on the angle. Do the chimney and do a polish. An important step to really reduce insect and disease but mostly insect pressure in your trees is in the fall gather the fruit that's fallen. Why? Because if the tree had fruit that were attacked by insect and you let those fruit fall to the ground the insect comes out of the fruit goes into the soil and next spring where does it have to go? It just looks up and bang it'll restart the cycle and attack your fruit again. So do a good job ideally once a week. Clean up the fruit that you didn't pick and that fell to the ground. Clean it up. Do a good sanitation under your tree. It will reduce your insect pressure tremendously. If you want to really avoid causing yourself problems mark your plants especially your trees perhaps your shrubs if they're small and your vines. Mark them where you put them. I mean just give it a stake. Give it a marker. Give it some way of knowing so that you don't come back and cut them or uproot them because oh I didn't know there was a tree there. I've heard so many cases where yeah I planted my little orchard with little trees and my husband came around and just mowed the whole thing down. Mark them in a way that they'll stand out above the grass so you're not as likely to do that simple maintenance mistake. Here's a couple of observational tips. Look what is around you. The easiest is look at resources that are abundant in your area. Maybe it's grass clippings. Maybe it's leaves. Maybe it's wood chips. Use them as mulch around your tree and you'll be adding fertility in a way that really benefits the tree. Mulch is the unsung hero of low maintenance and saving you time long term. Another tip about observing is learn to look especially beneath your trees because there may be seedlings and so multiply your plants very simply. You should be able to grow the amount of trees, the amount of plants by 10 times every two years. Yes 10 times. I said that right. You could get seedling trees. You could multiply your shrubs by layering. You could divide your perennials. There's so many simple ways to increase your plants. If you've chosen wisely and you have weeds then use them as rootstock. Use them as a potential new tree. Use them to extend your planting. Hey there's nothing more fun than look I got all these plants. Do you want some? And you can share with your friends and family around you and let them get their own orchard started. Let me give you some tips about working with nature's allies. I really say don't freak out because you see an insect that could be a pest. I used to absolutely hate these caterpillars because they caused so much damage before we really redesigned and worked with nature as our allies. Now I say you want to keep every pest at a low level but you want to keep them because they should feed a resident population of predators. Wow it looks like this is terrible. I've seen it often enough that I know this is not a problem. I hear the birds all around that they're just waiting to come and feast on these to feed their young. So don't freak out about seeing a pest. Give them a bit of time. Watch what happens and if you can maintain a population of all the pests you'll also maintain a population of their predators that will work for you 24 hours a day in every season and you can sleep peacefully knowing that oh my gosh I have all these caterpillars and I know they'll be gone very quickly. Anybody home? Anybody home? Add nest boxes. You put them up once they'll work for you for years. We have almost 300 on six acres and let me tell you you want to attract every bird that would nest in such a structure. You want them all and what really happens is when they're feeding their young they are voracious especially for caterpillars and they'll do the work for you. So set up a home for them and then they will partner with you saving you time saving you work and the maintenance on these is really not a lot. A very simple and really underutilized thing is thinking about insects not as pests but thinking about beneficial insects and one of the things they really need is just a home to multiply in. We leave the space under the trees with all the stems. We don't mow. You think look leaving these stems of the perennials of the plants of the shrubs sometimes leaving those stems here what it does is it allows them a place to nest and when a beneficial insect is nesting in here let me say they don't fly to your second neighbor they just fly very close and patrol and then they'll bring whatever prey they're gathering. So this becomes a focal point. Have focal points throughout under your fruit trees and you're gonna get so many more beneficial insects working for you. That's what allying with nature is all about. If you've gotten this far congratulations you're interested in getting your fruit trees to be low maintenance to save you time. My final tip is take a look at our master class at permaculture.study. It's the product that I wish I had when I started and that's how we designed it to be the biggest help we could to you so you will enjoy fruit trees. You'll say hey it's not that much work and there are ways of growing your fruit. That is a time game changer from the days of thinking monoculture. I was organic. I had monoculture and this is way better. I wish you have abundance so check out the permaculture orchard master class at permaculture.study and you can start looking at it today for free.