Joe, I've only had one order from Grandpa's orchard (unlike some of the others), but it went very well and I was pleased with the trees. I ordered tree guards to go along with the trees and it turned out that they were temporarily out of stock. They emailed me to let me know they would send them after the main order (no extra shipping cost) and offered me a book or some extra guards as an apology. I chose the extras and they sent 36+ instead of 24, around a week later. Nice deal. Cummins also has a lot of heritage varieties. I think Garedneck has some very good points. It's good to have a few extra trees for any number of reasons. A lot of orchards have dwarf apples at 2' ("super spindle" pruning). That seems a bit extreme to me, but I figure around 5' is a good place to start. If some bomb out I can either graft over, or remove the tree(s), depending on how the spacing is working for me. I've planted so many apples that in a few years, I can afford to screw up quite a bit and still lots of fruit. Of course, I'm not as confident in tight spacing for some of trees without dwarfing rootstocks. Peaches for example seem a bit more chancy to me. Most of mine are on full-size rootstocks, which is what most places sell. I am planting one this spring (Gold Dust- should arrive next week) on Citation, but even that isn't really dwarfing, like the apple rootstocks. So, I'm giving it a try, but it may require a lot of summer pruning to keep manageable. Either way, I'd suggest keeping like trees together (apples near apples, etc). If you have other parts of the yard open, maybe do a row of apples and pears here and stonefruit in another area?

Murky, are you a fellow fruit canner? I raw-packed the Satsuma plum halfs into jars, then poured hot syrup over them before just before processing in boiling water. These plums are not free stone, but not quite cling either. I believed I picked them before they were completely ripe, but they tasted fine anyway and the firmness made them easier to deal with. I just sliced them all the way around, then twisted the two halves and one would break free, then I'd have to pry the stone out of the other half. Not too difficult at all. Peach trees health hasn't been a problem except for my Harken, which is the only peach I've grown that was not reputed for resistance to Peach Leaf Curl. And it gets hit every year, despite spraying. So bad this year that I suspect I forgot to spray it. Anyway, I think I'll get rid of it as I don't like to keep trees that are too disease prone. But in general, peaches in this area aren't too tough if you pick PLC resistant varieties and dormant spray them at the right times. That usually means once after leaf fall and another time just before bud swell. I think Satsuma is my of my plums. Santa Rosa's flavor was a bit pale so I was a little disapointed there. Not bad just not super-delicious as I was expecting. The Japanese plums are surprisingly more productive for me this year. My Imperial Epineuse euro-plum did well and was quite tasty too. What also surprised me was that the euro plums are more disease prone. My Italian plum's leaves always get fungal spots, curl, dry up and fall off prematurely. Only three plums on it this year and this is its best year. Imperial Epineuse also gets some fungus but not enough to worry about. Seneca, however, has no disease problems, and darn few plums, so far, but I think it's coming into production gradually. So all of my preconceived notions about plums have been shattered by my real world experience. As usual.

I purchased a three-in-one plum tree from Raintree last year. It has grown nicely and was well labelled. I weighted down the branches with rope and a stone to make the tree more open centered. Looks like it may be budded for fruit next year. I transferred some chip buds ( my first attempt at chip budding) to other plums that I have, so we'll see next spring if that was successful. I have been grafting scions onto existing apple and pear trees for a few years now. My first reaction when these grafts fruited was that flavor must be affected and in decline when a graft. (Mollie's Delicious on Jonathan had no taste; Vista Bella on same tree was o.k.) However, this year has changed that --Honeycrisp is one of four grafts on Hawkeye Delicious and is wonderful. The Grimes Golden on that tree is also great, and expecting great things from Florina in a few weeks. One thing I think I've learned is to not let the tree overbear.

bfreeman, I was going to say that. Currently on my 30-in-1 citrus tree I have these general citrus categories: 1) Pink and regular lemons 2) Orange x Lemon hybrid (so they say, but you can guess this popular "lemon" fruit) 3) Pummelos 4) Grapefruits 5) Pummelo x Grapefruit hybrids 6) Navels 7) Valencias 8) Acidless oranges (some are green skinned even when ripe) 9) Pigmented oranges (ie, Moro Blood, Sanuginelli) Mandarins (counting all "tangerines" in this category) Mandarin x Pummelo hybrids (Tangelos and Tangors) Limes I would have easily grafted others like Calamondins, Sour Oranges, Limequats, Mandarinquats, Sunquat, Yuzu (considered outside the citrus genus in some literature), Ugli fruit (considered to look the same as the Yuzu and mistakenly grouped the same by some people), Kumquats, Sudachi but it wouldn't make my tree well balanced nor look good. These smallish fruits will be out of place and they have more of a columnar habit of growth. Not counting the various rootstock type. Still there are other various other hybrids between pummelos and oranges, kumquats, lemons, mandarins and limes. And the resulting hybrids can be grafted easily together. some hybrids are complex when they are back crossed, but usually are grouped according to the dominant taste or look. Anyway, that's 12 fruit categories right now, and 11 if you count Meyer in the pure lemon group. And if you go with how US market will group this, probably it would be like this: Valencias, Navels, Mandarins, Tangerines, Tangelos, Pummelos, Grapefruits, Blood, Lemons, Limes, Exotics. So I would still have 11 types. Anyway, categories are tentative and subjctive, they are always debatable depending upon whom you talk to. I myself may have miscategorized some of my citruses as the literature themselves are conflicting. Not surprisingly, California marketing is very good at confusing the markets by introducing the term tangerines when technically it would have only been mandarins. And the same mis-information is spread by the same US growers calling all non-astringent persimmons as Fuyu and the astringent ones as Hachiyas!!!