HI J, I have 3 peach trees. All have fruited in 2-3 years. I did not really amend the soil except for adding some top soil to fill the holes because I did not have enough native soil to put back. In my areas, rocks grow best. Rocks and boulders are everywhere when you dig a hole. I've fertilized the tree a bit in the spring each of the following years. I don't want to fertilize too much. If I were you, I'd get rid of competing weed around each tree and mulch it. Your apple tree looks stunted. A 3 yrs old apple tree should not look like that even in your type of soil. Not sure why, but you may want to consider relocating it. The soil in my yard is also land fill. The trees still grow decently. As for apple fruiting, I have apple trees that have fruited in 2nd and 3rd year on semi-dwarf rootstocks. My Honey Crisp is on an unknown rootstock. It must be at least 6 years old now but still have not fruited. My guess is it's on a standard rootstock which will take much longer. Make sure you have another variety of apple that blooms about the same time to cross pollinate. If there are crab apple trees in your neighborhood, you'd be all set.

LOL, bud! Thanks & love your "pose." You kind of look like my little brother, interesting. That tree is a turkey fig in my Mom's yard. It makes so many figs, just what we can reach is usually way too many. I took that pic 2-3 years ago right after I pruned it extremely heavily. You can't tell, but I removed all of the growth from inside so we could "step into it" and pick from inside & out... or hide a bus full of kids. Great for climbing in there, too. It needs pruning again, which I will do later this summer after the figs are gone. Some of the branches are laying on the ground again. The original owner of the home gets the credit for the beautiful "bones" of the tree, though. All I have done is maintain what was already done so well, removing crossing branches, those going straight down, etc... I'm still not sure how he got it into such a nice "low vase" shape instead of the "naked trunk" appearance of most other trees I've seen in the area, but I've only been a southerner for 5 years, still a lot to learn about the plants & trees that are new to me here. I hope the baby trees from my cuttings will grow up to be even in the neighborhood of such fantastic-ness!

Hi Rossello, Because the tree in the wooden barrel is extremely heavy I keep it all summer on a heavy duty 4-wheels that you may see a little on the picture. Then I made me a tubing with 2 "S" handles bolted on and when the time comes to go in my garage I just hook the handle on the 4 wheeler and wheel it in, once every few years I put new wheels on because staying outside they deteriorate. It is quite easy but I am now in the 70's and is very difficult to root prune, I am also limited to weights I can lift. I have 2 smaller ones of different type that will be sufficient. I hope this is a little help Franco

Frumchkin, the picture that satellitehead posted for me was not Hardy Chicago. It is a fig we are calling Hardy Hartford. That is until we can identify it correctly. Our Hardy Hartford is different in leaf then Hardy Chicago. The Hardy Hartford plant has leaves that are larger then Hardy Chicago. To me your tree looks like Hardy Hartford, not Hardy Chicago. At any rate, would you email me my email address is robertcharper@gmail.com