Backyard Orchard Culture

9 years ago

I was wondering if there was someone that could fill me in on this concept of a mini orchard in my backyard? i'm getting mixed answers when I email the various nurseries in my neighborhood about this ( I live in the Puget Sound Area of Washington).

My main questions are:

How high maintenance is this method?

Do the trees actually thrive this way or does it shorten their lives being in such close quarters?

thanks in advance for any info that can be provided!!!

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Comments (5)

larry_gene
9 years ago
What type of rootstocks (standard, semi-dwarf, dwarf) are being used in this mini method?

How many fruiting plants are you trying to crowd into how big an area?

Answers to that could result in insightful replies.

Crowding fruiting plants together can require more pruning. They will yield more fruit in full sun rather than when shading each other. I don't know if dwarfing rootstocks result in shorter plant lifetimes compared to standard roots.

The grower of a mini backyard orchard may expect smaller crops of a larger variety of fruit, kind of a sampler orchard. Most people cannot use more than 50 pounds of any single fruit for their own annual uses anyway.
lisaonbainbridge
9 years ago
Take a look at the info on Backyard Orchard Culture in the link below for Dave Wilson's Nursery. I had great success with the method when I lived in Southern California, but in the PNW, not as much. Perhaps only two trees close together would work, and be sure that they pollinate each other and grow at the same rate. Otherwise, one will take over.

Here is a link that might be useful: Backyard Orchard Culture
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Here is a bit of an update on my on highly pruned trees. I have 4 sweeet cherries, all pruned to less than 7 ft tall, all started as whips 4 or 5 years ago. Last year they bloomed but no fruit due to a late frost. Here are photos with 2 of those trees now, one is blooming well and the other is almost open. The others are either blooming or almost blooming. I also have several apples, a pear, and figs, which have been pruned with a similar philosophy, but it's too early to post photos from this year's flowers or fruits. The apples and pear look like they'll also have lots of flowers. Maybe it does work. We'll see. Since there are lots of flowers now, maybe there will be lots of cherries this summer. There is still some room for more growth, I can let them get to 7 or 8 foot without a problem, but plan to continue the somewhat drastic summer pruning as we have done so far. These were from a big box store and it did not state what rootstock, other than 'semi dwarf'. I did not use to multi-trees per hole method because I was not aware of it at the time, but otherwise am doing the summer pruning as described for backyard orchard culture.
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One caveat on peach trees in particular is they have a harder time pushing new buds on larger stocks. I have lost a couple peach trees I lopped at 15". I would first look for clear marks of buds on the main stem before lopping off; if the tree is a 2-year tree it will have plenty of those and you should be fine. If it is an older tree you may want to leave some of the branches. Note that this is only an issue on a freshly planted tree, the combination of just being transplanted and needing to push new buds is the problem. Also it is only a problem on peaches. I have many rows of 3' or 4' spaced trees, its my favorite fruit growing arrangement. I see you are in zone 6b so you are probably in the midwest or east where it is more humid. In those environments you need to do a lot more thinning than the California-centric DWN backyard orchard culture method will give you; if you don't you will get significant disease problems. I know because I spent several years fighting various disease problems that could have been avoided had I known how to prune properly. Basically what this means is to keep plenty of spacing between the various branches. A very rough guide is that a 1" diameter branch should be about 2' from the nearest 1"-er, a 1/2"er should be at least 1' away, etc. If there is too much density you just pick one of the two that are competing for the same space and remove it. It doesn't matter if it is from the same or a different tree, the same principle applies. Scott
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User
9 years ago
My version of backyard orchard culture was plant multiple varieties, keep them pruned short enough that I don't need a ladder, prune each tree so the center is open to sunshine. It has worked nicely for sweet cherries, figs, plums, in town in Vancouver WA.

I tried genetic dwarf peaches but they get massive peach leaf curl, and I gave up on those.

Summer pruning is a weekend project for me, sometimes 2 weekends. It does keep the trees small.

I did not do the 3 trees in one hole method, because we get a lot less sunshine than the California yards where this method was developed.
tcstoehr
9 years ago
This sort of thing in the PNW works best with apples, that do have truly dwarfing rootstocks, and are not disease prone. Stone fruits... forget it here in the land of fungal disease. Keeping them pruned down to size and disease-free is a nightmare.
mikebotann
9 years ago
I had several apple trees for awhile. Then they had apple maggots for two years in a row so I cut them down and pulled them up. Yeah, I know I could have sprayed, but knowing me I would have missed the correct time and I'm just not into a lot of spraying, insecticidal or fungal. By the time you do the pruning and spraying, plus taking up the room to grow them, it's just easier for me to buy them in the store or buy them by the box alongside the road when they're in season.
Same with stone fruits, too much trouble....and I like to grow things!
Mike...My orchard is at Safeway.

Backyard Orchard Culture

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larry_gene

lisaonbainbridge

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