Most people including myself do not have a lot of tree's to prune. I only have 2 peach tree,s to worry about, my other tree's are already shaped and do not need heavy pruning any more.I do have a few late freeze's in my area. I do prune my peach tree's the open center and shape them for a lot of sun penetration when they are young. When i buy a peach i usely cut the tree down to about 32 inches and then pick-out the new laterals branches.I descard all the flowers the first 2-3 years and continue shaping and cleaning the tree of small branches,tipping-off strong growing shoots during spring and summer. Then in the spring i usely wait till the last frost that(27 degrees and lower)to do the final pruning.When you have a lot of tree's to take care-off you might do it differently.I have other fruit tree,s to fall back on mostly no spray tree's like persimmon,paw-paw, citrus,asian pear and a few others. I believe in edible lanscaping so my tree,s has to look good too. I am working on a 10 year project to get my 21/2 acres out of 5acres in shape and this is on a slope. 3 more years then i am done.(hopefully)

wow.. where is this.. it flashed me back to visiting busia in detroit in the 60's ... its a war zone now... i dont know why i ever went back to look ... anyway.. apparently i digress ... no tree really magically stops growing at some preferred height. .. its all about how long to get there.. and how far past ... i would not put a tree next to the garage.. there just isnt space for anything greater than 6 feet ... with a foot to spare on each side .... i would go with a tree dead center in the bigger plot ... and some shrubs down by the garage .... there is a variegated norway maple ... that has remained rather small for me .... but it might not let you garden under it in 20 years .... i know others have many good suggestions.. i just wanted to chime in an thank you for the memory flash ... to simpler times.. take care ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

I was always curious about medlar. Does it really taste like apple sauce when properly ripened? I will use my fruits fresh and juices, jams, and jellies mostly. All the plants are small now, but I hope i'll get good yields in the coming years. Rose hip makes delicious jam. I bought some rose hip jam from Croatia in the ethnic food section of my grocery store and it's amazing. I love rose hip jam on a english muffin with butter. MMM :) I have a big freezer so that helps. I like driving up to Michigan to pick grapes. Sometimes I get 10 5 gallon buckets full of delcious Niagara and Concord grapes for juice, fresh eating, and jelly. This year I might make wine as I've been researching it a lot lately.

Sorry for the small image! I will attach one with larger font below: Thank you Ken and Lane for the advice. To Lane -- I will reconsider my choice of blue spruce based on the humidity in our region. I do plan to cut down a lot of the hybrid poplar and willow stuff as it grows and as the more sturdy evergreen trees grow taller. To Ken -- I love oak trees, but I don't want more trees that are close to the house, and I mostly want to stick with evergreens as I love year round color and not dealing with leaves. I would consider planting them further from the house though. As for the soil, there is definitely a lot of clay (we are actually near Westerville) but I'm hoping that all the excavation will loosen some of the top soil. Also, I am fine with the planting ending up being a bunch of tall trees -- in fact, that's what I prefer. Basically, in 20 years (we hope for this to be our forever home) I would love to look out our front door and practically see a forest of mostly evergreen trees separating us from the road. I just want to make sure that I do it in a way that ends up crowded in a good way as quickly as possible without hurting the trees. I too worry about the lifespan and strength of "fast growing" trees, but I do prefer to have at least part of this planting growing as quickly as possible. So my thinking was to mix in 3 different species of these fast growing trees so that I don't have to worry about losing them all at once to disease, and surround them with better long-term trees so that as they die/loose limbs, I'll still be left with a little mini forest of evergreen trees. I hope this helps give a little more detail into what I am looking to do. I am definitely open to different species than the ones listed above, and I am fine with planting further apart if I can still achieve a dense, forest-like area in the future.