What kinds of fruit and nut trees and bushes are you planning on? And how much of that space are you planning on cutting open for full sun- or are you just planning on trying to thin out the understory of saplings and leave mature trees as a shade canopy?

I'm planning for 3 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 2 plum trees, 2 Pawnee pecans (the shorter ones), and MAYBE 2 chestnuts (at the far edge of the property so that I can avoid burrs). Maybe black cherries if I have room, but it's lowest on my list.

And I have a handful of crape myrtles that I thought about dispersing throughout just because they're pretty and I don't have anywhere else for them.

I'm still thinking about the bushes that would go in front of the trees. Probably blueberry, but I'm not sure. Blackberry vines are common here, so I might put them farther behind the trees. The deer eat most of them, though, but I like my wildlife so it's OK.

My thought process for the trees is to cut out all of the field pine, anything that's too crowded, and any trees that are smaller than 9" in diameter, and leave the bigger and healthier trees. That should leave maybe 10 red oak, beech, birch, and maples. The fruit trees will be to the West of them so they'll still get full sun, but have a little bit of a buffer morning through midday.

I would still have a thick line of trees to the West of them, too, so late evening would be mostly shaded.

After a few years, though, those remaining trees to the East might have to come down, too. My plan is to set up 3 goldfish ponds in the lawn, so the orchard would be a backdrop to those ponds. I have a 1000G pond in the back yard (fenced in) and everything is starting to outgrow it, so I'm hoping to expand in the front yard.

This is slightly off-topic, but check if you have any eastern red cedars (Juniperus virginiana) growing in your area. Chances are you have them. They are hosts for the cedar apple rust disease, so growing apples could be problematic in a forested area.

I love following your gardening plans! But I need to give you a little warning on planting your fruit, nut and berry plants near the woodland area--do not plan on a big harvest. I have done something similar and the squirrels and bluejays harvest almost every thing right before it is ripe. I am taking out 3 peach trees that have pretty spring flowers but the squirrels harvest ALL of the fruit before it is any where near ripe and then have the audacity to bury the peach pits in my flower pots. They do the same with the apples, pears blackberries and pecans. So far the only things they have left alone are the muscadines and blueberries and I fight the birds for them with an owl and winding 4 ft plastic/rubber snakes thru the bushes--they have to be moved around every few days to make the birds think they are real.

As for the leaves--Find an old heavy duty pot metal snapper push lawnmower and chop up the leaves and small sticks--remove the big sticks. All those chopped up leaves and sticks make good soil in a short amount of time. My DH called the 40 yr old mower my bush hog. It died 2 years ago and I miss it. These new ones are so wimpy.

Yeah, a good bush hog would be nice to grind a lot of that up into useful mulch.

As a start, you can through the summer work on stuff like removing the greenbriar and poison ivy, and removing the bigger branches to elsewhere. Keep stomping down and walking over those leaves, break them down as you work.

Get yourself a few cans of screaming bright spraypaint. Use it to mark those hidden stumps and even what saplings you want to take down as you move around out there this summer. Since you have hummingbirds, don't use red or yellow. Neon green or blue, bright hunter orange or pink, and fluorescents works. That way stuff is tagged even though winter.

Also since you have hummingbirds- try to figure out where their nesting trees are. It would be nice if you could leave it in place for them. Consider adding in some nectar flowers for them. Also consider adding in some other flowers for your pollinators for when the fruits and nuts aren't in bloom.

Get yourself a handful of yard tags- sticks/wires with flags on the end used for marking yards. Where you find plants you want to keep, clean up that spot enough to tag where it's root bases are. This will make them easier to find and save/move/work around as you go along.

As you tromp along doing these summer things, you might break down and shuffle around the leaf layer enough to make it more mulch and useful. And also clean up more for future leaf clearing considerations if you still think it's the way to go in the early fall.

@JoJo (Nevada 9A), I looked it up... I don't THINK that I have any close by :-O There are tons of apple orchards within 15 miles of my home, though, so I don't "expect" any major problems (famous last words, I know! LOL).

@frankielynnsie, I'm glad you're enjoying it :-)

I don't plan to sell them or anything, so I don't need a huge harvest or anything. I was going to remove all of the pine trees, anyway, because they tend to fall and do more damage than good. My original plan was to plant ornamental trees (crape myrtles, tulip poplars, and dogwoods, which I have aplenty), but then (being a piggy) I thought... why not plant things you can eat? LOL Saplings are relatively inexpensive, so I think that I can fill in the whole orchard for less than $500.

My property is surrounded by 100 acres that was clearcut several years ago, and I've had nothing but snakes and coyotes ever since. But for the first time in a long time, I'm finally seeing deer and turkey come back this year! I certainly don't mind sharing if it helps encourage wildlife that I actually like.

I've had to deal with insects eating my veggies, but now I grow hot peppers (which I love, anyway) and make a spray out of the leftovers to protect my plants. They repel everything!! If push comes to shove then I could probably do something on a larger scale for the fruit and nut trees, I'd just have to figure out how to do it without macing myself...

In an ideal world, I really just want the Granny Smith apples and I'm planting a third one for pollination. So I would happily tithe with those apples if I can get them to leave my Granny Smith's alone :-)

We bought a leaf vacuum device. It's like a lawn mower. Holds much more than a handheld blower/vac. It cost less than one spring clean up from a landscaper.

Great info, @beesneeds, thanks! I wanted to comment on this specifically:

Also since you have hummingbirds- try to figure out where their nesting trees are. It would be nice if you could leave it in place for them. Consider adding in some nectar flowers for them. Also consider adding in some other flowers for your pollinators for when the fruits and nuts aren't in bloom.

I'll probably end up making another thread on the hummingbirds later, but I've looked and have NO Idea where they nest! I understand the nests are quite small, though, and I have 100' trees and they could be anywhere. I have 8 feeders out, though, and they go through them fast, so I know they nest somewhere nearby... but it could be on neighboring property for all I know.

But that's why I'm waiting on cutting, I don't want to risk taking out any of their nests by accident.

I have several flower gardens around, so I hope they'll help? Mostly irises, lilies, astilbe, Devil's and Angel's trumpet, and fringe flower bushes. Once I get all of this cleared out, though, I'll be doing more research on what to plant in front of the fruit-bearing bushes, and being good for hummingbirds and bees is a big plus.

Honeybees actually do well here, and I grew up with a small honeybee "farm" nearby, so that might turn in to a spin-off hobby in a few years :-)

@Sigrid, do you happen to know the brand of the vacuum you bought?

Make your orchard in an existing cleared, stump free area if at all possible. Apart from the expense and bother of clearing a currently wooded site orchards made where there was a wood previously rather often have problems with honey fungus spoiling the fruit tree plantings afterward. With all it taking is an infested root fragment left behind for the fungus to maintain a presence. And in addition Armillaria being able to grow through the soil for distances of 60-100 ft. to get at new trees to attack. So even if an orchard plot were to be somehow cleared of every bit of the forest trees before planting theoretically the fungus might migrate in from from the edges of any remaining woodland that happened to be present near the new orchard.

"armillaria root rot in fruit orchards":

https://www.bing.com/search?q=armillaria%20root%20rot%20in%20fruit%20orchards&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=armillaria%20root%20rot%20in%20fruit%20orchards&sc=4-37&sk=&cvid=E0A112D4D9954D1985C901040BF4E0E6

The good news is after you clear out 100 saplings, small trees under 9" diameter, the greenbrier (smilax), poisoned ivy, branches, sticks and rocks, any remaining leaves won't be worth bothering to remove. I don't see why they have to be removed first in order to clear the land and if you are worried about snakes hiding in them make a path or two through the leaves.

As someone who blows leaves into the forest edge on an annual basis - at other people's houses, I don't do that nonsense at home - big piles of leaves are pretty much gone by the next leaf season. I can't imagine a 2' deep pile of leaves hanging around in the forest for long.

If you must for some odd reason need to remove the leaves, get a real blower and disperse them over the two acres. Let them decompose. Don't haul them away. There is also the idea of fire that may be useful for all those other things than the leaves.

Forgive me please, now I am going to stomp on your dream just a bit. All those non-pine tree stumps are going to resprout and attempt to grow back into trees. Smilax has tubers that live down deep close to China and cutting off the tops is never going to get rid of them. Removing poisoned Ivy is easy by comparison. Clearing this land to plant an orchard is not really going to be a one person winter only job and may require some chemicals and big machinery to speed the process along.

Smilax is the devil to get rid of.

1. Take a plastic drink bottle--Gatorade, v-8 with a bigger opening.

2. Fill with 2/3 inches of brush killer.

3. Bend 6 or more smilax runners together.

4. Tape shoots together.

5. Insert into killer.

6. Then duck tape in place in the mouth of the bottle sealing to keep rain out.

7. Wait until shoots die and usually the tubers will be dead too.

This also woks for wisteria. The beautiful curse.

I'm going to respond a little out of order, sorry!

@Christopher CNC, it's not so much that it HAS to be removed first, it's more that I'm hoping to do as much of it as I can during the summer so that by time I can cut the trees, I won't be overwhelmed with so much more work that I won't get to plant the trees. Outdoor projects like this is my stress relief from work, so if I can spend an hour or two every day doing something that would make my life easier later then it's a good way to spend my time :-)

And, of course, if I remove it all now then when animals (snakes, mice, bugs, etc) are looking for a place to hibernate, they'll move on out instead of being in the way when I'll be working. Copperheads are relatively common in my area, so I'd like to avoid them if I can! LOL

I had cleared out a smaller section last year for light gardening this year (peppers, tomatoes, spinach, etc), and while I was hauling thatch to dump in the woods (not in the area I'm clearing!) over the weekend I found that the leaves were about up to my knees. It's a culmination, though, of 15+ years of leaves falling from the trees in the woods plus the leaves being blown in to it. I didn't go super deep in to the woods, but I'm hoping that it won't be as deep once I get in there a little.

This smaller section had 8 saplings that I cut down last year, then dug up the stumps this year. That was some work, but greenbrier and poison ivy were the bigger problems... especially since, as I've gotten older, I can look at poison ivy and get a rash! Which is very weird because it never affected me at all as a kid. But anyway, I know that they'll both be a problem for awhile, so my thought process is:

1. get rid of the trees I don't want;

2 dig up the stumps that are immediately in the way;

3. plant new trees; and

4. spend the rest of my days dealing with greenbrier, poison ivy, and digging up the other stumps

@frankielynnsie, in an ideal world I much prefer to spend time digging up the roots rather than using chemicals, especially if it's near an area that I'm planning to grow food! So far, all of the briers I've chased down have been fairly easy to dig up because the ground stays wet and loose, but I'll keep that in mind if it gets out of hand :-)

With all of that said, though...

@Embothrium, now THAT was scary!! LOL My cleared land is relatively small. I mentioned before that I have 5 acres, and they cleared 1 acre in the middle to build the house. So that 1 acre is the back yard, the house itself, garage, driveway, and front yard. So the front MIGHT be 1/2 of an acre, but it's probably closer to 1/3.

Plus, the front yard has 5 large trees in it now (I cut down 1 red oak in March, now it has 3 oak, 1 beech, and 1 birch), so I'll be near a stump no matter what.

Worse, it's definitely not 100' from one section of heavy woods to the other, so if there's fungus in there then it could reach my new trees no matter where I put them!

As I'm reading about Armillaria root rot, though, I think that I would see symptoms of it while cutting down trees. And it appears to require consistently wet soil, so maybe clearing out the leaves and smaller trees would dry out and kill any fungus?

I hate to keep pushing things off, but maybe I should clear off the trees and leaves, then let it sit and dry for a year?

Or, I could always rent a tractor, push off the top layer of soil, then import a few truckloads of healthy top soil? That would be a lot more money than intended, but it would have the added benefit of me not having to deal with stumps and other debris (at least, mostly).

I know that I'm not going to get any fruit or anything for 7-10 years... I turn 46 this year, and I want to get all of the hard work done while I'm physically able! Both of my parents were disabled and unable to work by 50, and while I'm much healthier than either of them were at my age, I still know that my clock is ticking. I hate that I pushed this off from last year, and I'm not thrilled about pushing it off for another year... but if I rush it and none of the trees survive then it will be even worse to try to start over in 2-3 years :-/

Jason, a few thoughts for you to consider. Every County Extension office has a Forestry expert. Suggest you call your local agent and request a meeting with its expert. And during your conversation ask questions regarding the suitability of introducing truffle spore or selected mushroom spawn into your woodlot as a future income for retirement. Your NC area provides the perfect environment. Some internet searching will provide factual information on the subject plus names of land owners engaged in growing truffles in you immediate area. Whatever...you need some expert advice on how to work with your present thoughts. Take 5 minutes to seek out professional help and the best way to clear your land for future productivity.

Ramps, Ginseng and BBQ flavoring smoking wood are also potential viable crops for the NC woodlands.

@nandina, that's an excellent suggestion! I found my local Extension office and just now emailed what I hope is the right person.

The power lines to my house are underground, too, so I have to call before I dig, too...

@Christopher CNC, interesting enough, my grandfather supplemented his income in the 50s and 60s by picking wild ginseng and selling it to pharmacies! Maybe I should become a ginseng farmer and bring it full circle? LOL

omg.... if the trees stopped them from blowing away .. once you remove the trees.. just wait for them to blow away ...

but for gods sake .. you are going to remove.. and i cant emphasize this any more ... FREE MULCH ... and then what .. go pay a lot of money for new mulch.. dude.. just leave it there .. if you remove it.. all you are going to have a a couple billion weeds pop up ...

ma nature will make it disappear.. either thru breaking down .... or blowing away..

dude.. work smart.. not hard .. which includes working hard to make more money to spend in your garden ...

you are probably close to being to late to be planting trees.. make sure you time that all out properly ... its the first section at the link below ....

i got so wound up reading down... i skipped a lot of replies.. lol.. if anyone else said the same ... what they said ...

ken

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub