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Step-by-step guides for every animal, the garden, orchard, pasture and compost: getting started, housing, feeding, daily care, breeding, health and harvest.
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Read Their Articles →Planting an Orchard
Fruit trees and berry bushes take a few years to start bearing, then feed the family for decades. The right varieties and early pruning make all the difference.
- Apples (semi-dwarf) fruit in
- 3–5 years
- Peaches fruit in
- 2–4 years
- Plant bare-root
- while dormant, early spring
- Thin apples to
- about 6–8 in apart
1Choosing trees
- Pick varieties that suit your winter chill hours and disease pressure — your extension office has a list for your area.
- Most apples, pears, sweet cherries and plums need a pollination partner that blooms at the same time.
- Dwarf and semi-dwarf rootstocks fruit sooner and are easier to pick and spray.
2Planting
- Plant in full sun with good drainage; avoid frost pockets at the bottom of slopes.
- Dig wide, not deep; keep the graft union above the soil.
- Water deeply after planting and every week the first summer.
- Guard trunks from rabbits, voles and deer.
3Pruning
- Prune in late winter while trees are dormant.
- Shape young trees early: apples and pears to a central leader, peaches to an open center.
- Remove dead, broken and crossing branches first; don’t take more than a quarter of the tree in one year.
4Care and harvest
- Thin fruit early in summer for bigger, healthier fruit and to stop branches breaking.
- Mulch around the tree (not against the trunk) and keep grass back.
- Learn the big diseases in your area (fire blight, scab, brown rot) and clean up fallen fruit and leaves.
- Pick when fruit comes away easily with a lift and twist.
Put it to work
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These are rules of thumb from university extension guidance. Breed, climate and your state’s rules change the details — your county extension office is the best place to ask, and you can find it on the selling rules page by ZIP code.