How I tried to set up my orchard for success, on a hill with clay soil.

2022 is the year of the perennial for me.  After time spent obsessing over trying to find the "right" spot to plant an orchard (University of Kentucky has extensive publications about fruit trees, and one discusses what type of siting is best for peach trees - which are really my ultimate goal with the orchard), meeting with our county's horticultural extension agent, doing soil samples, obtaining amendments, and going back and forth with my husband over whether my orchard would interfere with his longer-range targets (he shoots from one hill, over the orchard hill, to the far hill).  Did you know that our land is basically all hills?


I decided to lay out the orchard on contour.  I think that it looks beautiful when mature, and I may end up filling in those contour lines with lower effort rows of edible bushes of some sort if I get crazy later.  

Spacing was something that I obsessed over.  I'm growing exclusively dwarf or semi-dwarf trees at the recommendation of my horticultural agent.  Based on advice that I've received on permies, I may end up regretting this decision.  In an attempt to future-proof the orchard layout, I've spaced all of my trees as though they're full-sized.  This means if any or all of the trees eventually struggle for one reason or another, I can easily replace them with full-sized trees and spacing will not be an issue.  Trees were spaced at 30 feet to allow me to get through in a side by side for management and harvest.
 

Tree selection was governed by finding disease-resistant varieties that are all in the same bloom group, and that the bloom group is a little later.  If my reading has taught me anything it's that the biggest issue you're likely to run into fruit production in Kentucky is being hit by a late frost that wipes your blooms out.  I also have a preference for apples ripening at a later date, we often have nice weather into November in our part of Kentucky, and the late Oct/Early Nov ripening dates give me a breather after our standard summer garden chores are completed before the apples will need harvesting and processing (and who doesn't love a harvest party around Halloween to press cider and process apples together?)


Trees were obtained from Cummins Nursery in NY (apples were ordered in Oct/Nov when there was still a good selection, pears were added to the order later at the request of my husband)  - they have a ton of information regarding each of the trees, information on rootstock, and the ability to sort by disease-resistant varieties that lend themselves to organic growing methods.  All trees were bare root varieties.  We ended up with 11 trees in total this year, 8 apples, and 3 pears.



Planting hole prep involved first marking out locations, then broadforking the planting area, pulling sod off the planting hole location, tossing a scoop of alfalfa pellets mixed with a little blood and feather meal into each hole, then mixing/digging the actual hole for the tree.  I chose not to really amend the soil outside of a little organic fertilizer.  This is because from what I've read, especially with clay soil, it's possible to give the root zones too cushy a spot to grow, and the trees will refuse to send their roots out into the surrounding soil.  Giving them a little hardship (roots, meet clay) can actually improve their chances in the long term.  After planting the trees, I filled in around them, left the turf turned over on the downhill side of the trees to create a bit of a bowl to help channel and water into the holes (our clay soil is heavy, and it struggles to perc, but it does drain eventually.  Trees were then watered in with a few gallons of water hauled up from my pond.



After planting, the trees were cut back to ~40" tall and all branches cut back per recommendations by Cummins Nursery.  Trees were staked and tree tubes "applied."  The purpose of the tree tubes is to protect the trees from deer and also to encourage a more vertical growth pattern initially.  I would like to be able to run our future pigs, chickens, and flerd through the orchard alleys in the future once the trees have gotten larger as cleanup and fertilization crews, but I suspect keeping tree branches a little higher up may result in less damage from the livestock. After tubed (and the tubes labeled so I know what varieties I'm working with), they each got little watering jackets.  I found a deal on amazon where I got 15 tree sacks for under $100.  The way these work is they are little PVC bags with a few holes melted in the bottom.  Either end of the bag has a zipper, so you zip it around the base of a tree, and put a hose in the top.  Each of these sacks apparently will hold 20 gallons of water, and supposedly drains out slowly over the course of a few hours.  Since I don't have water up at the orchard location, and this area gets mowed somewhat regularly, running a series of drip irrigation lines out everywhere is more of a pain than it's worth. I got a 60-gallon tank I can strap into the bed of my side by side, either pump water into it from our pond, or fill the tank off municipal water (our account with the water company has a minimum charge that covers a certain number of gallons of water each month, and since we are not yet living on the property, I don't believe the house construction crew will use our limit, so it's basically free water that I don't need to pump), haul the tank up to the top of the orchard, and use the hose to fill our tree sacks.  I hope not to have to use these often, but I think making watering as simple as possible during periods of low rainfall will be imperative to actually watering.


Along with protection and watering, I got to mulching.  This consisted of ringing each of the tubes with cardboard, then dumping half a side by side dump bed full of wood chips onto the whole situation, and spreading it out in a small ring around the base of the tree.  The tubes kept the 6-8" of wood chips off the trunk, and effectively buried the tube, which should help to dissuade rodents from trying to make a home in the tubes.  After all of my trees were mulched, I put about half a load of wood chips into the bed of the side by side, saturated them with pond water, and mixed in a couple of bags of wine cap mycelium.  Once thoroughly mixed, each tree had a small hole dug in the wood chip mulch, had a couple of gallons of inoculated wood chips dumped into the hole, and then had the hole covered by a little more wood chips.  I'd like to add comfrey to the mix as shade for the winecaps and mulch for the trees, but haven't yet found a reliable source for some cuttings locally, and the ones I got on ebay and put in my garden haven't yet grown.



And the views of the orchard from a few angles, just because it's spring in Kentucky, and I like admiring my own handiwork.

Wow! Planting a few trees might seem like it would be easier than planting 100 trees, but I find that there's more pressure to get it right because you're counting on all of them surviving. I'm short on sunshine, so I can only plant in a few spots on edges, so I too feel like I need to give every fruit tree the best chance I can.

Some ideas that I've used successfully - I'm also on clay soil:

1. I try to water really deeply when I do water, and then wait as long as possible to water again. My theory is that this will encourage the roots to go deep. I don't know how quickly the bags you're using take to empty, but I'd try to measure that time frame. If it's "hours" I'd try refilling them twice that many hours apart, and ideally in the cool of the evening and late evening so the water soaks as deeply as possible. For trees I've planted near a hose, I've watered slow drips all night, then not again for 2 weeks if possible.
2. Next year, instead of having the watering bag around the tree trunk - which isn't actually where I want the roots to hang out - I'd dig a hole (loosen the dirt at least) and add some goodies in three spots in a circle at least 5 ft out from the trunk. I'd stake the watering bags over those spots and water those spots deeply in the theory that it will encourage the roots to travel out to those areas. The little apple tree I did that for has done amazingly well rather than dying which is what I expected after all the abuse it had suffered before coming to live on my farm.
3. Eric Hanson has found that adding a little organic straw to the spot you're inoculating with wine caps really helps them get established. He's also found that they need the wood chips to be in contact with soil, so I'd keep an eye on the cardboard to make sure it's decomposing and not being a barrier between the wood chips and soil. That really depends on the situation - in places I've got happy earthworms, it hasn't been a problem. Apparently, earth worms really like to eat cardboard, but only damp cardboard - not the hard dry stuff.

It sounds like you've done a great job - I hope they all prosper under your watchful eye. Good reminder, I need to try to dig up a little comfrey from my successful patches to add around the two apple trees I planted this winter.

Looking at your cider apple selections, seems as though you need more sweet apples. If you use a blend as usually recommended you'd need twice as many sweet apples as all the rest combined. I'd say you need a full/semi-full sweet tree to take over after the dwarf's get outproduced by the large tree/s

I planted cider apples last year and chose varieties based on precociousness, annual bearing, and their respect in the cider world.

My selections were Dabinett, Porter's Perfection, Golden Russet, and Harrison. This year I'm adding Ashmead's Kernel, but I'm worried I don't have a pollinator for a triploid. Some do say the AK is a diploid. I have a lot of late blooming sweet varieties to come up with a good blend.

Good luck with your new orchard.

Hi Laurel,
I'm so happy to see another Kentucky gal planting apple trees!  Your set up looks beautiful and your property sure does show the beauty of our state.  This year is a perennial starting year for me also.  I wish you much success. Do you have much deer pressure? I'm intrigued by the watering sacks.  Might you please post a few more pics of the sacks at different angles? Thanks!

Send me a message if you need more Comfrey roots.

Jay Angler wrote:Wow! Planting a few trees might seem like it would be easier than planting 100 trees, but I find that there's more pressure to get it right because you're counting on all of them surviving. I'm short on sunshine, so I can only plant in a few spots on edges, so I too feel like I need to give every fruit tree the best chance I can.

Some ideas that I've used successfully - I'm also on clay soil:

1. I try to water really deeply when I do water, and then wait as long as possible to water again. My theory is that this will encourage the roots to go deep. I don't know how quickly the bags you're using take to empty, but I'd try to measure that time frame. If it's "hours" I'd try refilling them twice that many hours apart, and ideally in the cool of the evening and late evening so the water soaks as deeply as possible. For trees I've planted near a hose, I've watered slow drips all night, then not again for 2 weeks if possible.
2. Next year, instead of having the watering bag around the tree trunk - which isn't actually where I want the roots to hang out - I'd dig a hole (loosen the dirt at least) and add some goodies in three spots in a circle at least 5 ft out from the trunk. I'd stake the watering bags over those spots and water those spots deeply in the theory that it will encourage the roots to travel out to those areas. The little apple tree I did that for has done amazingly well rather than dying which is what I expected after all the abuse it had suffered before coming to live on my farm.
3. Eric Hanson has found that adding a little organic straw to the spot you're inoculating with wine caps really helps them get established. He's also found that they need the wood chips to be in contact with soil, so I'd keep an eye on the cardboard to make sure it's decomposing and not being a barrier between the wood chips and soil. That really depends on the situation - in places I've got happy earthworms, it hasn't been a problem. Apparently, earth worms really like to eat cardboard, but only damp cardboard - not the hard dry stuff.

It sounds like you've done a great job - I hope they all prosper under your watchful eye. Good reminder, I need to try to dig up a little comfrey from my successful patches to add around the two apple trees I planted this winter.

Thank you so much for the recommendations.  I really like the idea of making hide and seek holes for nutrient dense materials to encourage root growth.  I'm hoping to not need to use the tree bags very often, we get heavy rains during the summer in KY, but they're insurance if we get periods of drought.  I'll keep an eye on the cardboard.  I checked on it yesterday and it looked damp, however we had rain a couple of days ago.  

John Indaburgh wrote:Looking at your cider apple selections, seems as though you need more sweet apples. If you use a blend as usually recommended you'd need twice as many sweet apples as all the rest combined. I'd say you need a full/semi-full sweet tree to take over after the dwarf's get outproduced by the large tree/s

Thanks.  I know next to nothing about cider.  I was under the impression that with the backbone of a bittersharp type cider apple, the volume of fresh eating apples may even be too sweet, but it sounds like that's not the case? What type of full-sweet tree do you recommend?

John Indaburgh wrote:I planted cider apples last year and chose varieties based on precociousness, annual bearing, and their respect in the cider world.

My selections were Dabinett, Porter's Perfection, Golden Russet, and Harrison. This year I'm adding Ashmead's Kernel, but I'm worried I don't have a pollinator for a triploid. Some do say the AK is a diploid. I have a lot of late blooming sweet varieties to come up with a good blend.

Good luck with your new orchard.

Nice!  The orchard is going in with the hope that we will be able to eat, freeze, and can as much of the apple production as possible, but after my mom's mature tree more than filled a bathtub, I suspect we will need to press the majority of the apples we produce.

Re: triploid apples - i was under the impression that all triploid versions of things were considered sterile, and in the case of apples and pears, as long as you have a diploid to pollinate it, you'll be fine?  This is why I ended up with 3 pear trees.  I wanted Magness, but it needs a pollinator, so I got another variety, but because Magness produces sterile pollen, if I want pears from the pollinator tree, I need a pollinator for that, thus the trio.  

I selected my varieties based on bloom group so they should all be flowering at roughly the same time, giving me the highest chance of pollination.  

Angela Wilcox wrote:Hi Laurel,
I'm so happy to see another Kentucky gal planting apple trees!  Your set up looks beautiful and your property sure does show the beauty of our state.  This year is a perennial starting year for me also.  I wish you much success. Do you have much deer pressure? I'm intrigued by the watering sacks.  Might you please post a few more pics of the sacks at different angles? Thanks!

Thanks!  It's honestly stunning, it's the reason we bought the property, we got up on the hills and just knew that no matter what, this is where we were going to live.  

We have plenty of deer hanging around, and they actually seem to particularly like this hill (grumble grumble) but if my garden is any indication, a couple applications of fish fertilizer, the presence of my dog every few days, and just being around seem to make it just inhospitable enough that they don't bother with spending time there anymore (we have game cams watching our garden/shop as we aren't around all that often and used to have deer parties in front of the shop before I was able to spend as much time really managing things there, now zero deer activity in the vicinity).  The tree tubes will hopefully at least let the trees get a chance before the deer start browsing them, although the bottomland/back of our holler is much more hospitable for them and they seem to prefer the bottomlands to the hilltops most of the time.

It looks like I did not get any additional photos of the water bags, however, if links are allowed, here's the amazon link to the bags I bought (the 5 pack was roughly $30 when I ordered mine), it seems that they're generally all basically the same.  amazon link

Trace Oswald wrote:Send me a message if you need more Comfrey roots.

I will!  Thanks!

Laurel Jones wrote:

We have plenty of deer hanging around, and they actually seem to particularly like this hill (grumble grumble)

I heard this from an old-timer, so it would be nice is someone could confirm it, but they claimed that deer spread botulism spores, so if you were going to make cider or juice out of the apples, it's important to *only* use apples you pick, not wind-falls that are on the ground.

Windfalls can still be used for baking, animal feed (my old goose who passed last spring absolutely adored apples - don't know about my new rescue goose yet), and a hunter friend used them to set up a bait center for deer. You may find that the deer will specifically come around and eat the windfalls once the trees are in production, and I actually find that an asset as our trees are near the house and windfalls also attract wasps. Wasps are great at harvesting caterpillars, so I appreciate their role on my homestead, but they tend to get goofy in the fall and I react badly to stings, so everything is a balance!

Jay Angler wrote:Laurel Jones wrote:

We have plenty of deer hanging around, and they actually seem to particularly like this hill (grumble grumble)

I heard this from an old-timer, so it would be nice is someone could confirm it, but they claimed that deer spread botulism spores, so if you were going to make cider or juice out of the apples, it's important to *only* use apples you pick, not wind-falls that are on the ground.

Windfalls can still be used for baking, animal feed (my old goose who passed last spring absolutely adored apples - don't know about my new rescue goose yet), and a hunter friend used them to set up a bait center for deer. You may find that the deer will specifically come around and eat the windfalls once the trees are in production, and I actually find that an asset as our trees are near the house and windfalls also attract wasps. Wasps are great at harvesting caterpillars, so I appreciate their role on my homestead, but they tend to get goofy in the fall and I react badly to stings, so everything is a balance!

interesting tidbit about the botulism.  I was under the impression that the spores are basically everywhere, so try to be careful about management of that stuff.  If we decide not to ferment cider, I'll freeze it, and if we ferment it, i can't imagine there'd be much harm in fermenting it out and then refrigerating?  I guess I'll do more reading.

Laurel Jones wrote:Thanks.  I know next to nothing about cider.  I was under the impression that with the backbone of a bittersharp type cider apple, the volume of fresh eating apples may even be too sweet, but it sounds like that's not the case? What type of full-sweet tree do you recommend?

There's a list at this link. It shows a list of recommended varieties in each cider classification. The usual blend would contain 60% sweet apples; so I'm suggesting you would need either more trees of your sweet variety, or a larger tree.

There's a cider press near me that will press my apples for a minimum $12.50 charge. So my goal is to have all my apples pressed in one visit. So I've decided on late apples that will ripen and sweeten up before they close in early November. I have Baldwin, Rome, Golden Russet, and McIntosh the last is a little early ripening. You could possibly make a list of your families favorite apple and pick the one that's most suggested for cider making.

Laurel Jones wrote:interesting tidbit about the botulism.  I was under the impression that the spores are basically everywhere, so try to be careful about management of that stuff.  If we decide not to ferment cider, I'll freeze it, and if we ferment it, i can't imagine there'd be much harm in fermenting it out and then refrigerating?  I guess I'll do more reading.  

That's the way I've understood it too. From what I've read, you can assume that any food that hasn't been pressure-cooked has spores on it, and make sure that they don't grow. Things that keep them from growing should be oxygen, low pH, high percentage of salt, and very low temperatures. I don't know the pH of apple juice, but if it's low enough maybe that in itself is enough to keep the botulism at bay?

The previous post has a link. At the link location there's a list of various apples and the %Tannin, Brix (sugar), and the PH. As I understand it the PH should be under 4.6 to allow the use of a water bath canner. All the apple varieties except 7 can be canned with a water bath.

John Indaburgh wrote:

Laurel Jones wrote:Thanks.  I know next to nothing about cider.  I was under the impression that with the backbone of a bittersharp type cider apple, the volume of fresh eating apples may even be too sweet, but it sounds like that's not the case? What type of full-sweet tree do you recommend?

There's a list at this link. It shows a list of recommended varieties in each cider classification. The usual blend would contain 60% sweet apples; so I'm suggesting you would need either more trees of your sweet variety, or a larger tree.

There's a cider press near me that will press my apples for a minimum $12.50 charge. So my goal is to have all my apples pressed in one visit. So I've decided on late apples that will ripen and sweeten up before they close in early November. I have Baldwin, Rome, Golden Russet, and McIntosh the last is a little early ripening. You could possibly make a list of your families favorite apple and pick the one that's most suggested for cider making.

Awesome, thanks.  I'll give it a read.  I expect if some of the apples I'm growing are fresh eating type apples, would they not be classified as sweet by cider terms?    Either way, until we invest in a cider press, there is a place that will also press all of your apples for you in one visit, so I'm looking forward to taking advantage of their investment.  :)

Eino Kenttä wrote:

Laurel Jones wrote:interesting tidbit about the botulism.  I was under the impression that the spores are basically everywhere, so try to be careful about management of that stuff.  If we decide not to ferment cider, I'll freeze it, and if we ferment it, i can't imagine there'd be much harm in fermenting it out and then refrigerating?  I guess I'll do more reading.  

That's the way I've understood it too. From what I've read, you can assume that any food that hasn't been pressure-cooked has spores on it, and make sure that they don't grow. Things that keep them from growing should be oxygen, low pH, high percentage of salt, and very low temperatures. I don't know the pH of apple juice, but if it's low enough maybe that in itself is enough to keep the botulism at bay?

Rad, thanks.  It looks like (per this Reddit Thread, which we all know internet hearsay is flawless ) botulism has very low alcohol tolerance, so there's little concern with a "normal" strength cider.  I tend to be careful about food safety, but also figure if people 200 years ago were able to do it safely, chances are that my home kitchen can also handle the challenge.

Laurel Jones wrote: Rad, thanks.  It looks like (per this Reddit Thread, which we all know internet hearsay is flawless ) botulism has very low alcohol tolerance, so there's little concern with a "normal" strength cider.  I tend to be careful about food safety, but also figure if people 200 years ago were able to do it safely, chances are that my home kitchen can also handle the challenge.

I've never heard of beer having botulism, even in the US where the alcohol % is lower than here in Canada (or it at least used to be in my teen years), so I suspect that alcoholic cider isn't a problem.

However, my friends "pasteurized" non-alcoholic "cider" - really just a version of apple juice with more flavor. This involved heating it to a 180º to 185º F for 30 min, and not letting it boil. Some pickle recipes do this, as it preserves the texture better. Depending on one's equipment, it can be surprisingly hard to keep the water in that narrow range, but my friends felt it preserved the nutrients better in their apple juice. However, as I said when I started this part of the discussion, they also only used apples they'd picked - not wind-falls. I can't tell from what people have written since, whether this actually makes any difference. Are apples on the ground likely to have a higher concentration of botulism spores on them than apples on a tree?

As for the link John provided, the chart gives data for 2 different years and the levels of  both tannins and pH were quite different for the two years. That suggests you'd need to either get your juice tested yearly and decide on your plan from there, or overcompensate in case the apples in a given year had levels worse than the data suggests. After all, if there's that much difference at a specific location, who knows what the difference might be at a totally different location with different soil, different plant management, and potentially different weather.

OT - I have a small Sparton apple tree. My people aren't keen on eating them, and the fruit is small enough to be a bit annoying to bake with. Last year, I put the whole lot through a friend's juicer, with a plan that never happened - OMG was it delicious. It all disappeared into people before the "plan" ever happened. They liked it so much that I froze it in 1 liter bottles just so they didn't disappear it all in one week! To me, commercial apple juice is too boring to bother with. It never occurred to me that fresh-squeezed Sparton apples would be a total hit. So before anyone frets over whether they've got the "right balance" etc - try it and decide for yourself!

Jay Angler wrote:

OT - I have a small Sparton apple tree. My people aren't keen on eating them, and the fruit is small enough to be a bit annoying to bake with. Last year, I put the whole lot through a friend's juicer, with a plan that never happened - OMG was it delicious. It all disappeared into people before the "plan" ever happened. They liked it so much that I froze it in 1 liter bottles just so they didn't disappear it all in one week! To me, commercial apple juice is too boring to bother with. It never occurred to me that fresh-squeezed Sparton apples would be a total hit. So before anyone frets over whether they've got the "right balance" etc - try it and decide for yourself!

I'm really not too concerned with getting the right "balance."  As an experimental cook, homebrewer in a previous life, and all that jazz, I'm happy to wing it, and if i don't like the balance, adding or subtracting trees from the equation is easy enough.  And I tend to prefer wines, beers and ciders with fewer residual sugars, stronger tannins, bitterness, etc.  We'll be fine.  

There was a farmstand near us that sold 5 gallon buckets of unpasteurized cider that I would decant in half-gallon volumes into foodsaver bags (they can lay flat on the counter to defrost quickly and get transferred to a better serving vessel) and we loved them.  I'd really love to be able to offer guests/friends a glass of apple cider pressed from our farm. And if we have enough extra, I have a sous vide setup to pasteurize the cider, pitch yeast and ferment out into hard cider.

Guys!  Guys!  The wine caps are happy!  I'm tickled pink.  I pulled back a little of the mulch in the area that I added the mushroom spawn when I planted the trees, and it seems to be growing!  

Congratulations! You've got baby mycelium! That is *always* a wonderful sight!

Jay Angler wrote:Laurel Jones wrote:

We have plenty of deer hanging around, and they actually seem to particularly like this hill (grumble grumble)

I heard this from an old-timer, so it would be nice is someone could confirm it, but they claimed that deer spread botulism spores, so if you were going to make cider or juice out of the apples, it's important to *only* use apples you pick, not wind-falls that are on the ground.

Windfalls can still be used for baking, animal feed (my old goose who passed last spring absolutely adored apples - don't know about my new rescue goose yet), and a hunter friend used them to set up a bait center for deer. You may find that the deer will specifically come around and eat the windfalls once the trees are in production, and I actually find that an asset as our trees are near the house and windfalls also attract wasps. Wasps are great at harvesting caterpillars, so I appreciate their role on my homestead, but they tend to get goofy in the fall and I react badly to stings, so everything is a balance!

I haven't heard of botulism being a problem with deer but they certainly do carry various parasites.  Nevertheless, for many years my family picked up drops and shook the apples to the ground from many wild trees where the ground was rich with deer droppings.  We would take the apples to an old historic cider press in PA where they would grind and press them .  Years ago they had no system for washing or sterilizing the cider.  As most of the cider we got I hot water bath canned, I wasn't worried about fecal contamination.  But we also just put some jugs in the freezer to drink "fresh" and the ones in the refrigerator would naturally ferment to "fizzy", which we drank with enjoyment before it got really hard.  Nobody ever had any stomach issues.

Although I would not suggest that you do as we did then (the cider mill later closed for a while during which they installed UV light sterilization equipment),  I still wouldn't worry about fecal contamination in cider since you would want to sterilize the juice before innoculating it with a culture specific to making cider. That would take care of any contamination.