Where does everyone get their trees?

I am all about the food forest/ permie orchard / garden with trees in it, but I have not found many places with affordable trees, fruit or otherwise. Where do you guys get yours? At anywhere from $30 to $100 and up per tree, progress is very slow.

I have pretty much stopped buying bare-root trees since they don't do well with out hot, dry summers.

I have a 10 ft. tall apple tree that grew from seed in my compost pile. It doesn't seem to need much water because it didn't get it's tap root removed like most of the trees you buy online.  I also have 8 pear trees I grew from seed four years ago. The pears all weather the hot, dry months without wilting, unlike the sad vintage apple trees I bought from Stark 4 years ago. Those have only grown 1-4 inches in that time and two look like they'll be dead in a year or so.

You can get a variety of tree seeds from Sheffields or Trueseeds. There are other places as well but Sheffields has a good assortment. I also get a lot of my seeds from local fruit since they will likely do better than a variety that was grown somewhere else.  There are several threads about growing food from groceries that might be of interest.

If you are trying to establish an orchard then I would recommend looking into grafting. My partner and I attended an apple grafting workshop back in February where we grafted 2 varieties each, under the eye of the tutor.

We also took home the excess, pruned pieces of root stock and have successfully planted those - so we can graft more this coming winter. We hope to grow out one tree from each root stock variety so we will have a supply going forwards.

Once you can graft fruit trees (apples, pears and Prunus are all graftable) then you can beg, borrow or steal scions (grafting stock) from trees nearby. Most people are happy to give some away, especially if they have done some winter pruning.

Each tree will take a few extra years to reach maturity but you'll benefit in having access to cultivars not available in the shops: some of our varieties have literally never been sold.

You'll also benefit in that you can select grafting stock from trees near your land, already adapted to your climate.

It's either you pay someone for saving the time of your life (not as labor, but as waiting time) and buy trees from a good nursery or you plant from seeds, graft, etc. and wait long for results.
I mostly buy from nurseries, but also grow from seeds (almonds, citrus). I'm also going to do some grafting next year.
A lot of mainstream nurseries sell their trees at ridiculously high prices. I always try to stay within $30-50 range and not more. Also, one nursery can sell a pencil size stick for $50 and another a 3/4" caliper trunk for the same price. It makes a huge difference.

If I could only graft onto pine and fir trees I'd be set. Or onto serviceberries. But that's one of those impossible dreams I suspect.

Burnt Ridge Nursery is my go to. Great variety, and many options for smaller, younger trees and shrubs that are much easier to plant, less traumatized by transplanting than larger ones, and much less expensive. They also have root stock for under 5$ per tree in many cases. Its often best to go with a local nursery or one in a similar climate, so it will help get better answers if a general location is in your signature or profile.

I have spent quite a lot of money in Burnt Ridge and I'm very satisfied. They are located in the foothills of Cascade Mountains and they offer a lot of cultivars resistant to late frosts and tougher growing conditions - like mine. They have good selection of apples on standard rootstock, apple scion wood. Also good selection of sour cherries, chestnuts. They have Pacific Northwest natives and a lot of less popular trees that I also purchased.

Fedco Seeds is the king for standard rootstock apple selection. I got apples and pears from them. A lot of old European cultivars.

I have also used Trees Of Antiquity. They sell good caliper trees. I buy plums from them, but going to get other species too.

Many of the states conservation agencies sell native fruit trees at a big discount.  Must order in quantities of 10 or 25.  Plant them in the ground wait until you get at least 2 foot of growth and graft the next spring.  Cliff England at nuttrees.net has an extensive collection of scion wood.  look for his 39 page list of trees that he sells scion.  He no longer ships trees.

If you are on a city lot and all you can fit in is 30-60 trees just pay the nursery their $1000 every year for two year for a total of $2,000 to get things looking nice. If you however have 5+ acres and you needs 1000 trees, then yeah paying $50,000 is a no go. Buy your rootstock for $2 each and your scion for $2 each and now you are only paying $4 per tree once you graft them yourself. You can even put two plants in each hole and kill the weaker of the two.

You can also pay the $30 to the nursery to buy one plant and then take cuttings and make your own scion wood for grafting or just root it and plant it as is.

Go to the forest/arboretum/farm/friends and make cutting and then root them, then plant them or you can use the cuttings as scion wood or even root stock.

The goverment usually have a forestry department and you can buy seedlings of native trees for $2 or so.

Don't be afraid of just planting from seed, you can always cull the plants that don't taste super yummy, or you can graft them. You can also use the less than perfect fruit to make jam/jelly/juice/wine/cake or even dehydrate and make snacks, additions to salads or puree and dehydrate and make fruit roolup. Really I find that if I am just eating a handful of fruits at a time while I am out in the garden I don't mind the sour ones. I actually prefer eating my gooseberry in June when they are still green and extra sour like a lime.

$1,000 per year is about $20/week. Folks who drink/smoke/coffee/lottery/boating/etc,  spend alot more than that per week/month/year. Maybe you will just have to bring leftover to work for lunch vs eating out to save some money for your new "hobby".

Buying trees from your State Nursery/Forest is always a good approach.

Since I have no idea what part of the world you are in here is a Directory of these in the US and Canada:

https://rngr.net/resources/directory

The best reason for using a resource like this is the trees are grown in your state and are adapted to your state if you are in the US and Canada.

Thanks everyone. I forgot to say, we are on 40 acres in southwestern Michigan.

Can you share with us, what your vision is for the 40acres.

Example
0.5acre homesite (600ft perimeter with 50 expensive trees on 10ft centers, house, pumphouse, barn? solar panel carport, outdoor living/kitchen/pool, chicken coop, kitchen-garden)
1acre pond
2acre market-garden
2acre orchard ( 15ft wide row of fruit/nut/legume trees, followed by 30ft spacing with dutch white clover/cover-crop, 113trees per acres or 226 total)
2acre firewoodlot (Hybrid Poplar, 15ft center, 8 "rotational paddock" with one harvested per year, 225 trees peracre or 450 total)
32acres silvo-pasture (30ft wide row of fruit/nut/legume trees, followed by 100ft of pasture spacing between them, aka 14trees per acres or 448 total)

Legume(adler) and Hybrid Poplar can be bought for $2 each
Native Fruits can be bought at $2 each
Native Nuts can be bought for $2 each
Buy seeds and cutting (add rooting hormone or graft) for $2 each create a nursery and then transplant when ready.

Sure, I don't know how detailed I can be, but I'll give you the broad overview. We are rehabbing a farm that has been neglected for a while. There's maybe a dozen or two apple and pear trees, 4 years old or so. Looking to expand the orchard and do plantings in between, nitrogen fixers, berry bushes and so on.

We have some Woodlands that could use some TLC. We'd like to grow mushrooms out of there and maybe do a little Forest pasture ( I forget what that's called.,) We have a few goats, possibly looking to get a family cow or two. We are redesigning the chicken coop now, because of the high Predator pressure here. We'd like a duck pond, to expand the gardens, we're still growing so it's all a process. Haven't solidified the entire plan yet.

I've taken some permaculture classes, and they have helped, but I'm feeling kind of stumped. Especially when it comes to project goals versus budget and earthworks. It's not economical for us to have a large irrigation system, especially with all of the sudden hard freezes we can get, so I'm looking to figure out something to wear most of the large plantings can access their own water.. I appreciate all your input, thank you.

I can only speak to my own experience: Have had bad luck with all Major National Nurseries (ex. Stark Bros). Have had very good experiences with Cummins Nursery (western NY - very relevant for MI) and FedCo (Maine - also relevant for MI) for fruit trees. For forest plantings I use Musser Forests (Indiana, PA) because it is rather local and cheap, you would have to look to see if they are allowed to ship you the species you want interstate.

If you are in Michigan, please try Morse Nursery - I was getting some chestnuts from them.
I was also using Shrubs & Trees Depot in Georgia and Honeyberry USA in Minnesota for currants, gooseberries, sour cherries.
I would not worry about any irrigation. I have irrigation myself, but I'm in the region that sometimes gets only 250 mm of rain per year and for 6 months you get no rain, blazing sun and drying winds. For states with so much (sometimes oppressive) humidity like Iowa, Illinois or especially Michigan I consider irrigation to be some blasphemy and waste of resources. There are hundreds of species that will grow happily without any special help there.

One of the main selling points for Cummins Nursery in NY and really why I began buying from them - the father of the family was one of the researchers that developed the G series rootstocks at Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. The family legacy for grafting and caring for fruit trees runs deep, and from an academic angle rather than just a business angle. I like that kind of peace of mind to reassure me that they kinda do know what they're doing.

A Hidalgo wrote:Thanks everyone. I forgot to say, we are on 40 acres in southwestern Michigan.

You can get some fruit from your state nursery. I believe in Michigan it's a called a "conservation district" or something else along those lines. Alternatively, Missouri's state nursery (https://mdc.mo.gov/trees-plants/tree-seedlings/order-seedlings) allows out of state sales. I'm in northwest Indiana and bought from this year since Indiana's state nursery was out of the trees I was looking for. Missouri's nursery runs about $0.75 a tree, while other states are higher and some are lower.

For grafted fruited trees, I like Adams County Nursery (https://acnursery.com/), but to order from them you really need to put in an order of 25 trees (or even better 100) since there are massive price breaks at those levels (e.g., 5 trees is ~$35 a tree, 25 trees is ~$20 a tree, and 100 trees is ~$12 a tree).

For ungrafted fruit trees, I like Copenhaven Farms (https://www.copenhavenfarms.com/) and their trees tend to be around $1.50 each.

S Bengi wrote:Can you share with us, what your vision is for the 40acres.

Example
0.5acre homesite (600ft perimeter with 50 expensive trees on 10ft centers, house, pumphouse, barn? solar panel carport, outdoor living/kitchen/pool, chicken coop, kitchen-garden)
1acre pond
2acre market-garden
2acre orchard ( 15ft wide row of fruit/nut/legume trees, followed by 30ft spacing with dutch white clover/cover-crop, 113trees per acres or 226 total)
2acre firewoodlot (Hybrid Poplar, 15ft center, 8 "rotational paddock" with one harvested per year, 225trees per acre or 450 total)
32acres silvo-pasture (30ft wide row of fruit/nut/legume trees, followed by 100ft of pasture spacing between them, aka 14trees per acres or 448 total)

Given my tree count above of around 1,200,  at $4 each that is around $5,000. This expense sounds very doable esp if you do it over a 4year period (0.5 homesite area 1st, then 2acre orchard, then 34acres silvo-pasture, then 2ace firewoodlot)

Lets zero in on the 2acre orchard with 226 "trees" at $4 each thats about $1,000/
20% N-fixer aka 45trees (Alder, etc)
20% Nut (Chestnut, Hazelnut, Almond, Walnut-Pecan)
20% European Fruits (apple-pear, plum-peach-cherry-etc)
20% Natives (grapes, maypop, strawberry, raspberry/blackberry, blueberry, gooseberry, currants, elderberry, beachplum, sandcherry, pawpaw, persimmons)
20% Asian-Exotics (artic/hardy kiwi, akebia, dwarf mulberry, fig, jujube, goumi, seaberry, etc)

I include the vines and berries in the row as part of 226 plants. vs having them as part of the something growing in the 30ft spacing between the rows of fruiting plants. I like filling that space with support species that such as dutch clover - scotch broom, mint - lavendar, chives - onion, lovage - carrot, etc. These I buy as seeds and just broadcast sow or start inside the house/greenhouse and transplant. For the fruiting vines in the orchard row, you can either build an arbor for them or just plant a living arbour (n-fixer) for it to grow on. You might also say that a 6ft raspberry/blackberry plant is't the same as a 15ft hazelnut tree so why have they both been given the same 15ft by 15ft spacing. The raspberry will create suckers, or self-seed or you will create cutting and fill in the space, also the height difference will increase airflow and thus less pest sickness. I don't see it as a lost.

I also think that it might be a good idea to focus on just one thing at a time due to the limited resources that we have (money, time, energy, etc). Personally I would find starting up a CSA market-garden and a pasture in the same year to be overwhelming.

Let me know if you find this helpful? Also how do you feel about doing your own grafting so that get your trees for just $4 each. What is your yearly budget to transform the homestead and for how many years would you invest at those levels?

Thanks, I have a lot to look into. I have looked at grafting, haven't done it yet. For the most part I don't worry about irrigation, but our weather has been changing. We've had several dry summers, with this the driest yet. We went 6 weeks without a drop of rain, highly unusual for us. I will look into all these things
My budget? Maybe $1200/ year. Need to get a real job so I can support my plant habit.
. I appreciate you all. 😊

I've had some good luck with Hartmann's Nursery for smaller stuff-- a few bucks a plant can't be beat.  Hidden Springs sent me some great plants and the prices were some of the lowest around.  All plants lived!