If planting an orchard again, what would you do differently?

Hi All,

For those who have actual experience planting and growing at least a half acre or larger of orchards or some variation of guilds/forest gardens, what would you differently if you were to start from scratch now?

What kind of density would you choose for the fruit trees and why?

How would this density lead your choice of seedling or rootstock decisions?

Pruning or training strategy?

Tree harvest plan?

I've read a ton of posts and really appreciate everyone's input.  It would be very much appreciated to keep this to actual experience after having done it at this scale.  Theory, what we've heard or what we plan to do is another great discussion, but it seems that there's no substitute to actual experience.

Thank you in advance for all your years of hard work, learning and sharing your lessons.

Steve

Life is good

I would use full size trees.

I would only do above ground drip irrigation only.  Once established trees do not need constant watering. Only during droughts and a large pile of wood chips helps there.

John F Dean wrote:I would use full size trees.

Thanks John.  Do you have experience with what density you'd do with full sized trees or keep it per normal recommendations?

Any experience pruning/training for easier harvest or are you fine using ladders?

Thanks

s

I would have located one orchard closer to the house, and more pear trees, fewer apples and made sure the black walnuts were cut down anywhere near the orchard.   It also needs to be further from the forest.  Would have been nice next to the regular garden so one fence could surround it all to keep deer out.  As it is, there were several patches of fruit trees, scattered, and garden area in two other distant places.   Very inconvenient for efficiency in fencing and maintaining.  It was that way when I bought the farm over 20 years ago.  

Hi Steven,

The trees that I expect to be drought resistant to some extent I plant only o standard rootstock. Originally I had them on 10x10 m grid, but since they are irrigated (2 emitters per tree, each 40 l/h) I decided to plant trees that will never be drought resistant on my land - plums, sour cherries, peaches, quinces and I planted them on 5x5 m grid. Then I added inter-rows and this way I have standard trees on 7.07 m grid (SQRT(2)*5). Between the standard trees I'm going to plant grapes (one grape per 10 m space in a row).
I keep the rule that anything large: apples, pears, mulberries, pistachios, walnuts, chestnuts, persimmons on American persimmon rootstock, I put on larger spaced grid and the rest on 5x5 m.

John F Dean wrote:I would use full size trees.

Can you tell us why? Is there a difference in the quality of the fruit or the health and hardiness of the trees?

I would use dwarving root stock, plant rows 12' on center, 4' spacing in the row.  A change of equipment would change row spacing.

I don't ever want to climb a tree or a ladder for pruning or harvest.

I would trim/prune the trees better.

Many years ago I planted a small orchard with the idea of growing fruit within 2-5 years.  I went so far as to lay down dedicated drip irrigation lines--hundreds of feet of them--by hand-digging little trenches.  Unfortunately, that overlapped a time in my life where I had significant health challenges--intractable insomnia--and was extremely busy right at the time that I could not sleep.  Eventually the trees that survived grew to the point that they were hard to mow around and bore little fruit.  I retire in a few years.  I may try again then.

Eric

I would add that I would mulch the heck underneath them and break out my Wine Caps to enhance fertility.

If I had a do-over regarding the orchard, I would have planted it 50 years earlier, and 40 years earlier, and 15 years earlier, etc... It's easy to chop out excess trees. It's really hard to get a mature tree today.

Annie Collins wrote:Can you tell us why? Is there a difference in the quality of the fruit or the health and hardiness of the trees?

1. Full size trees produce higher quality fruit - there a was some article from UK about this topic.
2. Full size trees are better anchored and there may have better resistance to drought.
3. A lot of dwarfing rootstocks may be hybrids with short life span.
4. Being large they will provide wind break and shade to establish food forest.
5. Last but not least - large fruit trees look great, true heritage trees, not trellised, disposable bushes for quick income.

Of course, dwarfing rootstocks may have better resistance to some diseases, are easier to pick, take less space, but I do care more about the five points above.

I started up a 5-acre orchard in 2010, moved away in 2016, and then in February of 2023 started on an 11-acre orchard.

Here are a few things I'm doing differently:

1) Straight rows of trees rather than the hexagon pattern I used with the first one.

2) No apples. They didn't sell well and were a hassle to maintain.

3) Invest in machinery early. Tending an orchard with a scythe seems a lot nicer on Instagram that it actually is.

4) Don't bother getting a restricted use pesticide license. I won't go into details since this is Permies after all, but let's just say it's rather scary the type of stuff you can get off eBay without needing a license.

5) The best defense against rabbits is a good offense. Trap early, trap often.

6) Take full advantage of your state nursery, it's the cheapest source of trees around

My experience has  been that full sized trees are healthier and produce more fruit.  Within reasonable limits, more space is better than less space. The down side is full sized trees take a little longer to grow and produce.  Looking back 25 years at my present location, it is a moot point.

Plant very densely from seed and thin as they grow. Apples have done very well so far 3yrs in on even my poorest soil compared to transplanted seedlings and grafted semi-dwarfs on somewhat better (but still started poor and rocky) soil. I had access to a lot of apple mash from cider pressing events I was helping with, and friends’ leftover cider mash. I did not have access to similar seedstock for other fruits and nuts. So I purchased mostly young rootstock and a few grafted semidwarfs of several temperate fruit tree species. I also made a seedling nursery bed for nut trees like chestnut and hazelnut. These thrived in the bed but have struggled much more when transplanted into challenging soil than seeds started in their forever place. Of course the challenge then is protecting them much more during their establishment. I want an actual forest though with larger, longer lived trees that thrive with less management, so it seems seeds are the way I will go for the most part as much as I can. I will use the transplanted genetics that are thriving for seedstock.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:It's easy to chop out excess trees. It's really hard to get a mature tree today.

This keeps repeating in my head now. It is ringing a bell, maybe giving me an epiphany. I've been going back and forth about attempting a mass planting from seed for science but was worrying about spacing. This is the push to do it and then tend after. Thanks :)

Eric Hanson wrote:I would add that I would mulch the heck underneath them and break out my Wine Caps to enhance fertility.

I was trying to think how an orchard could easily add nutrients like compost tea.

Wine cap mushrooms (or any kind of mushrooms) would make a great addition and a second crop.

Anne, everyone,

A while ago I saw a video that described exactly what you are thinking about.  The video involved incorporating wood chips among other ammendments.

Basically the author of that video made a ring around each tree.  The ring was divided into thirds.  The first part was one third of a ring that consisted of dense wood chips.  I would go ahead and inoculate those wood chips with Wine Caps.  The second third was composed of compost.  The last part was a leguminous cover crop such as a clover.

Each year the partial rings were shifted over.  The thinking was that using this approach enhanced soil by adding in a steady combination of fungi from the wood chips, numerous bacterial additions from the compost, and finally nitrogen and root penetration from the legumes.  This is all just a bit more complicated than just putting down a ring of wood chips, but the trees looked extremely healthy.  If I get the time and gumption when I retire, I might try this approach.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:
Basically the author of that video made a ring around each tree.  The ring was divided into thirds.  
Eric

So you mean rings like Saturn's rings? Or a circle divided into 1/3s?

It was three 1/3 ring segments placed near the dripline.

John Wolfram wrote:I started up a 5-acre orchard in 2010, moved away in 2016, and then in February of 2023 started on an 11-acre orchard.

Here are a few things I'm doing differently:

1) Straight rows of trees rather than the hexagon pattern I used with the first one.

2) No apples. They didn't sell well and were a hassle to maintain.

3) Invest in machinery early. Tending an orchard with a scythe seems a lot nicer on Instagram that it actually is.

4) Don't bother getting a restricted use pesticide license. I won't go into details since this is Permies after all, but let's just say it's rather scary the type of stuff you can get off eBay without needing a license.

5) The best defense against rabbits is a good offense. Trap early, trap often.

6) Take full advantage of your state nursery, it's the cheapest source of trees around

Great info, thanks.  When you say hexagon, do you mean offset a bit in alternating rows, kind of like this?
x  x  x  x  x
 x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x

If so, curious why?

What machinery will make your life much easier for better care of orchard and better quality of life?
Assume tractor with mower is number one on your list.

Thanks,
Steve

Steve Rea wrote:Great info, thanks.  When you say hexagon, do you mean offset a bit in alternating rows, kind of like this?
x  x  x  x  x
 x  x  x  x  x
x  x  x  x  x
If so, curious why?

I used the "Hexagonal/equilateral triangle" shown on page 17 of this PDF https://ucanr.edu/sites/fruitreport/files/133022.pdf The hexagon pattern allows for higher density plantings. However, it is a pain to measure out, and fixes the row width to the tree spacing.

Steve Rea wrote:What machinery will make your life much easier for better care of orchard and better quality of life?
Assume tractor with mower is number one on your list.Thanks,Steve

For the beginning years of the first orchard I was crazy and mainly used a shovel and hand saws. These have been replaced with an auger and chain saw. My brush hog has also been getting a lot of use this past year, but I assume that once things get more under control I'll end up switching to something like a zero turn mower.

I'd buy the "Permaculture Orchard" Movie prior to planting my orchard:
https://www.permacultureorchard.com

it is an instructional video on how to plant an permaculture orchard, very instructive.

In addition, I would graft more myself. Last year, I grafted 30 apple trees from $6 root stocks and $6 scion wood in early spring, then I planted them immediately. 28 of them took. So now I have 15 apple varieties and 2 root stock plants I can take cuttings from and make new root stocks and scion wood from, an infinite amount of future new apple trees. Note that last year was the first year I ever grafted, so even rookies can get good result with grafting.

Also, start with a whole bunch of different fruit trees to see which one is better adapted to your soil/climate. For instance, I now know peach trees are the best growing trees on my property, having a diameter the size of a small giraffe's neck (I know you Americans like this type of comparisons instead of centimeters ;) ) while all my other fruit trees are doing ok, buttery weak in comparison.

M

Things I would have done differently:
- plant more native wildflowers right at the start
- blackout tarp each tree row for 1 year prior to planting (to knock back the quack grass)
- plant nitrogen fixing perennials between every tree
- establish stool beds of currants and haskaps several years in advance so that I could have 1000s available to plant under the trees
- cut the grass adjacent to the tree rows and mulch the tree rows with it, 2x per year in mid-late june and september.
- plant more sacrificial trees down each row to provide partial shade for easier establishing forest understory species
- plant a lot of the trees in-situ using seeds, three seeds per hole

Density:
- I've been planting at syntropic agroforesty or Skobkowiak permaculture orchard type density, where trees/shrubs of the different strata can occupy the same square meter of a tree row, like the layers of a food forest. Planning for succession, starting with way more trees and plants than seems reasonable or necessary, thinning them out and/or pruning every year to manage the light penetration. An example would be walnut over apricot over alder over currants, all planted within the same 3 to 5 feet of a row. Pretty much each row in my orchard is different, but every row is overly dense with the idea being that redundant plants will get pruned out or shaded out. I have a few rows of walnuts with apples planted as timber trees in between, which I'm excited to see the conflict play out over the coming years, at the end of which I'll either have some juglone tolerant apples or some logs of woodworking grade apple wood for sale.

Rootstock:
- 99% are seedlings, though I wouldn't really call them "standards" because seedlings can be pretty variable as far as vigor goes.

Tree harvest plan:
- It varies by row and crop type. A lot of hand picking, which includes some coppice for pole wood and green shoots for tree hay. I'm not really there yet, but I'd like to build a mechanical tree shaker and net system like they use for harvesting oranges. Depending on how certain crops turn out, I might be open to doing a u-pick. I have some friends who have a cider business, and so pretty much all the apples were already spoken for before they ever got planted.

Echoing some of what Ben and Abe said, the number one thing I wish I would have done differently is more planting seed directly into its permanent location. For nuts, which is my big focus, I would germinate the nuts in a controlled environment over the winter and then as soon as those are germinated, plant them out. Planting nuts out over the winter would result in almost total loss to the critters. If you want grafted varieties, I would topwork onto roots grow in place.

Much of what you ask varies based on your location/climate. Tree size and spacing very much so. If you are in a cold windy environment full sized trees have a definite advantage. In more southern and wetter locales dwarf trees can do well, and do bear fruit earlier. Same with spacing, in dry and/or poor soil areas further apart does help. The advise about keeping to straight lines is good, since at 1A or more you will likely be using power equipment at least some of the time.

If I had it to do over gain, I would have put my trees in better/straighter rows, and grafted more of my trees myself. Grafting is a good skill to pick up if you have an orchard, and your own grafted fruit trees will cost but a fraction of what commercial nurseries will charge you.

Planning for irrigation (if you'll be needing that) is a good thing to do from the start. It can influence the layout of your rows, etc.

Have fun with your orchard.

Well, Steve, I can think of a few. The first would be to not trying to plant the whole thing at once, or even a large number. I started with small trees, so there  would be less trauma in the transplants [plus my finances made that more palatable] but young trees require more in the way of watering and pruning and adding food. Some suffered and died of neglect. My fault, I know, but in the winter, we often write checks that our ambition cannot cash.
Depending on $$$ and ambition, plant a guild around each tree at the same time, instead of planting a monocrop of main trees.
My soil isn't very rich but very sandy and since I will have some weeds growing close to the tree, it makes more sense to choose my weeds next to the tree[s] like some low growing kind of legume, bush or forbes, Comfrey is an excellent plant as it makes compost for the tree when it disappears in the fall. [I only have 3 trees like that, and they do seem to grow better]. I am in the process of adding more this year.
For protection, [that depends on your deer pressure, of course], I first started planting my trees 20 feet apart and giving each of them its own wire cage. To save money on the wire protection, I would have been better off planting like 5 trees or more with their companions and install one fence for the whole lot.
One thing I did well was to keep the row formation: there is just no substitute for being able to drive through easily with the equipment, truck, 4 wheeler or mower: I placed a tree too close to a fence and had to destroy it once it started really growing. [It wasn't a good fruiting tree, so not a big loss, but what if it had been one of my chestnuts or a prized apple tree?]
If you are going to have some chickens, it is a great idea to keep them fenced in the orchard, although if you mix berries amongst your trees,... Well, it won't be a complete loss: the chickens will eat your gooseberries and you may have plumper chickens, Ha!
I just had not planned it that way [It was a volunteer gooseberry, so no big loss. I stole a tip from it and planted in directly in the dirt, well  out of their reach. Good thing I did too: they totally stripped that gooseberry. It died.
A big advantage of chickens is that they keep your trees free of bugs, by and large. They also scratch and keep it almost weed free all around the tree. That may be good or bad. I have not had a single tree die inside their run. Depending on the density of trees relative to the chicken, the chickens will add a lot of manure and that worked really well. The trees in the other orchard don't have chickens and I have to manure them manually, with what I collect from under the chickens, on their poop shelf.
We have fairly abundant rain [35-60"/year], but still with young plants, you have to plan for the watering. I lost some because, again, I wasn't prepared for a drought.
Here you go, warts and all, that's what happened with my orchards. Realize that your situation must influence your choices too.
Good luck to you!

Edward Finch wrote:Echoing some of what Ben and Abe said, the number one thing I wish I would have done differently is more planting seed directly into its permanent location. For nuts, which is my big focus, I would germinate the nuts in a controlled environment over the winter and then as soon as those are germinated, plant them out. Planting nuts out over the winter would result in almost total loss to the critters. If you want grafted varieties, I would topwork onto roots grow in place.

Especially for nuts, I agree with you, Edward: Nuts grow a vigorous tap root very early. Any damage to that taproot will kill the nut tree.
I tried to plant small nut trees [bare root, from a reputable nursery]. They died. Then tiny potted nut trees. They  were more expensive but I thought: If I get only 2 or 3, I'll still be ahead. Well, they amounted to nothing and they eventually died as well.
Last year, around Christmas, I bought chestnuts. [They are in season at that time]. I rolled them in damp peat moss and put them in the crisper, in the fridge. In March, I checked on them and saw that quite a few had burst their outer leathery 'shell'.
I got a plastic container and inside of it, I cut sections of 2" PVC pipe, about 12" each,  then filled them almost to the top with seed starting and garden soil, placed the germinated nut carefully on top, tiny root looking down and finished adding soil. The nut was buried not even 1". I watered [carefully since my plastic container didn't have holes at the bottom]. I broke one or two placing them in the 2" PVC  or pushing them out during transplant pipe, but all those that I didn't break are now planted in the orchard or behind the garden  and I will see if they survive our winters [my zone is 4b so it is hard to know].
I have at least 25 plants that are making it so far [out of 30 nuts]. The reason for the 12" PVC pipe was to prevent the seedling roots from tangling up. That worked perfectly and I just might try again, perhaps with the hardiest pecans or English walnuts or filberts I can find. I should add that at the time of transplant, *all* of the tap roots had outgrown the pipe & some were starting to curl. If you are in zone 5 or warmer, using this method, you should have no trouble growing your own chestnut trees. They will be full size, so give them ample room! they spread about 40 ft in their normal habitat and grow about 40 ft. high as well.
I do not know if they are Chinese chestnuts but I suppose they are since those grow best in the US.
Since they would be at the limit of their range, it is entirely possible that I'm doing all this for naught, but at least, I will know. So far, success! I think that filberts have to be cracked, though. I'll see.

Steve Sherman wrote:If I had it to do over gain, I would have put my trees in better/straighter rows, and grafted more of my trees myself. Grafting is a good skill to pick up if you have an orchard, and your own grafted fruit trees will cost but a fraction of what commercial nurseries will charge you.

On my second orchard, I'm also grafting much more than buying from a nursery, but I think it was a good thing that I mostly bought the first time around. The way I see it, when I get a grafted bare-root tree from nursery I'm basically buying two years of time. Not only did the trees start producing sooner, but I also got to make "older tree" mistakes sooner so I gained experience faster.

I've planted more than a half-dozen orchards spanning your size range.  I like best the smaller denser mixed Subsistence Hedge & Edible Plantscape versions creating green wall & ceiling + varied understorey, but even in the more regular-grid type I think close alternating semi-dwarf trees, shrubs, vines are better.  Most are out west where irrigation leads layout; back east I'm planting & proving rootstock & seed before grafting.  Deer & rodents also require prior arrangements.