#Pine tree apple orchard full size#
#Pine tree apple orchard full#
#Pine tree apple orchard plus#

“ The more you want to control the growth of your garden, the more effort it will take to maintain it“ OK, this all sounds great, but you’re probably wondering, what’s the catch?Īt this point I’ll mention my very own Universal Rule of Gardening, which runs as follows:

Ease in Maintaining – when the tree is not much taller than you are, tasks like spraying, pruning an netting are fairly straightforward tasks that don’t require any fancy equipment to accomplish.

Ease in Harvesting – you decide how tall the trees grow, many choose to keep them as high as their arm will reach, so you can simply walk past and pick the fruit at your leisure.

#Pine tree apple orchard plus#

Plus you get a range of different varieties to make it more interesting! This will give you an adequate supply of fruit over an extended period rather than a huge amount all at once. This will give you fruit over a longer period, rather than having one tree producing for only a shorter period.For example, instead of one apricot tree that produces mid season, you can plant three different varieties in the same space, and early, mid and late season bearing apricot tree. Extended Productive Season – since you can plant more trees closer in together, you can have several varieties of the one fruit, that produce over different times in the season.

#Pine tree apple orchard full#

Sensible Production – the smaller trees will obviously produce much less fruit than full sized trees, but they will produce enough to provide for a family’s needs without wastage.Having multiple varieties also means that you can have trees which are pollinators for each other, ensuring better pollination and consequently, better yields. Wide Variety – this system, on account of the efficient use of space, will allow you to plant a wide variety of fruit trees, so you can eat all different types of fruit from your home garden, rather than just one or two.Optimum Use of Limited Space – you can literally fit dozens of fruit trees in an average backyard, and a respectable number in the smallest of backyards!.So, how does the technique of Backyard Orchard Culture solve these problems? Simply by using small trees! Yes, seriously! There’s more to it though… The Benefits of Keeping Fruit Trees Smallīy restricting the size of the fruit trees through various methods, to a size of your choosing, and planting them closer together, you gain these benefits:

#Pine tree apple orchard full size#

Pruning a very tall fruit tree is no better, and spreading a net over a fruit tree to protect the fruit from birds is not a viable option when we’re talking about full size fruit trees. Difficulty in Maintaining – spraying a full size tree is a nightmare, and may be physically impossible in the context of a backyard scenario.Difficulty in Harvesting – collecting fruit that is sitting 15 or more feet above the ground is not an easy task, even with the right equipment, and is usually more trouble than it is worth.Very Short Productive Season – basically, it’s a glut, then a famine… All the fruit comes at once, over a few short weeks, and then there is nothing!.Not to mention the possibility of getting completely bored with eating so much of the the same thing over and over. Overproduction – a regular family will be hard pressed to use a huge amount of one type of fruit, even utilising techniques such as preserving, drying, etc.Limited Variety – if you can manage to squeeze in two full size fruit trees, you only get to eat two types of fruit, no more.You might not even be able to squeeze in a single full sized fruit tree if it is a small backyard, which is fairly common nowadays! Limited Space – a typical backyard cannot accommodate many full sized fruit trees.

When we consider these facts, we can already see the problems this entails for the urban backyard fruit grower: The trees will be 15-30 feet high and almost as wide, and will be expected to produce something like 200-300kg of fruit per tree, all at once, over a very short period. Now, if we look at a farmer’s requirements, the aim is to get the highest possible yield per tree, for a single variety of fruit, so, for this reason, they will grow many identical full sized fruit trees. That is, full sized, and spaced far enough apart to drive a tractor between them… Typically, most people grow fruit trees the same way that they are grown in large scale agriculture. This article is an introduction to the gardening technique of Backyard Orchard Culture – a system of high density planting of fruit trees which allows for a wide variety of fruit to be grown in a limited space, and harvested over a prolonged period of time.