Regardless of which direction you take, it’s wise to plant several different varieties of fruit trees within the same species. But they also bear abundant crops and grow to become stately specimen trees. Standard trees take up considerably more space and require ladders and/or tools for picking the highest fruit. Do you want to grow standard, dwarf trees or semidwarf trees? Dwarf trees are smaller (more on that later) and don’t produce as much fruit, but harvesting is easy, and they’re perfect for small spaces. Size Mattersįor fruit trees, another question beckons.
Lower numbers are colder, so if you live in Zone 3-where temperatures d ip down into the -30 to -40-degree-F range each winter-you shouldn’t consider planting trees that are only hardy to Zone 5. This colorful map divides the United States and Puerto Rico into 13 zones based on average annual minimum temperature.
The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the place to begin when narrowing down choices of which trees to plant. What varieties of fruits and nuts would you like to grow? Apples, pears, peaches, plums, walnuts, almonds, pecans-the possibilities go on and on and will be determined largely by personal preference and your local climate. If you’re able to commit a few acres to the project, all the better.īecause we can’t time travel 20 years into the past, there’s no better time to plants some trees than now. A few well-placed trees in your backyard can form a productive orchard. And it certainly doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be a full-scale commercial orchard. Starting from scratch might seem like an imposing task, but with a little planning and a lot of digging, you can lay the foundation for a beautiful orchard that will produce annual harvests for decades to come. But if your farm isn’t so fortunate-or if its established trees are fading with old age-perhaps it’s time to follow the proverb and plant a new orchard of your own. Many older farms are stocked with mature trees planted by farmers of the past.
No farm is complete without an orchard of fruit and nut trees. The reward might be years away, but the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll reap a bountiful harvest. To plant a tree-particularly a fruit or nut tree-is to invest in the future. There’s a lot of truth in this oft-repeated phrase, widely described as an old Chinese proverb. “ The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
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