Starting An Orchard In Your Backyard

Learn how to avoid common mistakes in starting an orchard in your backyard.

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Starting an Orchard

Frost on the ground and the smell of wood-burning from a chimney go hand in hand with apple picking, pies, hot toddies, and perhaps a cider or two.  Fall is not just the time when you can enjoy the bounty of the land and the harvests that have been gathered, but also a time to plan. 

The first thing to do about starting an orchard in your yard is to think and plan for it!  When it comes to an orchard and fruit growing, resisting the urge to hastily plant in trees will reward you repeatedly in the long run.  Orchards are very much a slow start is better than a poor start.

The Right Fruit

It is so much better to work with your climate and try to grow plants that already thrive there.  Fruit is no exception.  There is nothing more expensive and frustrating than trying to grow fruit trees of something that won’t work in your climate.  Peaches grew brilliantly for me in Utah.  We had laundry baskets full of softball-sized sweet peaches.  I’m not going to try growing them here in Maine unless I can get them in a south-facing spot in the yard next to a wall or something that will soak up the heat from the sun and radiate the warmth throughout the night.  Peaches are definitely a warm climate crop.  Like almonds or pecans.  It’s not worth the time or money for me to try to grow in a short season in Maine.  However, looking around the local area, walnuts, butternuts, chestnuts, apples, and pears grow abundantly.

I’ll be honest, I’m now on the hunt for great cider apple trees and a Bramley apple tree.  I’ve not had a proper apple pie in years and my granny always made hers with Bramley apples so there’s some definite nostalgia driving that purchase decision!  The same goes with some of the favorite old apple varieties of England like Cox’s Orange Pippins, russets, Lord Lambourne, Discovery and of course the Ashmead’s Kernal. 

A perfect pear ripened on the tree is pretty hard to beat in my book.  I grew up with a wonderful Conference pear tree in the back yard and loved to eat pears and more exploration into nurseries and orchards is needed to find local or Northeast varieties of pears that can thrive in my yard.

Do some research into the fruits that grow well in your area and start with making a list of those and narrowing down to varieties you want to grow based on space available and pollination.  We’re going to dig into pollination in next week’s episode.

Rootstock What?

The rootstock is what determines the size of your tree when it is grown.  You need to select trees on the right rootstock for the space you have.  The tree variety is grafted onto different rootstocks such as dwarf, semi-dwarfing, or standard.

A dwarf rootstock has a tree that will mature to 8 to 10 feet tall.  And 8 to 10 ft wide.  These are perfect for urban gardens and smaller spaces.  This size usually sells out fast or has limited varieties available.

Semi-dwarfing or semi-rigorous rootstocks have more varieties to choose from than dwarf rootstocks but they will grow trees much bigger.  Semi dwarfing trees will grow 12 to 15 ft wide and 12 to 15 ft tall.

Standard trees have the most variety availability and grow to 18 ft or more in height and canopy width.  Sometimes they are the only rootstock available, this is most often seen for nut trees.  Standard peaches and nectarines tend to be 12 to 15 ft tall and 12 to 15 ft wide.  Trees that are on a standard rootstock may not even mention the rootstock in the catalog.  This is common for hazel or filbert, other nuts like walnut, chestnuts, as well as fruits like pawpaw and persimmon.

The Right Site

When it comes to fruit growing, most berries and fruit trees will grow better with lots of sunshine.  Often bigger and sweeter fruits happen when your plants are growing in full sun.  Of course there are always exceptions like the shade-loving thimbleberry of the Pacific Northwest comes to mind!  The area where you place your fruit trees should be away from a frost pocket.  That’s an area where the frost, snow, and cold air all lingers.  For me, that’s right out the back door.  My house is on the top of a hill and faces south.  The land slopes down to the north.  Our frost pocket is the shadow cast by the house in winter.  The shadow stretches quite far into the yard, luckily it doesn’t reach too far past the septic tank and we don’t want edibles growing around the sewage system anyway.

The ideal place for positioning an orchard is higher up than the rest of the yard on a gentle slope.  Check out old orchards in your area if you can, and more often than not, these old orchards that have been producing fruit for more than 50 years are on a gentle slope and high up.  Now being high doesn’t mean you need to be on a mountain top to grow an orchard, your fruit trees should be on the higher place in your yard.  The slope means that when frost or rain comes, the cold air and the water move away from more quickly into the lower areas of the land.  Cold weather can kill your blossoms and ruin a harvest for the year.  It wasn’t uncommon in early spring when the buds were beginning to appear on our fruit trees in Utah be cover the trees with a frost blanket if the temperatures were going to be dipping as the blossoms were going to be opening.

If you have flat land with no slope don’t despair, you really can grow fruit trees.  Patio varieties are available that grow on dwarfing rootstocks that are happy to grow in a container.  There are also trained fruit trees available that are in fans, tiers, low to ground step-overs and other espaliered and trained shapes to help you make use of a wall, fence, or even strong wire and t-posts.

Learn More

Dig in and learn more about growing fruit in a home garden in these related posts:

Designing a Permaculture Orchard: How to Grow More Food In Your Backyard

How to Plant a Fruit Tree Guild

40 Brilliant Berries To Grow In Your Garden

What do you want in your orchard? Let me know over in the Facebook group 

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