HOW TO GROW FRUITS IN YOUR GARDEN

TIPS ON HOW TO GROW FRUITS IN YOUR GARDEN

WHAT YOU NEED TO PUT INTO CONSIDERATION

Fruit trees are somewhat fussy about where they're planted. If you were planting a large commercial orchard, site selection would be critical. But for a small home orchard, your best bet is to take a handful of variables into account, select the most promising site on your property, and then plant a couple of trees and give it a try.

• Soil: Fruit trees don't like wet feet, so well-drained, loamy soil is a must. They should be located where there is good air circulation so their leaves will dry quickly, since moisture helps spread disease.

• Frost: Flower buds can be easily killed by late spring frosts, so avoid siting your orchard in a frost pocket. Cold air flows downhill, making flowering fruit trees located at the bottom of a slope especially vulnerable to frost. Mid-slope is the best location, because winds are most severe at the top.

• Slope direction: Which direction the slope should face is not always clear. Southern and southwestern slopes can be hot and dry, and can cause trees to break dormancy too early, which makes them susceptible to damage from late frosts. Yet a southern slope can work well if it is protected from the prevailing winds by a windbreak on any side except the downslope one (which would block air circulation). A northerly slope may not provide enough solar exposure to evaporate moisture and promote good fruiting. In humid regions, easterly slopes can speed drying of the morning dew.

• Sun: Fruit trees need a lot of sun to grow healthy and be productive. If they are shaded by other trees or a building they will be less fruitful and more prone to insects and -disease.

PLANTS SELECTION

It pays to seek out trees and shrubs that have some natural resistance to disease. In apples and pears the common diseases include scab and fire blight. With other fruits, such as raspberries, make sure you buy from a nursery that propagates from virus-free plants. Selecting disease-resistant plants doesn't mean that you will never experience any disease problems, but it greatly improves your chances for success.

Another crucial issue is hardiness. To make sure that the plants you purchase won't be damaged over the winter, check hardiness information before you buy. Also consider bloom time. Many fruits flower very early in the spring. If your area is prone to late frosts, such early bloomers may survive, but they will never truly thrive or reliably set fruit. To grow these plants in a marginal area, you’ll have to plant them in an especially favorable and protected site.

Buying Plants: Locally or by Mail?

Local nurseries usually sell trees in containers or with the root mass wrapped in burlap. Mail-order nurseries usually sell trees as "bareroot stock," which means that they are shipped to you in a dormant state with their roots packed in damp wood shavings.

The choice of where to buy is up to you: mail-order nurseries tend to offer more varieties than garden centers, so if you are looking for a particular cultivar or want a broad selection you should start with them. However, if you're unsure about which variety to buy, a local nursery will carry plants that will thrive in your growing area.

If you buy bareroot plants by mail, you will need to plant them in early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked, while the plants are still dormant and the water table is high. This spring planting gives the young plants a full growing season to get established before the onset of freezing weather in the fall. Trees and shrubs sold in containers by local nurseries are more forgiving in terms of planting time; they can be successfully transplanted in most areas either in the spring or early fall.

Most fruit trees will be sold as grafted stock. This means that the tree consists of at least two sections. The top part is called the scion, and is a branch cutting that has been taken from the variety of fruit you want to grow. The bottom part is the rootstock, and it is usually selected either for hardiness or the ultimate height and size of the tree. Standard rootstocks result in trees of full size (to 15 feet or more). Dwarf rootstocks limit the size of mature trees to 6 to 8 feet or so. Semi-dwarfing rootstocks produce mature trees somewhere in between the two extremes.

Dwarf fruit trees result in space-efficient plants that begin bearing fruit quickly, usually two to three years after planting. There are, however, a few disadvantages to growing dwarf trees. They have a shorter life expectancy than standard-sized trees—about 10 to 20 years on average. Because of their limited root systems, dwarf trees don't compete well with grasses and other plants, so you'll have to keep the area around them weeded and well mulched. Also, most true dwarfs are not suitable for regions in Zone 4 and colder. But for gardeners concerned with space limitations, or who live in relatively mild climates, dwarfs can be the ideal choice. 

HOW TO PLANT A FRUIT TREE 

1. If you've ordered bareroot nursery stock, soak the plant roots in water or manure tea up to 24 hours before planting. If you can't plant within a few days after receiving the shipment, repack the plant in the damp sawdust or wood shavings it came in and store it in a cold, dark location until the ground can be worked. Never expose the bare roots of plants to wind or sun. 

2. Using a sharp, square-ended planting spade, dig a circle 2 feet in diameter and about 3 feet deep. Remove the sod and set it aside. Now separate the topsoil and the lighter-colored subsoil into two piles, and remove any rocks from the planting hole. 

3. Chop up the sod and put the pieces in the hole, grass side down, so that it doesn't come in contact with the tree roots. Cover the sod with a little topsoil. 

4. Set the tree into the hole. For grafted trees grown on standard rootstocks, position the tree so that the graft union, the point at which the scion and the rootstock were joined together, is 1 to 2 inches below the surface of the ground. For dwarf and semidwarf rootstocks, the graft union should be 2 to 3 inches above the soil surface. 

5. Fill in around the roots, using the topsoil first. Use your hands to firm the soil around the roots and eliminate any air pockets. Fill in about half the planting hole. 

6. Pour water into the planting hole until the soil gets quite mucky. Then, using your foot, tamp down the soil. 

7. Fill in the rest of the planting hole with the remaining topsoil and subsoil. Firm down the soil around the tree and make a "dish" or depression to encourage water to drain toward the tree. 

8. Mulch around the tree with organic matter (leaves, compost, grass clippings, etc.). Don't use fresh manure, though well-rotted manure is fine. Line the mulch in the same dish shape around the tree. 

9. Water the tree until the soil cannot readily absorb any more. 

10. Drive one or two stakes into the ground outside the root zone to mark the tree. Fruit trees grafted to dwarf rootstocks develop smaller root systems than standard-size trees and require some support. After planting dwarf trees, attach the tree to the stake using some -flexible tubing or other material. 

11. Prune off any side branches and cut back trees by about one-third after planting. Balled or container trees do not need to be pruned. 

12. Place wire-mesh "hardware cloth" or a plastic tree guard around the tree trunk to protect it from rodents and deer. 

13. Post-Planting. During the first growing season, water the tree regularly, giving it 5 to 10 gallons per day for the first month or so, then watering two or three times a week for another couple of months, or during dry weather. In the late fall, paint the tree bark with white latex paint diluted with water, so the bark will reflect winter sunlight and not be damages by sunscald or cracking.

POLLINATION

Many varieties of fruit trees and shrubs are self-fruitful: that is, they do not need to have a plant of another variety nearby with which to cross-pollinate. Other varieties (particularly those of fruits) need to have a partner in the orchard so that they will be pollinated and produce a good crop of fruit. In fact, even self-fruitful varieties often benefit from having a different variety of the same plant located nearby.

Cross-pollination doesn't mean that you will end up with weird-looking hybrid fruits. For example, a 'Cortland' apple tree will always produce 'Cortland' apples, even if its blossoms are visited by bees who carry pollen from another variety of apple or crabapple that is growing nearby. However, if you planted the seeds from that 'Cortland' apple, you would probably grow a tree that bore an entirely different kind of apple, one that was not "true to type."

Commercial orchards often rent honeybee hives to ensure good pollination during blossom time. Fortunately, there are also wild bees that do the same job. For example, the orchard mason bee (Osmia lignaria) is a good pollinator, and is found throughout most of the United States, with the exception of the Deep South.

It's very important never to spray insecticides during the blossom time of either the fruit trees or the other groundcover plants (dandelions, clovers, etc.) that may be growing near them. These toxic chemicals can kill bees and other beneficial insects. Read on for more information on nonchemical methods of pest control. Nursery catalogs and books usually provide good information on which varieties of plants need pollinators and which will produce fruit even if planted alone.

Orchard Maintenance 

Cleanup: Maintaining a clean orchard means picking up after your trees. Fruit that drops to the ground can contain insect larvae, which burrow into the soil where they overwinter, to reemerge in the spring. These drops also attract voles and mice, which can damage trees by chewing on the bark. Pick up the dropped fruit and burn or bury it underground far away from your trees. Pick up the fruit as soon as possible after it drops to catch the larvae before they burrow into the ground. It's especially important to collect the spring drops, which are still quite small but can contain a large number of larvae.

While you're picking up dropped fruit in the fall, also clean up fallen leaves, which can likewise harbor disease and insects. Removing apple leaves within 200 yards of your apple trees will reduce the number of scab spores the following spring. 

Pruning: Pruning is a subject unto itself. Certainly you will want to learn the basics and practice selective pruning of your fruit trees and shrubs on a yearly basis, removing crossing branches, suckers and watersprouts; opening up and reinvigorating older plants; and allowing good air circulation to prevent disease.

Insect and disease control: If you follow good cultural practices and select disease-free trees and shrubs, you should be able to keep most common orchard pests and diseases in check without the use of chemicals. But to grow fruit organically, you will need to tolerate some degree of pest and disease damage. If you were to prevent all insect and disease damage, you would need an arsenal of toxic sprays—something no one wants to use around the home landscape.

One strategy is to attract beneficial insect predators to your orchard by planting wildflowers and herbs, including dill, buckwheat, tansy, yarrow and goldenrod. Another way to reduce certain kinds of insect damage is to trap pests using simple, visual lures. These traps mimic the way leaves or fruits appear to insects. For example, the apple maggot fly can be lured by hanging in the tree small, dark red spheres that are covered with a sticky substance called Tangletrap. Female flies get stuck as they jump from fruit to fruit, and then die.

There are also many biological sprays that can be used in the orchard at key times to disrupt insect cycles. Dormant oil spray, Bordeaux mixture and other natural products are relatively nontoxic to beneficial insects and to humans when used judiciously and according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Simple physical barriers serve to keep many animal pests from damaging trees and fruit. These range from wire mesh or plastic tree guards set around young trees to protect them from mice and rabbits, to smelly soap hung on branches or tall fences erected around the orchard to discourage deer.

By combining preventive measures with the least toxic controls, you can have a healthy orchard and still harvest lots of good-quality fruit for eating.

How to Grow Berries

Raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are enjoyable edible fruits that you can learn to grow in this section.

Raspberries and Blackberries

These fruits grow on thorny canes, which are elongated, semi woody flowering stems about five or six feet tall. They spread with underground runners and can be aggressive unless severely checked. But they are worth the trouble for the absolutely delicious berries, which can be eaten, still warm from the sun, right off the plants in summer. You may have to cover the ripening berries with netting to protect your crop from the birds.
Fruit breeders have given us types of raspberries that are everbearing or repeat bearing, instead of bearing fruit just once a summer.
Blackberries, too, have been worked on by breeders, and you can purchase thornless types that are delicious and have very large berries. Some of these prefer to have their canes staked to poles or other supports. They are self-pollinating and easy to grow, performing best in well-drained soil.

• Cut the canes on blackberries and raspberries when first setting out new plants. The canes are the elongated flowering stems. Leave just a few of the leafy buds at the base of the stems. This eliminates any cane diseases that may have hitchhiked to your garden on the plant. It also discourages spring flowering, letting the plant become well established before moving on to berry production.
• Thin out one-third of all blackberry and raspberry canes each year to keep them productive. If you've ever tried to walk through an abandoned farm field bristling with blackberry thickets, you know what a thorny tangle these plants can grow into.

Not only does crowded growth make blackberries and raspberries hard to work around, it also forces the canes to compete for sun, nutrients, moisture, and fresh air. The result can be smaller berries and more diseases. As soon as canes are done bearing fruit, you can cut them off at the base to provide more space for new canes. Remove any sick, weak, or scrawny canes. Then selectively remove additional canes from areas that are crowded to keep them from creeping into other parts of the garden. prunning is easier if you wear thick, thorn proof gloves and use long-handled pruning loppers. A pair of sunglasses to protect your eyes won't hurt either.
Strawberries Strawberries are fun to have around for garden tastes, even if the crop is not that large. Various raiders such as birds and squirrels will get most of the crop if you don't keep them out with netting or repellents. The plants like full sun or bright partial shade and moist, rich soil. Buy your plants from local sources for types that thrive in your climate. Mulch strawberries with straw to keep the fruit clean. Straw keeps soil and disease spores, which cause berries to rot and mold, from splashing up onto the berries. As a result, they look nicer and keep longer. Straw also keeps the soil moist, so the berries can plump up, and it helps reduce weeds.
Grow day-neutral strawberries for a summerlong harvest. While June-bearing strawberries bear fruit heavily in early summer, and ever-bearing strawberries bear in June and again in fall, day-neutrals can keep flowering and fruiting throughout much of the summer.Plant day-neutral strawberries as early in spring as possible and pinch off all the flower buds for six weeks afterward. This lets the plants grow strong before they begin to fruit. Once the plants are flowering, fertilize them monthly to keep the plants vigorous and productive.
Heavy producers such as these may not keep up the pace year after year. When you notice berry production diminishing, consider starting a new strawberry patch with fresh plants.
Plant strawberries in a strawberry jar for a delicious feast on a patio. Strawberry jars stand about two feet high and have openings along the side, perfect for planting with strawberry plants. They look especially charming when little plantlets sprout on runners and dangle down the sides.
These guidelines should take the mystery out of cultivating your own fruits and berries so that you can readily enjoy nature's freshness from your own garden.