Starting an Orchard: Apples, Cherries, Peaches, Plums and Pears

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Pear trees can be some of the hardest fruit trees to grow. Prune your newly-planted saplings carefully to prevent too-rapid growth. PHOTO: FOTOLIA/ MARTINA BERG

Special Note: All material here reprinted from Grow It! Copyright © 1972 by Richard W. Langer. The title of this excerpted chapter is "Fruit." 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
—A.E. Housman  

All worms have an apple,
But not all apples have a worm.—Peter Reeves

There's no place on the farm quite like the orchard. For dew-fresh fruit, but also for picnics in blossom time, watching the bees gather nectar for your honey, and simply enjoying life. Making a detour on your way to feed the chickens in the morning and stopping by the orchard for a night-chilled Transparent apple is a country experience hard to pass up.

The only problem is, unless your land comes with an established orchard, it's going to take a couple of years' wait. That's why starting an orchard should be one of the first things you set out. If, as is likely, you move to the country in spring or summer, planning your grove of fruit trees right away and getting the trees in time for fall planting will give you a year's head start over putting it off till you're settled in. Even if you don't have time to get the trees, you can sow a green manure crop of rye to help prepare the land for early spring planting the next year. Fruit trees can be set in either season as long as they are naturally dormant when transplanted.

To speed up your first yield even further, try a few dwarf trees. You probably won't bother much with these once your big ones start bearing, but they will give you an initial crop to tide you over the second or third year of waiting.

Where to Plant an Orchard 

The orchard is going to be around for some time. That's your first consideration in deciding where to locate it. You can put a vegetable garden on a slope that you expect to be part of a pond in a few years. To do so with the orchard would be a waste of either orchard or pond.

As a permanent addition to your homestead, the orchard should have not only good soil, but good air and water drainage as well. Thus a slope is the best location if you have one. Avoid low-lying sites, since these harbor the cold in winter, making any trees there more likely candidates for winter-killing than others in the area. A northern slope will delay blooming and subsequent fruit. A southern slope will speed up both. The ideal spot is on the small hills surrounding a valley or depression. Trees with early frost-sensitive blossoms can be planted halfway up the northern slope, the less sensitive trees halfway up the southern slope. No trees should be exposed to the windy hilltops and none to the frost-retentive bottom land. Rows of trees planted on hills should, of course, follow the contour system.