I have a medium sized back yard (approx. 900 square feet I think), and am looking forward to planting a fruit tree in one area. A while back I found this site on the internet, discussing "Backyard Orchard Culture", which is essentially high density planting of fruit trees, and controlling their size with successive prunings. website I'm tempted by the idea of being able to plant 3-4 trees instead of just one, but I don't know, it just sounds odd to me. Has anyone heard of this, or had experience with it? What are the potential problems with this method vs. the traditional? Is it worth giving it a try? thanks in advance, Lori
Using pruning and training methods and fully dwarfing rootstocks you can really packe them in, as fruit hobbyists due. You can even have a sort of living fence of dwarf apple trees.
As long as you maintain the size through pruning, then, does it not make a difference if you're starting with non-dwarf varieties? This particular website's method is assuming several full-size trees to a single hole, if I'm not mistaken.
Haven't studied information at your link but the general situation is that those grafted on fully dwarfing rootstocks won't constantly try to produce a full-sized top. Those on standard or semi-dwarf roots will respond to hard pruning with abundant, vigorous, non-branching shoots as they try to quickly restore or produce a much larger top than is wanted.
I have about 90 apple trees plus peach, nectarine, plum, pear, persimmon, and apricot stuffed in various corners of my city lot, and would not be able to even try that without B.O.C. Dave Wilson Nursery sells over three million trees a year and know what they're talkign about. We have all vigor of trees from M27 mini-dwarf to full-vigor seedlings, and they all work fine. Summer pruning keeps even the bad boys in line and is no trouble at all. This is the first year they've been producing regularly, and it was wonderful to walk out just about any time of year and pick tree-ripened fruit. It will spoil you forever against supermarket fruit.
Thanks for the reply, Ron! Wow, Applenut, that's a lot of trees! Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds amazing. Gives me confidence enough that I think I'll give it a try (granted, with far fewer trees, at least for now... :D). Now the hard part...deciding which types of trees I want, and which will grow best together! Oh, and learning how to prune a tree. Small detail... ;) Thanks again! Lori
California Cooperative Extension has lots of information on fruit cultivation up on the internet, it being a big state the coverage is divided up into sections. With a little digging you should be able to find recommendations for your part of the state, if interested.
Given that you live in Southern California, you need to be picky about your selections because of the low chilling hours. Despite what you've heard, apples require little if any chill to fruit and are quite reliable here. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for most stone fruit and if you pick the wrong tree, you'll get a nice shade tree but no fruit. Tom's Picks for Southern California at http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/all_tom/tom_picks08.html are a good place to start. We have most of them and the quality is top shelf.
Its 4:00 AM on the east coast and I just found this message board with a google searchfor BOC .I have 18 semi dwarf trees. 5 peach,5 apple.5 pear and 3 asian pears the oldest trees are 20yrs old (12) the rest are no older than 5 .I have been using BOC for 7 yrs now with mixed results First was to get my ignored trees back to a managable height and secondly was to squeeze more trees in .I'm sold on the idea and plan to keep planting trees
Look at URL below: http://www.berkeleyhort.com/pdf/bhn_backyardfruitree.pdf Page 3 gives some good ideas about high density planting of fruit trees and taking care of the home orchard.
Quick question: anyone know if this high density planting works with citrus too, or only deciduous fruit trees? I didn't see any mentions of citrus on the sites. Lori
Lori: Well, there's a good reason for this. Dave Wilson Nursery doesn't sell citrus trees. However, yes, it works fine for citrus too, and since most citrus trees can be pruned like a bush, they are especially easy to keep small with summer pruning. But having them on Flying Dragon rootstock (the miniature trees you see at Home Depot) also works well.
