Written by RTB’s Gardener/Field Worker Dane Mainella
Why should you grow trees?
Trees are a magnificent gift to our community and to all of our descendants. Trees are loving and generous creatures full of helpful services to us and to the animals, plants, and soil upon which we depend. Some fruit and nut trees can live and produce for hundreds of years if nurtured with respect.
Where is it best to plant trees?
It is best to plant most fruit and nut trees in a sunny spot, where they will get at least six hours of direct sunlight. Sunshine is necessary because it provides the trees with enough energy to produce fruit.
You never want to plant a fruit or nut tree by itself. It is best to plant at least two different seedlings or varieties of the same kind of tree, so they can pollinate each other’s flowers and thus make a lot of fruit. If you don’t have enough space for two trees, don’t worry, you can plant two in the same hole and have them grow right up next to each other, essentially treating them as a single tree.
If you have enough space for two or more trees, plant them 10-30 feet apart, depending on the type of tree. The further away you plant your trees, the lower the chances of them pollinating each other. I personally recommend 40 or 50 feet as the maximum distance if there are no others of that variety in the area. Closer than 10-15 feet can be okay, but is not ideal, as they can begin to crowd each other when they reach full size.
When is it best to plant trees? (Potted vs Bare-root)
Trees sold in pots can be planted year-round, but it is best to plant them in the mid-late fall, after the weather has cooled down and there is plenty of moisture in the ground. This gives the tree a chance to establish its roots in the soil, gives it a head start on the following growing season, and will also significantly reduce the amount of watering that you will have to do. If you can’t plant it in the fall, planting while the tree is dormant in the winter and early spring is also okay. (However, planting in the late spring and summer is tough on the tree and is not recommended. The soil is drier, moisture is in the leaves, and the tree is trying to actively grow while also establishing a root system. You will have to be more diligent with watering, especially if you go a week or more without rain.)
“Bare-root” trees are given to the customer with their roots exposed, not in a pot of soil. Bare-root trees should be planted when they are dormant, from late fall to early spring. It is best to plant bare-root trees as soon as you get them, because every minute they are out of their home (the soil) they are essentially struggling to stay alive. (You can think of them as a fish out of water.) It’s a good idea to soak the roots in a bucket of water for an hour or two before you plant them in order to rehydrate them. You DO NOT want them to sit in water for more than two or three hours, as this can cause the tree to drown (they need air to breathe). If you need a day or two before you are ready to plant them, you can “heel” them in by burying the roots in moist sand, sawdust, woodchips, or anything that retains moisture.
How to best plant trees?
Start by digging a hole that is the depth of the distance from the bottom of the pot or roots to where the roots begin on the stem. From there, dig a wide bowl-like hole that is a diameter of at least three feet wide. If planting a bare-root tree, you don’t want to crowd or circle the roots in the hole, so if there is an extra-long horizontal root, dig a trench for it so it is not circling back in on itself.
If the tree is grafted, you do not want to bury the graft union. The graft union is the place on the tree that transitions from the rootstock to the scionwood. The rootstock is a unique variety of tree that was bred for strong roots of a certain size. The scionwood is a unique variety of tree that was bred for great fruit and disease resistance. The graft union should be a clear transition point on the stem/trunk that is marked by a scar or a difference in color or texture of the bark. If you bury the graft union when you plant the tree, some trees will grow roots from the scionwood, which will negate the dwarfing effect of the rootstock. You may end up with a tree that is much bigger or smaller than expected. If you have space for this and the means to maintain such a large tree, then go for it!
Some trees, like chestnuts and oaks, do not want to be planted deeper than the soil line on their pot. In these cases, make sure the soil line of the pot is at the same level as the soil line of the ground.
If you have the soil amendments Azomite or rock phosphate, throw a handful or two into the bottom of the hole when you backfill it. These amendments provide much needed minerals to the soil. (Most soil in the United States has been greatly degraded due to poor land management practices.)
Do not fill the hole back up with compost or other fertilizer. This will make the tree focus its energy on vegetative growth, which is not what we want the first year that it’s in the soil. We want the tree to focus its energy on root growth and on establishing a strong root system in the soil, which will make the tree more resilient to droughts, floods, and extreme heat & cold.
Mulching your trees
Mulch serves many functions: It suppresses the growth of grass roots around the tree that the tree’s roots cannot compete with, retains moisture in the soil so the tree’s roots will have plenty of water to drink, and it also feeds beneficial microbes, fungi, and the tree roots themselves. For most fruit and nut trees, hardwood mulch is best because it decomposes readily so it can feed the soil.
Right after you plant, put down a layer or two of cardboard in a two or three foot radius around the tree, unless you have already prepped the soil by killing the grass or vegetation around the planting area. On top of the cardboard, place a layer of wood chip mulch about 3-4 inches thick, adding a layer of mulch every year in an expanding circle outward, following the outer edge of the canopy of the tree (where most of the “feeder” roots are).
Sheltering your trees
Most of the Northeast United States have a lot of deer and rodents due to the lack of natural predators and hunters, and from permanent human settlements.
Deer LOVE fruit trees. They love to eat the leaves, the buds, the twigs, and they love to rub their antlers on the trunks of young trees in the fall. Voles and other rodents love to chew on and eat the cambium (inner bark) of young fruit trees in the fall and winter when the rest of their food sources die back. If you do not shelter your trees from deer and rodents, they will kill your trees or at least keep them in a runted condition that will ultimately lead to their death.
If you have an eight foot deer fence surrounding your property, or you live in an urban environment that deer keep away from, you can get by with a two or three foot plastic shelter around the base of your tree that protects the tree from rodents.
If you live in a rural or suburban area without a deer fence, you will want to either build a four or five foot metal cage around your tree (in addition to having the plastic shelter around the base of the tree), or you can purchase a five foot, well-ventilated plastic tree shelter (i.e. Plantra) and prune your tree to a central leader.
Watering your trees
If planted in the spring or summer, put at least a 5-gallon bucket of water on each tree each week, or a good thorough soaking with a garden hose. If you get a good rain that week (at least a half inch or three quarters of an inch), you can do without watering. In the hottest months of the year (June, July, August), you may want to increase that to two buckets of water a week. If you do not water your trees, and your area does not get enough precipitation, your trees will die.
The following year, if there is no rain for two weeks or more, you’ll definitely want to water your trees. Two 5-gallon buckets worth of water a week in April, May, September, and October; and three 5-gallon buckets a week in June, July, and August. As the years go on, the tree will be more and more resilient to drought. However, you will still need to put some water on them for droughts lasting three weeks or longer.
Pruning your trees
Pruning practices for different trees can vary considerably, along with pruning philosophies in general. It’s a good idea to further research which practices will most benefit the specific type of tree you are planting. A resource that I like to refer to is Michael Phillip’s book “The Holistic Orchard”. In addition, a good general resource that Benoit, our Garden Manager, likes to refer to is Cummins’ Pruning Guide.
The less you prune your trees in the first few years of their lives, the faster you can expect to have lots of delicious fruit. For example, with apple trees you can do this by “training” or bending intersecting branches or very upright branches to a more horizontal position by tying a string from the branches to the trunk of the apple tree.
It sounds contradictory, but for many fruit trees you want to pluck off any flowers that form for the first couple springs that you have the tree in the ground. Again, this is so the tree first focuses its energy into root growth and vegetative growth. It takes a LOT of energy to make fruit, and to make the seeds within the fruit. If this flower plucking is not done, the tree can “runt out”, meaning that it can have a much abbreviated lifespan, as well as be significantly smaller and not produce as much fruit over the course of its lifespan.
I prefer to wait until a tree is older, 4 or 5 years old at least, before performing any pruning. At this time, the first thing you want to cut out is dead, diseased, and dying/damaged branches. Next, you should prune for access and for the tree’s structure, meaning you prune so that you can access all of the branches of the tree more easily (for future pruning, thinning, harvesting, and maintaining of your tree). This includes pruning for sunlight access and airflow. The leaves of the tree need plenty of sunlight energy in order to make the fruit we want to eat. Also, because disease thrives in cool, moist environments, you want tree branches to be exposed to enough sunlight and air, decreasing the chances for your tree to get sick.
You do not need to be as fussy about pruning nut trees like chestnuts and oaks, and fruit trees like persimmons, where the crops fall to the ground. You can just keep everything below five feet pruned back and the tree will tend to take care of itself.
If you suspect your tree has a disease (and even if you don’t), it is always a good idea to sanitize your tools with alcohol or hand sanitizer so as not to infect neighboring trees.
Fertilizing your tree
After the first year of growth, and for every subsequent year, you can and should feed your trees with well-matured compost or manure. It is best to do this in the early to mid spring, putting down a layer about an inch or two thick around the “dripline” of your tree (this is an invisible ring on the ground around the tree underneath the furthest reaches of your branches). It is best to “scratch” or “work” the compost or manure into the soil, or cover it with mulch, allowing it to fully absorb into the soil and not wash away in the wind or rain.
Harvesting
For fruit trees like apples, pears, and peaches, in mid- to late-June it is best to “thin” the fruit from your tree, snipping off the fruitlets so there is only one fruit per cluster, and only one fruit every six inches along the branch. We do this to keep the tree from bearing fruit biennially, or every other year. Many apple and pear trees have a biennial bearing tendency in an effort to conserve energy, meaning they put on a lot of fruit one year, and then the next year produce little to no fruit. Thinning the fruit can help them produce annually.
When you harvest your apples or pears in the late summer to wintertime (depending on the variety), it is best to hold the fruit from the bottom and slowly lift up and to the side. If the fruit is ready to be harvested, it will snap off where the stem meets the fruiting spur. One way to tell if the fruit is ready to be harvested is if the tip of the stem is swollen where the stem meets the branch. You do not want to pull and yank the fruit off the tree because this will damage the fruiting spur, making it so you will not get apples (or pears) in that place the next year.
Please feel free to email Dane with any questions or clarifications at dane@roundthebendfarm.org.
