Fruit Trees

[bacpacker]

Belew's post about planting apple trees got me interested in the varitey of tree he mentioned. I have yet to find a vendor on-line that sells them. But I did find this site:

http://www.treesofantiquity.com/

They have about any kind of fruit you can think of. And from the looks of it most all are heirloom types. What I have looked at are not real cheap, but they have some stuff I have heard of in years past from my Stepdad and grandparents. Think I may have to place an order pretty soon.

What kind of trees, bushes, or vines do you all have out? What are your favorite varieties? Do you have any that have trouble with pest or diseases?

[helomech]

I want to plant a lot more, but now all I have are peaches, figs, banana persimmon, and plums. Want to plant some apple, and oranges bad.

[bacpacker]

We have several type of apples, 3 pears, 3 cherries (which came in within 3 years of planting. Nectarine, paw paws, pecans, blueberries, grapes, & figs. Got a lot more to get going.

[belew]

We have a plumb tree that looses all its fruit. I had a soil test done this year to see what's missing. I keep finding persimmon trees in the edge of the woods. Also found some pecan and walnut trees in the woods. My problem is all the poison Ivey and ticks. I only go in the woods during the winter.

[ak474u]

I've got Methley plums, Harvester peaches, Celeste Figs, and Wonderful pomegranate. The peaches figs and plums were chosen because they do not require pollination from another plant to produce. As much as I'd like to have pairs, there isn't a great deal of space on my .28 acre yard. The fig produced this year, and we just planted it 2 months ago. Hopefully since the peach and plum are large (8 ft) they'll produce next year too.

[bacpacker]

I have two old peach trees that the fruit pretty much rots on the tree just before they ripen every year. I never have figured that out. I also have two or three large old walnuts on the back of the property that produces heavy most every year.

[Daca102090]

BP, does the soil around your peach trees stay pretty damp for a lot of the year?
If so, then the problem could be a fungus that affects peach, nectarines and apricots.
Once the blossoms have set and the fruit starts growing spraying an agricultural lime mixture once every couple of weeks should help with that problem.

[bacpacker]

Daca it does stay pretty damp in winter and spring. Is the lime solution sprayed on the trees? I assume thats what you intended. I have only used lime on the soil as an ammedment. I will give that a try.

[Possom]

We have 3 pear trees (not sure which kind) small cooking pears. 5 peach trees (again not sure what kind they have been growing on our place for years and try to take over with seedlings) 3 plum trees several boysenberry plants and a few domesticated muscadine and blackberry plants. Oh and a couple of wild cherry trees that make awesome cherry cobblers.

[Daca102090]

Daca it does stay pretty damp in winter and spring. Is the lime solution sprayed on the trees? I assume thats what you intended. I have only used lime on the soil as an ammedment. I will give that a try.

Yes, the spray is applied from the ground all the way to the top and on the leaves as well.

The soil at my current house is great for lawn grass, but about 6 inches down it changes to a grey clay that is like modeling clay when it is wet and like cement when it dries out, which isn't very often.

As the fruit matured it had mold start growing on the outside of the fruit and started to shrink. It looked like the fruit that had spoiled on the counter from being too old.

The local feed store will probably have some of the spray solution. Here it is reasonably inexpensive.

[Daca102090]

I just dug out the old bottle I have in the shed and it is a Lime/Sulfur spray.

[Stormfeather]

Ive got apples trees here, they are easily 15 years old or so, but they werent taken care of before I got here, so had to do some serious pruning to get them back into shape. This years apple harvest wasnt really impressive, but I think it will get better each year now that im taking care of the trees. I WISH we could plant fig trees up here and they would live, I love figs fresh off the tree!

[bacpacker]

We have 3 pear trees (not sure which kind) small cooking pears. 5 peach trees (again not sure what kind they have been growing on our place for years and try to take over with seedlings) 3 plum trees several boysenberry plants and a few domesticated muscadine and blackberry plants. Oh and a couple of wild cherry trees that make awesome cherry cobblers.

What type muscadines do you have? I have a white and a purple types. I got mine from my stepdad, who got his from his dad. Not sure where they originated from. I got some concords as well as a couple other types. Concords always produce, as do the muscadines. The others not so much.

[Possom]

Mine are black beauties (I think). They are a pain in the butt to get to bare fruit because they are not self pollinating. You have to have a good bee population to get cross pollination between plants. I have a couple of scoopinal plants (green muscadines) from my aunt for them to cross pollinate with.

[Possom]

Here in western Arkansas wild muscadines are everywhere. Early spring you can go out on the national forest and gather up some starters and transplant them into your yard.

We got a lot of wild muscadines off this year. Gathered and put up about 40 pints of muscadine jelly so far.

Lots of muscadines is why I haven't killed a black bear yet this year. They don't have to move very far to find lots to eat.

[bacpacker]

I think one of mine are Scuppernoogs. They grow wild around here as well. And are super easy to root from cuttings.

[helomech]

We have a lot of wild mucadines, and mustang berries. Along with the black berries. Also have a lot of the passion fruits that grow wild.

[nevermind]

I am new to this site and a novice at growing fruit trees. I just planted 3 apple trees at my farm; BraeStar, GrandGala and a Super Red Fuji. I ordered them from Stark. I know it will take a few years for them to bear fruit but I'm happy to get them in the ground. I have some existing apple trees on the property but I don't know what variety they are.

I also have some Bartlett pear trees that are about 8 years old. The pears have great flavor but have been neglected by previous owners, who were elderly and unable to care for them.

My problems are deer, racoons and squirrels. I have to fence the young trees but the mature trees are able to handle the critters.

[bacpacker]

Welcome to the colony Nevermind. Sounds like your fruit growing is off to a good start.

[MegaCPC]

When I was very young we had orange, lemon, and plum trees. Nothing like fresh off the tree.

One day I'll have my own.

[Sniper-T]

I planted about 30 fruit trees this year, all bought at costco, all between 6-8 feet tall (I'm a little impatient), and all for 30-25-20 bucks a piece, as the season wore on.

Being as far north as I am, I need trees that are EXTREMELY cold hearty, and although I think I listed them in a planting thread somewhere, I'll see if I can find that and add the list here. but I have, cherries, pears, apples, and crab apples, of a couple varieties growing now... that I am hoping they will live through their first winter (always the toughest)

for 'others' I have hundreds of chokecherry, pin cherry, saskatoon,plum, hazelnut, and a few others that grow wild around my property.

Has anyone heard of adding iron for your fruit trees? When I moved here, I have several 'ornamental' cherries and apple trees that would flower like a sum-bitch, but produce nothing. A friend told me about iron, so I dug out a few dozen old rusty nails, and by hand shoved them into the ground around the trunk (2' rad). NOT into the roots, just all throughout the soil around, about a dozen per tree.

The very next spring, the trees all bloomed as usual, but then they filled out so heavy with fruit I had to prop up branches to keep them from breaking. fourth year like that now, but my BIG cherry tree was kinda meh, this year, so I put in a bunch more nails this fall (most into that, but some into all), so we'll see what Spring will bring...

[bacpacker]

I never heard of the "iron" thing. My trees are all pretty young, but are starting to bear. I will be trying that this winter and see what happens.

[helomech]

They should do great here then. This soil is nothing but iron ore.

[ladyhk13]

We have almost 1000 apple trees with 13 varieties. Have a pecan tree that is probably 40 years old, black walnut all over the property which aren't worth the trouble to process to eat and the one right outside our back door is a pain in the butt since we have to pick up all the nuts and dump them in the woods by the tractor load in the fall. That tree really needs to go, sounds like the house is being bombed when they fall on the roof. We have wild blackberries everywhere and I did have passion fruit but dh mowed them all down when he cleared out the area they were growing so now I have none :(
I started some thornless blackberries in a container and raspberries too but they really need to go in the ground somewhere.

We do a lot of sharing with the deer.

[bacpacker]

1000 trees, wow that would take some work to process. What diameter is the Walnut next to the house? If it's big enough, and if it drops that many nuts I bet it is, it would make some beautiful lumber. Walnut is one of my very favorite woods.

[ladyhk13]

Yeah, we only use a small portion of the apples that are right in the backyard. We bought the property with them on it, used to be a working orchard but hadn't been kept up in several years so they really need to be pruned but it's a major job so we have basically left them and let the deer eat their fill and we pick enough to make some sauce and if the neighbors want some they take them too. They get spots all over them and with all the rain we've had they get rotten too so and with so many it would cost a fortune to keep spraying, then add the Japanese and June bugs we take what we can get which is still way more than we could ever eat.

The walnut tree is huge. We've talked about having it cut down but again I'm sure it would be very expensive because of the size. It is a gorgeous wood though and they are all over the property as well as all kinds of other hardwoods.

[Daca102090]

Look into selling the walnut trees. Black walnut can pay you $1000 to $2000 per tree easily for selling the logs.
Very desirable for furniture and other specialty wood working.
The buyers will usually make arrangements to have a logger come in to do the work.

[ladyhk13]

We have thought about it but there is so much black walnut in our area I'm not sure they would be worth that much. We would like to find a logger who uses a donkey instead of trucks on the land so it doesn't tear up our property but not sure where to even start looking for someone like that.

[Sniper-T]

modern skidders leave a lot less damage than they used to. within a year, you probably wouldn't even know they were there. A black walnut near here went for $12000 standing, with the contractor responsible for cutting, removal, and repairing the property. Granted, it was truly a stellar tree, and prices will vary based on the amount and quality of lumber they can get from them, but I would seriously look into it... it could just set your preps to a whole new level. The especially cool thing about trees like that is they are extremely versatile... Tall straight ones have their purpose, as do short squat gnarley ones... and each can be worth big bucks.

Are there other apple orchards near you? have you talked to them? maybe they would take 'responsibility' for your trees do the pruning and arrange the harvest/spraying.

check it out, sounds like you are sitting on a mountain of un- (or under-) utilized resources to me.

[ladyhk13]

I think there is an orchard up on the mountain. We talked to the Tn Ag dept about our orchard when we first bought it and they told us we were better off just pulling them all up because it's more expensive to maintain them than it is to get rid of them which didn't make any sense to us since we weren't looking at making a business or profit to begin with. We just wanted to have healthy trees we could use and give away to the neighbors because we really don't need the income nor want to run a business. They were no help with finding someone to prune and spray and with that amount of trees it's too much work for us.

Most of our hardwoods except for the one right outside of the back door is on a hill with a path that is really only good for a 4 wheeler and we don't want it tore up with equipment going down there. It would have to be select cut only, just to make the woods healthy so the smaller trees have room to grow (hasn't been touched in more than 65 years) and I worry about damage done to to the other trees. We really care about the health more than the money. Except that darn one outside the door...I hate that tree!

[Sniper-T]

drill a dozen 1/2 inch holes in it at a convenient level as deep as the bit will go. fill the holes with salt. next year, tree is dead!

[ladyhk13]

Yeah, I can see that monster falling on our house. It would have to be cut down by a pro...way too big.