As you plan your orchard trees, there are several considerations to make. Selecting the right varieties and the correct rootstock will dictate the long-term success of your orchard in subsequent years. Many people shop for standard grocery store varieties because they are familiar with them, but countless other varieties may be better suited to your garden or your taste palette and it pays to do a bit of research.
As you plan your orchard consider the seasons in which your fruit ripens and try to stagger it over many months. In this way, you can be eating fresh fruit from late June until the following January and February. The harvesting season begins with cherries in late June and early July followed by early plums and nectarines in summer. By midsummer, there ought to be some early apples and pears and later plums as well as soft figs followed by peaches and nectarines in late summer. September and October bring on the late apples and pears. Every Christmas we climb our neighbor's apple tree to pick the delightful bright green Granny Smiths to add to our traditional oliebollen (deep-fried fritters with apples). It is astonishing to see these apples hanging on into winter, withstanding several degrees of frost.
Late maturing apples such as the Jonagold, King, and Northern Spy will hold in a root cellar or cold storage for several months extending the harvest into late winter. Comice and Highland Pear are best after sitting in storage as the sugars develop after picking.
Before finalizing your selection of fruit trees, make sure that you know whether or not you need a pollination partner for the variety that you have selected. This is not intuitive, some varieties of apples such as King, require two pollination partners, and some apples such as Braeburn are self-fertile. Many plums are self-fertile, while others require a pollination partner. The juicy golden Shiro plum requires another Japanese plum for pollination and it won’t be satisfied with a European Italian prune plum as a partner. Usually, a quick search will reveal what is required for your orchard. If you live in a residential area with more fruit trees around you may find that pollination is no issue at all for your trees.
To assist in pollination, find ways to attract pollinators to your orchard, by adding mason bee hives, planting pollinator-friendly plants, and avoiding herbicides and insecticides (even so-called organic ones)
It can be a very confusing process to determine what type of rootstock your trees should be grafted on. Generally, the smaller your space, the more dwarfing the rootstock you should select. Some of our apple trees are grafted onto mini dwarf roots stock which will restrict plant growth to about 6 feet, we also carry varieties on standard rootstock that will allow trees to form large trunks and far-reaching branches. The rootstock confers growth traits to the above-ground part of the plant and if you choose a dwarf variety for a space where you require some shade you will be disappointed.
