Fruit trees are a key part of our long term preps, and are major sources of food for us both here at the in-town location and out at “The Place”.
Every spring, at about this time, we get ready to plant a few more of them, both to replace ones that either died or just to add to our orchards.
Fruit trees are an attractive stealthy prep
Fruit trees are an attractive plant that are welcomed even in some of the most restritive neighborhoods, and the best part about them is they are basically “plant them and forget them” easy.
There’s very little you can grow that gives you more “bang for the buck” as a good, productive fruit tree. Once the initial work of planting is done (I’ll be honest, that is quite a bit of work) the trees require very little in the way of maintenance.
We generally feed them a couple of times a year, and if it gets extremely dry we water them (using captured rain water), and when the fruit is ripe we pick them.
Three important considerations
Spice mentioned three important considerations when thinking about fruit trees in this article previously published on 3BY.
I’m going to share an abbreviated version here with a few of my own thoughts.
The site
Here’s a few of her thoughts (her thoughts are in italics):
How much space do you have? Some don’t take up a lot of room, but you have to know before you choose. There are dwarf, semi-dwarf, and full-sized varieties; and if the space is narrow you can even do espalier trees. This is where a the tree, often a dwarf apple or pear, is trained and tied so it grows in the shape of its trellis. You can control the shape of the tree and make it easy to harvest – some of them double as really cool landscaping; nice for those of you with grumpy neighbors.
If you live in a neighborhood with a restrictive homeowners association, my second bit of advise is to check your associations rules and laws carefully to learn what you can and cannot plant, as well as where you can plant. Not very helpfully, my first bit of advice would be to sell your house and move to an area that doesn’t let your most control-freak neighbors run your lives for you… but you already know that…
You also have to consider the soil type. You’ll get tired of reading ‘prefers fertile, well-drained soils’, because that’s the plant equivalent of ‘likes well-cooked, hot meals’, but some varieties are much less finicky than others.
Here’s an article about planting fruit trees in bad soil that you may find of use.
Call Before You Dig
She also mentions that you need to call before you dig any holes. Each area has their own numbers, but the whole “call before you dig” thing is a real deal, and it’s important. You can read about our experience by clicking here (fortunately, we did call before we dug).
The climate
You need to know what grows in your area, and what doesn’t.
I would love to have orange trees here, but not only don’t oranges grow here they don’t grow anywhere within 800 miles of here.
As Spice puts it:
It’d be great to have bananas, but it ain’t happening in Missouri. If you google Climate Zones you can easily find maps or interactive guides to find out what climate zone your growing place is in. Plants are rated and advertised by which zones they prefer. I always aim for a plant where my zone (5b) is near the middle of its preferred range, so the occasional but inevitable unusually cold winter or hot, dry summer is less likely to kill my trees. If you’re near a zone border and in a city, go with the warmer zone — cities are several degrees warmer than the countrysides.
Pollination
This one’s massively important for us, especially this year because we lost one of our best polinators at the in-town house with the death of one of our apple trees.
First, Spices’s thoughts then mine to follow:
Here’s one that surprised me: If you plant one apple tree, or a half dozen of one variety, you’re likely to get no apples at all. Some fruit and nut trees require cross-pollination, and other members of the same variety are too genetically similar to fertilize one another. If you can only plant one or a couple members of a species, choose one that is self-fertile. That’s easy for peaches and cherries, but limits the selection of apples quite a bit.
Of the ‘good eating’ apples, I know of only one (Golden Delicious) that’s strongly self-fertile. It’s also good at pollinating nearly any other apple, so I’ve planted several.
Shopping
We’ve been shopping for another Golden Delicious for our in-town orchard, and I expect we will pick one up when she declares the time is right.
How sure am I this is going to happen? When I get done writing this article, I’m going to go get a gallon of gas and mix up some two-cycle gas/oil for our powered post-hole digger. We run it dry in the fall and it’s time to fire the thing up for the year.
Permanent food plants are a critical prep
It may seem like we spend a lot of time and effort talking about fruit trees and perennial food growing plants.
It seems that way because we DO talk a lot about them. For good reason.
There is very little in the prepping world that can give you as much food security as perennial producing plants, especially ones that require very little maintenance. There’s so many ways you can preserve excess fruit and berry production that it just makes sense to load up your yard with edibles.
The best thing about planting perennial edibles is that they are not only a prep for if the Stuff Hits The Fan but they are something you get to enjoy each and every year.
Give it a try! Even if you don’t go “whole hog” start by planting SOMETHING this year. Once you start, make it a habit. It will pay off in both good times and bad.