Back yard orchard culture planning!

General Fruit Growing
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I have gotten bits and pieces of information from various sources however the Growing Fruit forum seems to have the most concentrated amount of experience I have seen in my search for information.

We are planning our orchard in 9b south Louisiana. We currently have a Washington Navel, Valencia orange, several banana varieties and several rabbit eye blueberry varieties. We have been assembling trees and orders for the following.

Anna Apple X2
Kindercrisp Apple X2
Ein Shemer Apple
Golden Delicious Apple
Golden Dorsett Apple
Rubinette Apple
Sunshine Apple
Early Grande Peach
Florida King Peach
Orient Pear
Kieffer Pear
Byron Gold Plum
Metheley Plum

Our house is to the west, all other directions are wide open with nothing to block the sun at any point. I plan to keep all trees in the 8-10ft tall range, I read grow a little fruit tree but I think going for 5ft is a little extreme and I would like my scaffolding to be a little higher off the ground.

I am still trying to determine my spacing, I would like the trees to be independent of each other and not grown together like the, 2/3/4 in one hole method. I don’t want to do a hedge either. I was considering 8ft spacing in all directions, or 6ft spacing with 8 or 10ft between rows. I see some recommendations that you can put the plums and peaches closer together but that doesn’t really make sense with the type of orchard this is going to be.

Two concerns I see brought up are first to plant your more vigorous trees on the north side, however with keeping them all topped the same height will that really be a concern? If so, how do I determine who gets the south facing and who gets the north and where to go in the middle.

Second, I see people mention to not keep like types together. I do understand the risk of spreading disease. I do keep most of my garden mostly organic however with these trees I plan to stick to a spray schedule coupled with monitoring. This is a lot of work to let go, and I understand I am reverse zone pushing trying this in the gulf coast 9b and spraying can help me do that.

So we have a bunch of apples on the list for two reasons. My family eats a lot of apples, we love fresh apple juice, that is one fruit that won’t go to waste. I would say bananas come first but you get SO MANY at one time… they are super easy to give away though. Hopefully I get my first bananas at this house in 2026. Second, I want to see what works. Apple trees are relatively inexpensive when they are small and bare root and I am willing to sacrifice the ones that don’t work out and replace them in the future. I am more certain my other selections will work out for my environment.

Last but certainly not least, upon browsing this forum I have discovered seedless muscadines! I bit the bullet and ordered Ohmy and Ohyes. I intend to put them in the back along a fence. I was looking at doing a two tiered espalier type trellis however it looks like most are doing a double curtain. I am not sure how that would work along a fence line, the north side of sun is blocked bit it would get pretty good south,east and west sun.

I am open to suggestions, tips, someone who wants to dig a bunch of holes… whatever advice I can get.

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Strike off the Methley plum. Black Knot magnet. Don’t know what plum to order instead. I’m sure someone will suggest an alternate.

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You gave yourself the best advice i think. I try just about everything that interests me… just because someone on here or elsewhere says you cant or it does this or that… isnt always true everywhere.

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You will read alot of suggestions on what you must do or cant do…

Do what makes sense to you and then go with it.

The above pic is from 39th parallel nursery and orchard in Kansas…advertising a u-pick

Which is kind of what i try to do myself and my goal… except I-pick. Or let friends and neighbors.

I personally like Drews method of pruning for the most part. I dont need 500lbs of fruit per tree myself so smaller more managable trees work for me… but some folks want the opposite which is much easier to manage.

Using Dave Wilson techniques to keep trees small

If you are happy with your list then try them all… you can always delete or add something as you go.

I cant give any suggestions other than to be sure you have enough pollinators if you want to get fruit from flowers… and to be aware of pollination on things that you choose to plant. Also may think about bending some branches etc when the time comes. Final thought is the more trees you plant the more you will have to prune…

No matter how you look at it… its not work if you enjoy it.

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I have one comment about bananas and how you get so many at once.

I love dehydrated bananas!

They are seriously like caramel banana candy.

I will buy them on sale or maybe someone will be giving them away. Ones that usually look past what most people are interested to eat fresh. (i.e. good for baking)

Edit: I forgot to say here, slice them thin long-ways. (No one got time for that coin slice!)
Load up my dehydrator and dry them until crisp.

Put them in zipliock and enjoy as you wish!

They stay crisp for a while, but I never put any oxygen absorber in with the bananas, so they become pliable and chewey.
Delicious, chewey… decently filling if you are looking for a healthy dessert or snack.

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We don’t really have black rot issues down here. No natives to spread it.

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I think I got all the pollinators down. For the orient pear I have the kieffer, for the Byron Gold we have the Methley. I know the Florida King and Early Grande bloom at different times but from what I understand they are good self pollinators. Finding suitable trees has been an issue as many of the peaches offered locally require high chill hours and sourcing them online can be pricey. If there happens to be an oddball in my apple grouping that doesn’t line up with another apple it just needs to go!

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Its not black rot. Its Black Knot. You don’t have wild Black Cherry trees there?

Besides Black Knot its a relatively low quality plum. You can do much better. Santa Rosa for example although its susceptible to Black Knot too.

I type from experience, I’m cutting my Methley down soon.

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Sorry for the typo, black knot, and yes my area does not have native black cherry trees. If I get black knot its coming out, I got it to pollinate the Byron Gold, and honestly if I see a low chill hour variety pop up that is different I will probably grab it to try. Plums are not high up on our list but I do think they make for an attractive tree.

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Your correct to pay attention to the chill hours. I have not had good results with zone pushing.

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So I didn’t get the Methley, I still want the Byron Gold.

I see the AU rosa and Gulf Blaze as other lowish chill hour options locally. I don’t think I can pull a Santa Rosa down here but I see conflicting reports, some say 200 hours, some say 600? . Also Toka, Shiro, Ruby Sweet, Bruce/Early Bruce, Red June, Spring Satin look like suitable lowish chill hours available to me fairly locally.

These trees are pretty young and pretty cheap, so I don’t mind getting a few, I just know nothing about these and the pollination information seems inconsistent across different platforms. The Byron Gold is the one we are after, but variety is also awesome.

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Well, I just now googled “is the Byron Gold plum tree self fertile?”

Not surprisingly I got back “No, the Byron Gold plum tree is not self-fertile” so that was that.

But ironically enough the reply also stated “For example, the Santa Rosa plum is recommended as a good pollinator for the Byron Gold plum.”

One good thing that I can say about the Methley tree that I had for 14 years is that it was a great self fertile pollinator because it was always loaded even though it was the only plum tree that I had. Had some trouble with freezes though. After about 7 years it started having BK and it got progressively worst as the years went by.

Some posters on this forum has had good results with the AU series of plum trees but I have no experience with them.

As for the apples I can honestly say if it was me I would look hard at the website of David Vernon at Century Farms Orchard for information on southern apples. He seems to really know his stuff on low chill apples. I’ve had real trouble with apples in the heat here.

https://www.centuryfarmorchards.com/

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Some sources have the Byron Gold listed as self fertile… Some sources say you can use any Japanese plum, others state you need specific varieties but typically only list santa rosa and methley. I think the information out there is incomplete and it is obviously confusing. Finding apple and pear data was much easier.

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Definitely try things, but if you have low chill hours, picking varieties that need fewer chill hours will be a good plan.

If you plan to keep things small, pay attention to the rootstock for pear and apple. Also, on apple and pear trees kept at 8-10 ft, plan to provide support for the trees (stakes and/or wires). I think most people plant them like a “hedge” to use support wires. Not really because they like the hedge look (though perhaps some do). I don’t know about keeping peach or plum small - so hopefully someone else can talk about those.

I also prefer to have my rows further apart. You can go closer between the trees if you make the row spacing large enough to get through. I probably like more space than most but want to be able to get a big cart through.

I know @scottfsmith has done some tight spacing between trees, but how close together are your rows Scott?

I have heard this too - but I have to spray where I am. Because of that I prefer to keep the same types together so I can spray them all at once and don’t have to worry about hitting the adjacent tree.

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I did 10-12’ between rows.

I did many super tight plantings at the start, things like apples every foot. I got to try a zillion varieties but it’s not a long term plan if you want good production.

If you want to be tight but not requiring extreme pruning I would do 12’ rows and 6’ spacing. This is assuming the apples are on some dwarf or semi dwarf rootstock. Plums and pears are much more vigorous, if you wanted to keep 12’ rows I would do say 8-10’ spacing on them. Peaches can be similar to apples.

If you don’t have enough room you can play pick a winner, plant them twice as close and then remove stuff that doesn’t work out or is not quite as good. I have removed hundreds of varieties. In general orchard planning is not a one shot thing, I would plan to evolve. The only thing hard to change is the row width.

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I like this idea of pick a winner, haha. Makes growing a small orchard more like a game!

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Yes, I agree. Some folks say to never ask two experts on a topic the same question. Too often you will get contrasting opinions.

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You might consider investigating the Auburn University plum releases (AU Rosa, AU Cherry, Au Producer, etc) and the University of Florida releases (Gulf Beauty, Gulf Blaze, Gulf Gold, etc)

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I’d never want to maintain 2 foot spacing!

In the area I have I can get in 25 at 6ft spacing or about 16 with 8ft spacing. I was looking at doing a combo of both with 8ft and 6ft with a wider row in the middle. If i do 8ft spacing there is no more room to go with a wider row, it would be 8ft everywhere. I could do 20 with 6ft spacing and a wider row in the middle, so two rows 6 foot between them, skip a row and then have 2 more rows with 6ft between them. I am also looking at making something look more organic with a mix of 6,7 and 8 foot spacing but I don’t know yet. I wish my yard had gridlines on it.

The plums are frustrating me, and this isn’t suppose to be frustrating. I think I am going to shift my focus and add some Asian pears and a Sam Houston peach to extend my pear and peach season and maybe research plums for next years planting.

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Would apple trees in 9b never lose their leaves and be almost evergreen? So when would they wake up? I could see some problems with that. Supposedly nearly all apple varieties does well in the tropics, so I don’t know.

My high chill Honeycrisp does terrible here. This year it woke up late over a month after the others as it always does. Apparently it pollinated itself. Had a big crop for the first time which all rotted in August. I did not harvest a single HC. Don’t know why that happened. Frustrating.

Yet there are reports that Honeycrisp does really well in Southern Cal.

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Things go dormant here, just much later. The apples are a gamble IMO, one of the reasons I am trying many varieties. I think the biggest challenge after meeting the chill hour requirements is the pest and disease pressure which makes it mandatory to spray and monitor closely. I don’t know this for sure, but I am going to find out, and I can share my experiences here. I might zone push the other way too, A mango or papaya tree in a container rolled into the garage for our “winter” might be in my future.