The post below is from a survival forum. They lifetime banned me years ago, but I still read it once in a while. The thread was called:
Are fruit trees worth it when building a homestead?
The importance of this is to show how you can get good and bad advice from people. Before I started to grow fruit trees in 2008, I was discouraged from growing fruit trees from online advice I received in 2007. I was told you have to do this and that or no fruit. You got to spray all season or no fruit and on and on. I almost never started with the trees; I had given up before I even started.
But one day I figured just give it a try and I bought 3 fruit trees and am glad I did. I didnât know what I was doing. The bare root trees I bought from Willis Orchard didnât turn out well. But the 4th overpriced tree I bought at a local nursery ($60 apple in 2008) did and I still have it after 17 years.
After 12 years of tree growing, I gave up my garden. It is too much work, and you have to be a slave to it in my local. Iâve settled on +/- 42 fruit trees for my home orchard. And if I had acreage, I would have many more trees. Especially apricots that may only produce every few years on Z6.
Here is that personâs post responding to Are fruit trees worth it when building a homestead?
Savage30L wrote:
Iâve raised fruit trees off-and-on for 50 years, and regularly for the last 25, and I do well with them. So here are some general observations:
1) A lot of people become seduced by the idea of producing their own fruit, only to be defeated by the amounts of hard work, and knowledge and skill, that are required. If you want to grow tree fruit, by all means, make a serious effort to learn everything you can, before you buy and plant. Each tree requires many hours of labor each year, for pruning, spraying, and thinning of fruit. If you canât, or wonât, commit to that labor, skip the trees.
Here, for example, is a photo of todayâs fruit tree chore:
Itâs about 3 gallons of tiny peaches that I thinned off of one tree. There are probably at least 2000 peaches in that bucket, and each one had to be evaluated and then pulled off by hand. It is a tedious chore and took me about 2 1/2 or 3 hours today, and it gets harder every year, as I have arthritic hands. And each tree usually requires 3 or 4 rounds of thinning. But they must be thinned in order to size well; youâll want nice, big peaches (or apples, etc), not ping-pong-ball sized fruit.
Here are a couple of pictures of some of my peaches, from seasons past:
Pruning takes time, and youâll have to prune year 'round for best results. Adds up to a good number of hours per tree per year. Pruning fruit trees properly is an acquired skill, and an art, and itâs best to have an expert show you how.
Spraying, likewise, is necessary (unless you are raising native fruits like pawpaws or persimmons). You have to spray on a schedule and adhere to it religiously. Where I live, the wind picks up as soon as the sun gets above the horizon, so I have to spray at the crack of dawnâŚwhich takes some self-discipline. I have to spray approximately weekly from sometime in March until about 2 weeks before harvest, or until the 1st of August, whichever comes first for any given tree.
2). You wonât save money over buying fruit in the storeâŚeven without counting the value of your labor. There is no way for a home gardener or homesteader to achieve the economy of scale that can be exploited by a commercial grower, and the organized wholesale-and-retail distribution system. And, if I value my labor realistically, my tree fruits would probably cost me something like $20/pound to produce!
The real reasons to raise tree fruits, are, firstly, that you will get better fruit (if you do everything right) than you can buy at the store, and you control which chemicals are used on the fruit. (Most folks have no idea how many chemicals are used to produce tree fruits. Even âorganicâ fruit gets sprayed quite a lot, just with chemicals like rotenones and pyrethrins that can be labeled âorganicâ); and, secondly, to maintain a survival skill. This second reason seems largely lost on the public at large, but I believe most here will appreciate it.
3). If you have decided to go ahead with raising fruit trees, donâtâŚDO NOTâŚI repeat, DO NOT buy your fruit trees from a big-box store, or even a local retail nursery. Unless you live on the west coast, those trees almost certainly will be varieties that are poor choices for most home growers. Invest the effort and time to learn which varieties have sufficient disease tolerance to cope with the fruit tree diseases that are endemic in your area (fireblight and black knot are big problems here in KY), and which are also suited to your local climate. These generally will be cultivars that you will never have seen for sale in a grocery store. Also make sure that you understand the pollination requirements for any variety you consider planting; some cultivars require compatible pollenizers to be fertile. I find that Cummins Nursery in New York is a good choice for acquiring disease-resistant cultivars, especially of apples and pears. I also buy from Raintree out in Oregon. There are some other nurseries that specialize in cultivars for the deep south; the University of Arkansas and Auburn University have done a lot of work developing fruit trees that cope with the disease pressure of hot, humid southern weather, and their extension service bulletins are worth consulting for tips on which varieties to buy, if you live in the deep south.
4). Plan ahead for processing your fruit. If you are successful in producing it, you may suddenly find that you have many bushels of fruit that you must do something with. Think about canning and drying, as freezers fill up quickly.
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A few comments from meâŚ
âIf you canât, or wonât, commit to that labor, skip the treesâŚâ
That is wrong. Sure, if you want to grow perfect fruit, then labor and spray away. The reason I got into fruit trees was I am lazy and hate gardening. Iâve seen abandoned / wild fruit trees when foraging and they do just fine without anyone being a slave to them. They donât produce perfect fruit, but the fruit eats just fine.
I never thin fruit trees. Too much work. That was why I got rid of my donut peach. It did require thinning. I donât get the big, luscious peaches from thinned trees, but I still get luscious, smaller peaches without thinning.
These are the kind of peaches you get with no thinning or sprayingâŚthey are not ping pong size.
The advice they give on not buying from big box stores and local nurseries is not right. But I have found many big box stores can sell mislabeled trees. Mislabeled or not they have worked out fine. It is just disappointing if you buy a white peach, and it is a yellow peach. The mislabeled trees have all been the $24 trees or sometimes a closeout 50% off $12 tree from big box stores.
When you buy mail order you may spend $25 or more just to ship
a mini tree. None of the mid-priced trees from Eastern Shore / Hollybrook have been mislabeled. OK, once in a while the box stores may sell trees that are Z7 instead of Z6. But that has only happened a few times here.
You just have to try things if you got the space, $ and time. Iâve tried a lot of Asian pears. Some produce, some donât. The varieties that donât produce get cut down. I donât have the room for loafers. Over the years Iâve probably had experience with near 90 trees.
This Asian pear is basically wild grown with no work other than harvesting in August / September. Once every few years it may get some water if there is a monthâs long drought. I donât know if it even needs the water, but in 2024 the drought was historic, so it got some water.
That is the nice thing about trees. Once established they generally find their own water in temperate climatesâŚthey are survivalists! And if they are finicky and not a survivalist, the saw comes out.
Apples from tree grown with no spraying or thinningâŚ
I guess the purpose of this post is to tell people thinking about growing fruit treesâŚto just try. Donât let people make you quit you before you even start. I almost did.
