How much fruit are y'all actually harvesting?

General Fruit Growing
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There is no control over weather, and yes I lost my stone fruit crop in its entirety two years in a row because of a spring freeze and a winter -10 dip after a warm spell.

Plum Curculio decimated the full crop of a few trees last year, and brown rot did the same. You will have to figure out what your pests are, and master a control strategy for each.

For nutrients, I strongly recommend sending soil samples to be analyzed by your local extension lab, so that you know what nutritional supplements your trees need.

Finally, you also need a control strategy for big critters: squirrels, raccoons, ground hogs, deer and birds.

Growing fruit trees and getting good crops is not easy.

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22

Our spray for Peaches and Cherry trees is a combo of triazicide spectracide and Captan

23

two gallon of plums, a handful of apples, a few pints of black raspberries, zero strawberries, no peach or nectarine or apricot or pawpaw or pears yet.

tried to plant cherry and they’re sand cherry so no edible ones.

a handful of beach plum, a handful of mulberry

the less productive are all younger trees from 2-4 years. the plum, apples and berries are 4-6 years old

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24

Most of what I grow contributes to squirrel obesity. I nibble on what’s leftover

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25

So very true. Some years a LOT of fruit, other years close to a big nothing. Once the fruit gets ripe then there is a lot of work involved. I have just over 40 fruit trees. Maybe I got over anxious with growing fruit.

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26

I’m just waiting for my own overload… I’ve had a few trees in the ground two years starting on three with this year…

I’ll end up with plums out my ears because I’ve ended up with three plum trees!!

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27

I have six mature muscadines and get a gallon or more off each. A producing 75 Ft row of blackberries in what looks like a batting cage to keep the critters off them and get several gallons of berries. One red haven peach in the yard with a bushel of peaches. Three more mature peach trees and five mature apple and four crab apple, a couple pears - NEVER any fruit due to coons, squirrels, and possums. A couple gallons of figs. A half gallon of elderberries.

If I didnt spray every two weeks, a peach would never live past half grown - at least the spray regimen makes a nice looking peach for the critters to eat

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28

Sounds like what happens to me. The worst part is if you thin it well and it is very tasty. it will get stolen. If it is overloaded, small, and low brix, the animals will leave plenty for you to figure out what to do with it.

I benefit from this with jujubes, as animals only occasionally eat them. When they do, it seems to happen late in the season and at only 1 or 2 locations (I have them planted in over half a dozen). For the last ~3 years, I’ve been getting 300-500 lbs/yr. There are about 100 trees in ground, but a lot of them are young and not yet bearing much, while some trees have produced 50 lbs in a year (some trees of the same age are more like 1-2 lbs). So even without significant animal-related losses, there is a lot of variability.

The first ~5 years, I got almost nothing from mulberries. Maybe 3-5 fruits per year. Now, after another 5 years, I can pick multiple quarts from some of them. Still a lot of losses to birds and squirrels, but at least some is left.

Aside from the 100 jujube trees (which is probably a bit much, but I really like them and kept planting more until I was harvesting enough- a sure way to overshoot, as they mature), I have over 100 other fruit trees (peach, plum, pear, apple, persimmon, mulberry, etc), but rarely feel like I have too much, except when something was under-thinned and produces poor quality. On those times I do have a temporary excess, I give some away to friends and neighbors.

My figs are extremely variable, as I don’t protect them from the cold. So most (but not all) winters kill them to the ground. Any not-killed to the ground will likely be pretty productive. But ones which need to grow back are very dependent on how warm/sunny the year is. If it is too cloudy/rainy, most of the figs don’t ripen (or ripen in October). So rather than expending effort to protect them, I just planted a bunch of varieties in a bunch of locations (some along buildings). So usually something works, but it is a often a different something each year :slight_smile:

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29

My blueberries are my most mature and out of my 5 mature plants, I’m picking a small cup full every day for breakfast and while grazing.

My peach tree are young so I’m getting 2-5 fruit right now depending on when i got them.

A bowl full of strawberries every day when they’re in season. I started these 2 years ago and went from 20 plants to i don’t even wanna count right now.

Raspberries are a cup every day from the beginning of the season until late October from 7 potted plants. I added over 10 more just this fall.

These are just for myself and my daughter + dogs. I’ve had random kids come by every day last year and the years before to pick as well. No idea how much they took along with the birds but i always had more than enough.

Got 3 pears off of my first year pear trees and about 5 feijoa from my 2 small plants last year.

Since i moved back to Washington and got a house, I’ve added over 50 more fruiting shrubs, canes, and trees just this fall alone.

For my passion fruit in the last few years, I’ve been able to ripen about 20-30 in Colorado Springs even with only a 120 day average growing season. Last year, i was moving and didn’t have time to pollinate them so i didn’t get any but this year, i plan on going harder with them.

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30

My Lapins cherry is loaded with small fruit now… and the 5 grafts of montmorency cherry I grafted to it some are in full bloom and some more on the sunny side have bloomed and set fruit already. Looks like a good crop of cherries on the way this year.
Hope nothing wrecks that.

My Mt Royal Eu plum is loaded with blossoms this year and starting to set fruit.

My J plums…I have 2… with 8 total varieties considering grafts added… my shiro plum tree is loaded with fruit… my au rosa I can find no fruit on… grafts of au producer and alderman have several fruit set.

Alderman bloomed last this year after our 3/20 frost… i will be replacing more au rosa branches (no fruit in 3 years earliest bloomer and frost wipes it) with alderman next spring.

I have some real potential for increase in fruit production from just cherries, j plums, eu plums.

TNHunter

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31

If you’re in Albuquerque I highly suggest you look up and follow Edge of Nowhere Farm near Phoenix. They also have a Desert Farmer Podcast on Saturday afternoon. They get amazing fruit production out of their part of the desert, and are fortunate to have plenty of well water.

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32

Thank you for that recommendation! I’m always looking for other desert growers! Being high desert always throws an extra wrench in the mix too.

33

Have 1.3ac, and our fruit trees bring in WAY more fruit than we can consume by ourselves, so much of it is given away to friends and family.

Currently I’d guess there are enough lemons on just my one ~10ft tall Eureka lemon, to fill up the bed of my Toyota pickup almost to the top.

In the ground I have: 28 citrus trees, 7 apple, 8 persimmons, 15 pomegranate, 6 plum/pluot, 2 aprium, 6 peach/nectarine, 4 pear, 4 fig, 1 loquat, 1 quince, 1 banana, 12 table grapes, 10 blackberry/raspberry, 4 blueberry, and many more in pots, plus a vegetable garden.

Some years are good and others are bad, depending on stuff like weather. Last year was hardly any pome fruits, we got a bad hail storm during bloom that killed 90% of the fruits. Year previous was basically no stone fruit due to similar storms.

These days I spend pretty much all my free time gardening, it could easily be a full time job - but I enjoy it.

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34

If your trees are overrun with aphids, you may be feeding them too much nitrogen. That promotes excessive, soft growth that is irresistible to aphids. Get a soil sample tested by your state agricultural university or cooperative extension (this costs very little) and follow the fertilization program recommendation included with the test results.

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35

I’m in my second year trying to grow fruit in high desert St.George, UT. The EdgeofNowhere folks have much better soil and water than I do, but we are fighting almost the same heat and lack of humidity. I’ll be following your posts to see how it’s going for you.

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36

I’ve found that the critters don’t like sour fruit. My English Morello tart cherry is about ten years old and barely up to the 6’ fence now and yet I got 20 and 25 pounds the last two years. I simply plan that for two weeks every spring I spend an hour a morning on them: I go out there and pick a Kitchenaid mixing bowl worth, pit them, and freeze them by the two pound bags towards future large pies. Same with apples: my neighbor’s Granny Smiths are untouched, my 1989-planted Fuji is mostly squirrel food because those have some sweetness months before they’re ripe.

One thing I do for my peaches: I put Erva bunny cages around the trunks. They keep the rabbits from chewing, but they also deter squirrels: to them it looks like their downward escape route ends in a cage and they stay away, which is really funny. I deliberately do not anchor them in the ground: I want them to rattle when a raccoon or possum tries to climb over them. Since I put them in, they don’t anymore.

For my

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37

(Sorry. Got interrupted there.) Anyway, the thorns don’t discourage the critters from the pomegranates but it produces so many that that’s fine with me.

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38

I have 13 trees, 2 blackberry brambles, and 6 blueberry bushes. Only my orange and peach trees and blackberries have produced so far - I try to hold off fruiting until 4th year for the trees and 2nd/3rd year for blueberries.

My orange tree last year gave about 40 oranges - it’s quite small, maybe only 6ft tall. My peach tree fruited for the first time last year and had about 30 peaches that were stolen by neighbors, so that was a bummer. The blackberries produced the first year, but last year in their second year I got probably thousands of blackberries. Didn’t exactly count because my 2 year old (at the time) would go out after daycare every day and pick every ripe berry clean.

This year, I am letting the blueberries fruit and…… boy howdy there are a lot of tiny berries on there. I’ll see if I can upload a pic when I go out later. I’ve got tons of blackberry flowers, I would estimate a couple hundred baby peaches after thinning, and about 5 plums that flowered for the first time this year. I also planted a fig tree this year and heard you can expect fruit year 1, but no idea what to count on for that.

Still not yet at producing age are 2 paw paws, 6 apples, and 1 Frankenstein stone fruit that I am experimenting with grafting on.

What surprised me is the jump in production that comes after the first year or two of fruiting. I removed hundreds of baby peaches when thinning out my tree this past weekend, and the orange tree is completely loaded up with flower buds about to open. Glad I tried to focus on staggering harvest windows!

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39

Hope it was just their kids being kids. If it was the adults, what did they say? Sorry, I thought you planted that for us.

I would have loaded up a potatoe gun with all my rottenest fruit (peaches for sure) and repainted the front side of their house w rotten fruit. This was how as a teenager I always dealt w customers that failed to pay the paper boy (me). I would always repaint the front of their house w dog poop stuffed into the potatoe gun and leave a day old newspaper sticking out of a fresh squished giant dog turd. I pitty the fool I catch stealing my fruit. If I saw them I think I would pitch a fast ball dog turd bare handed at their face just out of reflex. It won’t go well for them for many years….

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40

as a kid in a rural area I ate pretty good in the summer days. mulberries and apples from an abandoned orchard (full of worms but I was a kid and didn’t care), sweet corn from the outside row of a field nearby (that farmer chased us off countless times), and peaches from a neighbor’s tree. he hated us kids at the time but later in life going back to the neighborhood, he told me his wife used to laugh at him, because the tree was loaded and they never were able to eat or process them all.

he was a nice guy, very old the last time I saw him. the tree was long gone, when it stopped making peaches they put in a nice maple tree

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