Welcome to your support group where we all help feed each other’s addiction
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But the kieffer is such a polarizing variety, I had to know for myself! Honestly I’ll probably graft that one into a multi variety tree at some point.
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Takes us about a half a day to mow. About 15 acres though. Just don’t overcrowd your trees. Each tree needs a certain amount of space regardless of what we do.
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Reminds me of a conversation that went like, if I had to do it all over again, what would I do differently.
Hmmmmm, when the kids all move out and I’m 65 and wife and I both have a hard time pruning 100 trees and no way to eat all those apples. I sure wished I had just 10 really good producing trees that are well kept.
Sort of like Beekeeping and Beehaving.
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Oof… If I spent half a day mowing it would be to make hay or straw as an additional crop.
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Definitely. I’ve spent just enough time helping out on a proper orchard with hundreds of trees to appreciate the 8-foot high backyard dozen
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Love Kieffer!
I grafted over mine, but the grafts never fruit, only the stock
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Surely, 1/2 acres can fit more trees , if you let the forum members to show you how🤣
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Same as you…but got rid of landscapers long ago.
One tidbit of advice. If you have snow and they spread salt and chemicals…be careful how close you plant a tree to the road. I have a white peach that is pretty sicky and is just a few feet from the road. It picks up salt from the snowplowing truck. Still produces fine, but it struggles. It is about 11 years old.
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Beautiful…I’m jealous!
What are the mounds of dirt for?
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I’m not really a tree or garden person. Just want the food. Gave up garden after 12 years. Overgrown with weeds. To do gardening good you have to be a slave to it. But I am successful with low maint fruit trees…as long as I only keep survivors that do well on their own.
If a drought, I may give water. But after established, and some fertilizer, that is it. I may prune a little if needed. The trees grow and produce or they get replaced. If I had tons of room would not care. But I’m a 2/3 acre orchardist with 30 something trees in every available spot. I even had a few in the neighbor’s yard. Asked and he said OK. But they didn’t do well. Odd types of fruit to experiment with. I should have sued tried and true trees.
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Those are piles of wood chips from the pine trees we cleared from the site, you can see the stumps we left high for the excavator to remove (979 trees removed). Those piles of wood chips got moved to a single large pile, along with wood chips from the county, and they were used for mulch around the trees, as seen in the second pic.
How can you grow so many figs and never eaten a fresh fig? OK, I get it they are babies. But why grow so many and you don’t know if you like fresh figs?
That is what I miss about L.A…the fresh figs. In the Rustbelt they are $1.29 - $1.49 EACH for crappy Brown Turkey figs.
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because I enjoy it. I’m excited to try all of the varieties when I get fruit but growing figs from cuttings is quite a magical experience for me and it simply brings me joy in of itself. I have 2.25 acres so its not like I’m lacking for space and the less lawn I have to mow the better. I keep reading the flavors are so unique for different varieties, and each cutting is like $5 so why not?
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Stark Bros say: “Semi-dwarf orchards today have densities of 123-311 trees per acre at spacings of 16’ x 22’ to 10’ x 14’. Dwarf orchards are planted with spacings as tight as 2’ x 10’, but more commonly 4’ x 14’ and up to 7’ x 16’ for densities of 388-777 trees per acre.
So it depends how much landscaping plants you already have or how many paths you have created in between to served these trees, but I feel you: I started planting in 20’X20’, now I’m at 10"X10” and last year, I channeled my Johnny Appleseed [I live in Wisconsin after all!] and I planted 2 beds of pips with close to 30 trees in each. I must transplant these this year. I will have to plant them in the forest after I graft them.
I’m also planning to deepen my little duck pond [yes, by hand, with a homer pail] and get at least 2 batches of meat ducks. [Well, I need fertilizer now, and its’ not the 23 chickens that can give me enough!].
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I bet the pond sludge makes rich fertilizer. 
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Sounds like you’ve got a lot of cool stuff going on!
One could absolutely plant many more on a 1/2 acre, but I’m lucky enough to have two separate detached two car garages, plus mature Doug firs to the east and mature elms to the west and south. I planted some native shrubs on the north fence plus a red oak. I also need to leave room for the inevitable replacement of my sewer line to the septic, plus a little room for parking excavators and boats and such 
So really the fruit trees are kind of wound in a line around the shops and the house where there’s spots of decent sun.
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