my worst mistake was planting a gorgeous fig outside a cabin I was renting.
I still have a propagated piece of it growing but it broke my heart to leave it. we own this tiny patch but I still worry whenever I plant anything, what if I have to leave one day?
also I still make the mistake of putting things too close together and end up with chaos by the end of leaf and fruiting season in both the trees and the garden. at least I enjoy pruning
oh and planning pineapple mint because my partner came to the nursery with me and it was what he picked out. he doesn’t get to pick things out anymore. it’s taken over a very large area I could be using for food or something- he doesn’t even like mint tea OR pineapples
The biggest mistake many make is not growing more sooner. Many have an aversion to taking chances. The key mistake is not using this year right now. There is no better time than now to do something. Many say yes but I’m to late to plant but plant anyway even if it’s rootstock. They say it’s to hot to graft but keep grafting. They say i missed the sale but buy them anyway. People say they have no money but go dig up wild callery. Do not let yourself make excuses or get discouraged. Keep planting the trees and bushes or garden plants. If you miss watermelon planting season plant summer squash or beans. Didn’t get a chance to graft no problem it’s perfect timing for tbud grafting. We all want you to be successful which requires sometimes failing. Mistakes and failing are a huge part of success.
Ignoring susceptibility to disease. I bought my 1st house, where the former owners had planted some pears and peaches. There were legacy apples as the property had been a farm.
The two pears were killed by fireblight within 2 years. One peach died of I-don’t-know-what. I planted some plums, which gave 1-2 crops then succumbed to black knot. And some cherries, killed by bacterial canker. The apples all lived but insects destroyed most of the fruit.
Now I grown a big home orchard of disease-resistant selections. There’s a variety of apples and pears, and I’ve never seen fireblight here. I also grow figs, persimmons, blueberries, raspberries and mulberries, all of which are trouble-free. But no plums or cherries or apricots, which I’ve learned are a waste of time here.
Yeah I agree. I should have added this above. Initially I tried adding some apples that I love (e.g., Cortland) but are disease-prone. Then I added Liberty and Enterprise (this was the 1980s), which were mostly disease free but still attracted bugs. Now I spray for bugs and manage to grow ~30 different apples that you’d never see in a grocery store.
Using the wrong labels/markers or failing to label period. One of the biggest boo boos I made, that I don’t remember seeing mentioned, though I may have missed it.
“I’ll remember what variety that is” no you won’t, now label it. “I wrote it in a notebook” good, now tag them babies before you lose the dang notebook. “I’m out of metal tags so I’ll put duct tape and label with permanent marker till the tags come in” you better label on multiple mediums and make a permanent tag before the delivery driver is out the driveway when your tag order comes in. It’s unbelievable how fast permanent marker fades when conditions are just right. Maybe you can read some tags from last year, but you let the sun bake it just right, and it’ll fade totally in a couple months tops. I’d like to say I’ve learned, but the last example is from this spring’s grafting. sad thing is, it is my most vigorous pear graft. Thankfully I only grafted 3 varieties, so if I label going forward and keep up with the three candidates till fruiting time, I should know. You’re probably wondering why I don’t just count and see which variety is missing one. Cause dummy didn’t record how many grafts I made of each variety. Moral of the story: Record everything. Tag all with permanent tags. Keep spare tags on hand. Don’t be a dummy. Aluminum tags cost money…but not THAT much money. I’m pretty sure if I totaled up money spent on pots, fertilizer, soil, irrigation, rootstock, scion, grafting supplies, shipping for trades, if we were to be honest we’d factor in land prices cause planting spots ain’t cheap. It would make the cost of a spare pack of metal tags look pretty trivial.
Thinking I could grow a fruit to maturity without a rigorous spray routine. Once I started spraying and saw the fruit growing, thinking I might actually get to eat some before the coons and squirrels. I was wrong
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Biggest initial mistake i made was taking the advice of the local so called experts in regards to which varieties to plant.
This was in the early 1990s, i had just learned how to graft and so proceeded to order scions, from all over the country, of very early maturing apple varieties.
Had i had more experience or better advice i would have known better. The well over 100 early varieties i tried have all gone on the burn pile long ago.
My unique location is far too hot for any of them. However the hot growing season with cool nights, many times weeks of 30 degree day/night differential, makes for excellent apple growing environment.
Just the opposite of the advice i was originally given.
It’s still working for me. My rows are 15’ apart and I let them grow more in that direction and the plums are starting to give me a canopy. It’s about 7-8 years in and I’m still managing them all at 8’ apart, but controlling the height is becoming a little more exhausting as they get more vigorous as they age. However, I love not needing a ladder. And I love being able to fit in many different things. But it is more work pruning. A few dozen would be fine like this, but I have 200+ so it’s a lot of work for one person.
I am putting my centers 15’ apart E-W = 12’ wide for plants + 3’ for walking. I’m probably going to use centers at 11’ N-S (but maybe 10’). It seems like 11’ works easier if I want some plots subdivided for shrubs. I can have say 3 shrubs (e.g. Black Currant) on the bottom filling 12’ E-W, a walkway in the middle, then 3 more shrubs (e.g. Haskap or Blueberry) E-W on the top. If so inclined, I could grow groundcovers or bush beans if there’s extra space in the corners of some plots, but I’m more likely to grow native plugs from seed for my prairie restoration.
Since I’m in Zone 4, my reading of sizes suggests having my plots be 11’ N-S and 12’ E-W with 3’ between rows means I can use the same uniform size plot for a combination of 2 Seaberry/Bush Cherry and 2 Blueberry/Haskap/Currant. This means my trees will be pruned to approximately 11-2 = 9’ for airflow.
i plant my trees touching because i want them tiny
i like the jungle i guess. i enjoy pruning and have to fight myself not to go too far on most trees. only my plum has escaped my wrath.
my front/side yard trees are all less than ten feet apart with maybe one exception and I’ll probably put another one in the “gap”. i don’t want them big. i want little trees i can walk by and look at the whole thing and pick stuff. i have no grass to mow, just early spring whacking in between so it’s not so bad.
i wish I had put in a bigger shade species WAY earlier to shade the house; the black locust my partner put in 20 year ago all have to come down as he planted them basically touching the place. and my shade trees in the west side are all so small still in comparison. it will take a decade for them to cool us the way those awful ones do
Biggest mistake? Leaving too much fruit on a young tree. It took me a while to wrap my mind around stringently thinning until the tree attains size. Of course, that applies to those which tend to over-bear.
I have the same issue. I just hate the thought of taking off so much fruit on the trees when the fruit looks good and not all diseased and or insect bitten. I just have to keep remembering the fruit will get bigger further on in the summer.
I just took off 20 gallons of small apples off just one tree. It still has PLENTY of apples left on the tree. It is a semi-dwarf tree , probably 12’ tall. That one I do not feel bad about thinning it out. Other apple trees I feel sort of bad taking so many off.
I here you. When I worked at WSU there was a strict set of rules for tree management. One of them was NO fruit left on the trees until year 4 and even then only a handful.
Somehow when I started my farm I forgot a lot of the basics, actually I rebelled against many of them! But removing fruit from young trees is a good rule to follow!!
could be a really bad outcome, and probably did, all in all.