What Was Your Biggest Mistake Starting Out Growing Fruit?

I’m really not good at pruning, especially my apple. And when I started I was even worse. It is hard for me to remove wood, and I have to keep reminding myself that taking out bad wood makes room for good, getting rid of old wood lets the new grow, and simpler is better. And I grossly underestimated the amount of apples a semi-dwarf apple can produce in a good year, and how much work it can be to keep it maintained.

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I started with trees as close as 1’ apart, but I don’t really call that a big mistake in retrospect… it could have been but what I realized over time is I could remove the varieties I didn’t like as the trees got bigger, and it all worked out pretty good. Occasionally I would have a spot of too many good things so I would have to move stuff, but I did get to try many hundreds of varieties in a small space with this methods. My rows that I had 50 apples in now have a dozen … I went from 1’ spacing to more like 4’ spacing for dwarf apple trees. My peaches were 3’ spaced and now it is more like 6-8’ on average. The only place where my plan did not work at all was on non-dwarf pears and Euro plums, they were too vigorous for really close spacing. Having not enough light plus too close spacing meant I got no fruit.

I also made a great many mistakes, hundreds of them! Probably the biggest mistake I made was planting some things in not enough sun, and not doing enough training (as in limb bending). I believed the DW mantra that I could summer prune my way to success. Well, that didn’t work. Also trying to be 100% organic was a good challenge but in the end I was not able to deal effectively with brown rot.

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While I agree that the idea of grafting can be intimidating to new growers, I would not be worried about killing an established tree by grafting . In fact, I am not sure how you could kill a tree by grafting.

There are several good grafting videos that many people here like. These include the ones done by @SkillCult, @applenut of Kufflecreek nursery and a British man named Stephen Hayes. Watch any or all of these graffting videos, it should help you gain some confidence.

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Those are some of the lies of which I’m referring.

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Another big mistake i made and make is for anything new! I dont care if its a maypop, akebia, or a blue potato i buy it. I get bored growing staples i know work and like to mix it up. Must be a lot of people like me they make money from. Do we really need to grow stevia lol?

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Yah, I’ve bought a lot of new or odd stuff, too. There is a reason it is odd or not grown much!

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@clarkinks, I like growing weird stuff too. It makes of exotic compost, at least. But, things I used to think weird, and people i my world think so, included things like American Persimmons and mulberries, which we love now. And pawpaws, although my trees might never bear again. As for gogi berries, rabbits like the plants. And honeyberries gave the deer salad bar that extra special somethin.

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My biggest mistakes so far have been buying or growing varieties of apples that don’t do well in my zone. I have changed my caging techniques over time as I have seen rabbits and rodents destroy trees that were off to a good start. Trial and error as well as learning from this forum have helped immensely. The best move I ever made was grafting and propagating my own trees.

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Are you saying you found the information on the Kuffel Creek website to be inaccurate?

-mroot

One other mistake that I thought of…I would never order standard size apple trees again. I like the semi-dwarf (M111) which roots well and is sturdy in the wind…but produces at a much younger age.

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Is there a significant difference in fruiting age between standard (such as Antanovka) and M111? I’ve got both but was under the impression there was a year or two difference tops between them.

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That will depend/vary from variety to variety and probably site to site. M111 has been slow to bear for me on most varieties. So has antonovka.

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  1. using landscape fabric under my trees.
  2. Not protecting my trees well enough from deer and elk. Welded wire fencing was too easy for these animals to get through. I purchased several bird nets from American Nettings, and that is working very well with the welded wire cages around the trees.
  3. Not starting with potted trees. I could have picked up several end-of-the-season apple trees for almost nothing, and grafted them the following season to whatever varieties I wanted.
    4 Not planting a vegetable garden while I waited for the fruit trees to mature.
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Why was using landscape fabric under your trees a mistake?

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This reminds me of one of my hundreds of early mistakes… I decided I would plant wildflower seed in the orchard. I was thinking nice 6" flowers, but I got a 3’ high mess. It took a long time to get rid of it as well, the yarrow in particular was stubborn stuff.

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The landscape fabric (the grey stuff, not cheap black stuff) only worked temporarily. Even though I double upped on the fabric, the grass and weeds eventually made their way through. Also, the soil underneath the fabric seemed to compact and become of poor quality. I’ve had much better luck with cardboard topped with mulch.

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Totally agree with landscape fabric. I regret putting it down. It doesn’t let the compost mix with the soil and the edges always manage to work to the surface to create an eyesore.

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This is what i was planning to do next spring, but maybe i shouldn’t. The idea of adding my orchard to what i mow sounds like a lot of work.

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Heh, same here… They’re mostly gone now, replaced with creeping red fescue.

This grass can go un-mowed. Just because there are still a number of weeds mixed with it, I have mowed it once in the spring for 2 years now.

Also has been previously mentioned, not taking deer pressure seriously enough. I now have an electric fence encircling the perimeter and (knock on wood) no problems since.

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Similar experience here. After reading a lot of permaculture materials, I experimented with building some wood chip mulched beds between trees within the rows, and planting flowering perennials. I learned pretty quickly that I need to mow everything very short in the orchard in the fall to keep the voles out. Plus if you don’t actively work those disturbed areas, they get over run with aggressive / undesirable weeds.

I do let the orchard grow as a wild meadow (with lots of wildflowers growing) throughout the summer, because it has its own dedicated space away from my house, but I have to mow it down at the end of the season.

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