So I did both. Have a Reed in a mound and a Pinkerton in a raised planter box. Raised box is 28" deep and about 4’ square. I also worked the soil under the box quite a bit. Next door neighbor has planted 6-7 trees, all mounded. They all look good.
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growing varieties or certain fruit trees that doesnt do well for my area. Oddly, they are sold in locally nurseries so i didnt think i would need to do research until i used growingfruits.org and real locals and notes help me understand what to grow and what not to grow.
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@letsski Hmmm. Which do you recommend – mound or raised bed? How high does the mound have to be? Is it easy to maintain a mound or do you have to keep adding soil because it washes away? I placed an order for an avocado tree, and I know where I am going to put it, but I haven’t yet decided how to plant it. Thank so much for your help!
This is maddening. ‘Buyer Beware’ is their motto. They stick varieties in our local stores that dont have a chance! New gardeners and fruit growers don’t realize that. I was one of those once. Im a little more informed now. It takes some research and exposure to info . . . And lotsa time.
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Yes it’s amazing the plants that you sometimes see offered for sale locally. It’s not just fruit trees but ornamentals as well. However, in some ways the worst stuff isn’t things that die in the first year. It’s things like Bing sweet cherries that produce cracked fruit full of brown rot or crape myrtles that die to ground level every Winter and never bloom. You lose years of time thinking " this year it will be great" but it never is.
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Hi, I am far from the expert, but I mounded my tree on about 2 feet of soil - native mixed in with local nursery mix. I just keep adding mulch every year. I got a lot of information from this site: http://www.epicenteravocados.com/ Good luck!
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Figs often do surprisingly well in the Puget Sound lowlands.
Also
Kiwis like the region.
It’s a bit on the cool side, but many varieties are good here.
Not for a small yard though.
Rampant as a Kudzu vine.
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I’d love to know how you irrigate your avocado tree. I’ve heard they require a lot of water. I’ve got a tree coming soon from Epicenter and I’m trying to get the site prepared in advance. Would a ring of 1/4 drip tubing around the tree be adequate? Thank you.
Not paying enough attention to soil vs. medium/amendments. Following advice to plant trees a little mounded has worked well for me but there are trees I planted before I found that out that have sunk over time from the nursery soil compacting more than I thought likely. This combined with digging a big hole and amending heavily has been an unholy trifecta for a few trees. Now I usually clean the roots entirely before planting and very lightly amend the soil in the well only. Sometimes I still dig deep to remove large rocks but never alter the soil below the roots.
The sunken ones I had to clear around the crowns so they can breathe, and then dig out a deeper/further to put some drainage so that it doesn’t flood whenever it rains. Watering well initially + native soil has some younger trees far more established than some I planted years ago, fortunately and unfortunately. Once they get established they take off.
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Hello Adam,
Welcome to growingfruit.org.
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Failure to remove a huge western cedar tree when I purchased my property, had no idea how cedar roots can invade a garden, caused me about 10 years to of mitigating work to do raised beds that rests above cedar roots.
Trying to grow cherries, too much competition from birds and insects in western Wa! Plums much better. Something about this region destroys apricot trees lost two and quit.
Choosing M111 for my first apple trees and then not topping them soon enough.
Should have learned how to graft many years ago!
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Cherries do bad here? I just got a small tree, what problems did you have o.o
Our tree at our last house produced heavily but the fruit were always full of fruit fly larvae. Birds and raccoons also ate many, but there were always plenty left over, just full of “extra protein.”
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What location are you?
If you are in western wa, then you will be disappointed
No way to keep them insect free and if you do not net your trees the crows and squirrels will take them. Much cheaper to buy cherries grown in eastern Wa
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I’m in western haha, right above seattle. I can definitely net them, but jeez are the bugs really that bad?
I have read advice from many experts who suggest digging large holes and amending the soil when planting trees, but recently I have done more research in preparation to planting my apple trees and discovered a controversial method that seems to make sense to me. And in reading the way you describe the “compacting” and sinking of your trees after “amending heavily,” it makes sense to me that the compost and other amendments will break down after a few years causing the trees to settle lower in the hole and “sink.” I think I will follow the advice which says to dig the shallowest hole necessary, spread the roots out like the spokes of a wheel, and then “mud the tree in” with backfill–without compacting the soil too much–and only mix compost into the top 2 inches of soil before covering the soil with a woody mulch “donut.” (The donut being a thin 2" layer of mulch near trunk, increasing depth to 8" to 10" on outside diameter to help hold water, prevent weeds, and to develop the mycorrhizal fungi nutrients the trees will need.) If I begin digging the hole and see a large number of big (fist-sized) rocks, I will likely dig a bigger hole to remove those rocks, but then fill it back in, and mud it in, until the hole is at the desired depth again for planting. The whole idea with this “controversial” method is to get the roots spreading out from the hole, away from the trunk to develop a strong anchor, searching for mycorrhizal and other nutrients not far from the surface, while also growing roots deeper in search of water and the lesser amounts of nutrients down below.
I am told that high PH levels are common here in Montana and my soil will need iron fertilizer and sulfur to reduce the PH level and make nutrients more readily available to the trees. And I am also told those amendments will have to be done on a yearly basis–from the surface–and so I believe there is no amendment that is necessary or possible prior to planting this spring.
I plan to follow the same strategies when planting my honeyberry plants, and to provide drip irrigation for all in order to establish strong root systems and the best conditions for success.
All that being said, I may sound a little over-confident, perhaps, but how else does a fellow take a leap of faith and still sleep at night without such a good dose of optimism? 
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Taxes and earthquake got old and boring. So, we added forest fires, hazardous air and water scarcity now 
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If you don’t look too closely you might not notice them, but yeah the SWD fruit fly fills basically any unprotected fruit with larvae right before it ripens. Here’s info from the Seattle Tree Fruit Society about it:
Not really funny . . . . but you ‘made me laugh’!
My husband read me a statistic yesterday . . . U Haul published the numbers of people coming and going from different places. Oddly enough - Tennessee was the state where the most people were headed. (huh?)
And guess which state had the most numbers of people LEAVING??? (you got it!)
It’s such a shame. CA is such a beautiful place. But people are leaving in droves, because of all of the things that we mentioned. Where, in CA, are you?
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For cherries if the insect pressure (SWD, cherry fruit fly,etc.) is high you will need to spray an insecticide to control them. Which is exactly what commercial growers do.
As an organic alternative you could spray Surround which is type of kaolin clay that then forms a coating on the fruit and protects it from egg laying. Bagging individual fruits is not really practical for cherries. Some people have bought large protective fine mesh bags and bagged entire trees. There is actually a forum thread about doing this.
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