The internet was in need of orchard harvest time schedules, calendars, guides, or charts for USDA growing zone 4. So I made one. This shows the approximate harvest date / ripening time for your home orchard or backyard orchard produce grown in USDA Zone 4.
Tree and Shrub Orchard Harvest Window guide for Zone 4 Minnesota & Wisconsin:
May: Ramps. Rhubarb (thru Sep). Foraging… Dames Rocket. Garlic Mustard 2nd year (1st white flowers in the woods). Black Locust flowers (other parts toxic). Ostrich Fern fiddleheads. Wintercress aka Yellow Rocket (distinguish from native look-alikes).
June: Juneberry aka Saskatoon. Goumi Berry. Strawberry. Honeyberry. Black Walnuts if picked green without shell. Sweet cherry.
July-Aug: Earliest Plums and Cherry plum. Early Seaberry. Forage… Stinging Nettle.
August: Peach. Apricot. Most hybrid & Japanese Plums. Early pear. Mid Blueberry. Michigan Huckleberry. Buffaloberry. Forage… Amaranth.
Aug-Sep: Fall Raspberry (“primocane”). European Plum. Early season apple. Hardy kiwi. Elderberry. Late Seaberry. Hazelnut. Cornelian Dogwood.
September: Late Pear. Aronia (early Sep). Hawthorn. Siberian C (specialty) Peach. Grapes (e.g. “prairie star”).
Sep-Oct: Mid apple. Crabapple. Quince. Shagbark Hickory nuts. Butterheart aka Buartnuts (in WI not MN). Lingonberry 2nd crop (hangs thru Christmas).
October: Late apple. Pawpaw. Apios americana (throughout summer). Nannyberry (fruit soft at leaf drop, hangs dry into snowfalls). Black Walnut (can collect to process later). Early Chestnuts. Limited set of early Persimmons.
Oct-Nov: Northern Pecan.
November: “Early-to-Mid-Season” Chestnuts produce some years. Medlar. Highbush Cranberry (fruit hangs thru Feb). Forage… Garlic mustard 1st year rosettes (green until Thanksgiving like motherwort). Note: invasive Buckthorn seedlings hold green leaves Nov 01 thru Nov 10 after natives drop leaves, easiest time to pull.
December: Eat the Medlar.
January: Highbush Cranberry.
Notes:
Foraging above means eating “weeds” that weren’t intentionally planted.
Annuals calendars:
The internet really needs this kind of document for each USDA growing zone. It’s not something found in a general-purpose book on Amazon because the publisher wouldn’t dedicate 10 pages to lists where 9 of 10 pages don’t apply to each consumer. A nursery wouldn’t have this because the varieties wouldn’t be coming from just one nursery – invasive weeds, the perennial rhubarb, and natives are in there with cultivated trees.
Before planning your orchard or garden, learn what type of septic you have and where it is. Upper Midwest septic tanks often have septic “drain fields” aka “septic leach fields” that occupy 1200 (30 * 40) square feet of yard; only lawn grass (not even prairie plants) can be planted over it per design.
You could spend a whole 1-2 years preparing, maybe growing some early-producing fruit shrubs in containers set into the ground while you prepare.
In the year before planting:
Examine sunlight patterns across the months.
Call 811 to have underground utilities marked. If not in busy spring season, ask them to take extra time to be more precise and estimate utility line depth. Photograph the paths. Digging with foot shovel or adze can pierce a gas home service line. So can fenceposts being pounded down.
Take lots of measurements of your yard from fixed objects visible both in summer and in snow, including to the utility lines.
Draw a scale layout of your yard and orchard on graph paper or diagramming software. Also draw underground utilities and any septic systems on your map.
Fell or trim trees that block sunlight.
Fell trees nearing end of life that would be harder, costlier to drop after new fruit trees are growing in the direction they need to fall.
Examine your soil composition and lean how to augment it following instructions from orcharding books or local experienced gardeners.
Examine your soil nutritional characteristics using test kits and instructions from orcharding books.
Buy an orcharding reference book and read it because each variety of plant has specific pruning needs that you will need to reference. Each has diseases and disease interactions with other plants.
Cottontail rabbits on snow can slip through the spacing of many deer fences up to 4’ above ground, so you will need chickenwire or “hardware cloth” sometimes sold as “rabbit wire” to stop them if you use tree cages or a fence.
Tree cages for a few trees or scattered trees can be nice. Tree sleeves 5’ or 6’ can be nice out in a wild setting for trees growing tall. Plan to seal tree cages in a way that can be re-opened for pruning, e.g. by 2-3 ties of wire on top, middle, bottom around a fencepost. You could build tree cages on the floor of your garage as early as Jan-Feb.
For a home orchard with a dozen trees pruned to stay low at a height within reach of a stepstool or small ladder, the orchard tends to need a fence to 8’ to stop white tailed deer. Though their shoulders are only 4’ high, for fruit white tailed deer raise their neck and go on their hind legs or jump. Example building instructions: pound steel 8’ (or better 10’) T-posts 2 to 2.5 feet into ground (about 25% their length is standard depth for posts). Lash additional non-biodegradable (e.g. metal) garden posts to the T-posts as an extension to complete posts standing a finished height 8’ above ground. Run fencing around the lower ~6’. Run wire at 8" to 12" intervals around the extension’s top 2 feet. To dissuade rabbits from burrowing under, consider an extra 1-2’ of chickenwire laid as a carpet around the outside of the fence (they tend to give up if they cannot dig just in front of the fence) or bury 8-12" deep along the fence.
Other notes
In the 2020’s it’s common for new home orchards to use a battery operated pole saw to maintain the height of fruit-trees within reach of a step stool or small ladder or just arm’s reach.
Semi-dwarfing rootstock combined with late March pruning (see a reference book for pruning times) tends to work better than dwarfing rootstock in a Zone 4 home orchard setting for controlling height, if higher fruit yield and tree vigor is desired. (Dwarfing rootstock is acceptable if low maintenance is a primary concern.)
Nuts in zone 4’s cold are susceptible to delayed graft failure, so the U of MN recommends cuttings or layered clones.
As the orchardist, you are allowed to choose what shape you want your trees:
