Dreaming of our new yard…

One of the many new, fun things we’re going to do with our new yard is to create an area for multiple fruit trees. I’ve been researching a technique called Backyard Orchard Culture, and I think we’ll implement that since we don’t have too much room in our yard. Backyard Orchard Culture is basically a high-density planting guide. You can plant 2, 3, or 4 trees (of similar types of fruit) in ONE hole! Not only does it keep the trees from getting too tall to harvest fruit from, it saves you so much space in planting area.

One of the areas that we’ve gained from the construction in our yard is a terrace on our hillside that measures 3 feet wide by a little longer than 25 feet long. Backyard Orchard Culture seems to ask that you plant the trees in an 18″ hole (in a triangle pattern for three trees, one in each corner for four trees), and have each 18″ planting hole spaced about 30″ apart. So, doing my rusty math, it seems we can get maybe seven planting holes for our little orchard. With most spaces being planted with three varieties, that is a LOT of fruit trees! I’m really hopeful that this will work for us.

Doing some research, I’ve found different varieties of fruits that have low chill requirements (necessary for southern california!). For apples, we’ll try these three varieties: Dorsett Golden apple, Fuji apple, and Pink Lady apple in one hole. They each have successive ripening times, too, so with luck we’ll harvest apples from June through the Fall! Next, we will try two pear varieties in one hole: Hood pear and Floridahome. We need both varieties for pollination. Then, we have a planting hole for peaches and nectarines: one Double Delight Nectarine, one Donut (Stark Saturn) Peach, and one Red Baron Peach. These all ripen around the same time, so hopefully people will help us out with eating them up. 🙂 Next we have plums and apricots: one Goldkist Apricot, one Santa Rosa Plum, and one Burgundy Plum all in one hole. Then we have a hole for three cherry varieties: Royal Lee and Minnie Royal (both needed for pollination), and Stella.

So far that is five planting holes, and FOURTEEN trees. Wow. We have room for some more, so I’m not sure if we’ll leave that open for maybe some of our citrus trees, or if we’ll space out our orchard a bit more and give each bunch of trees a bit more room to breathe…we’ll have to see. It’s still in the planning stages, but it’s getting close to a reality. Pretty exciting!