If you have space on your property, an orchard makes a wonderful addition. Besides their inherent beauty and the plentiful fruits they produce, they offer a range of benefits to your land and the natural world overall, including providing pollinator habitats, reducing stormwater runoff and sequestering carbon.
So how do you start one?
It’s not expensive – it really just requires a small financial investment. But you will need to invest a lot of time and labor.
The first thing you’ll want to do is choose a site on your property that features well-drained, fertile soil and gets a lot of sun. Definitely avoid areas that are exposed to high winds or tend to act as “frost pockets.”
Next, assess your climate and which trees are best suited for your area. If you’re not sure how to do that, speak with representatives of a tree nursery in your area; they should know what kind of trees grow the best in your locale.
Then the fun begins: start buying trees! You’re going to want to order young trees, not seeds. Seeds will grow into fruit trees, of course, but they won’t necessarily have the exact characteristics of their parent plants. So, if you want to ensure that your orchard has top quality Honeycrisp Apples, buy a young Honeycrisp Apple tree, not a Honeycrisp Apple seed.
Also, be aware of when your fruit trees will flower. You don’t want to plant early flowering trees on south-facing slopes. That could cause them to bloom too early and then lose their flowers to a late frost.
Once your trees are in the ground, then it becomes all about love and care. For three-fourths of the year, you’re going to be busy, watering, weeding, fertilizing, mulching, pruning and, of course, harvesting your fruits. During the winter, things slow down considerably – basically all you’ll have to do is a little pruning here and there.
But don’t let the amount of work dissuade you. Maintaining a fruit orchard is an incredibly fulfilling hobby. I maintain a large orchard of plum, apple, pear and cherry trees on my 100-acre farm in Ancaster, which is a historic little town in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, and nothing is better than just wiling away the hours, in the late afternoon sun, inspecting my plants, trimming an errant branch here or there, checking on the growth of a new sapling.
Somehow, it’s both relaxing and stimulating, all at the same time. And, best of all, me and my family have an endless supply of fruit – home-grown fruit, with flavors more vibrant than anything you could buy in a grocery store. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve let someone sample a cherry or plum grown on my farm and they’ve remarked how my fruit is the best they’ve ever tasted.
That makes the toiling in the orchard all the more worth it.