Planting an orchard - choosing the right fruit trees
Got a plum place for your new orchard or will it turn out to be a lemon?
The first thing to consider before planting an orchard is whether you really want one. Do you have enough space to dedicate? Would you be better off with a few trees planted round an open lawn? What will you do with the excess fruit if the crop is successful?
If you do have space for an orchard then the aspect and degree of shelter will make a lot of difference to its success. A sheltered, south-facing slope is ideal, in order to aid drainage, protect the buds from the wind, and help the fruit to ripen. Other location factors are also helpful, if achievable. If your orchard is accessible to a tractor, then it is that much easier to spread manure round the trees. If it is close to the house, it is easier to supervise and thus prevent scrumping.
If you have a predilection - say you adore plums - then it obviously makes sense to have plenty of plum trees. However it must always be remembered that a high proportion of the yield from a large orchard cannot be consumed immediately. It must be stored, preserved, given away, or sold. Unless you wish to engage in a commercial venture, or unless you are prepared to get heartily sick of a particular kind of fruit, then you are probably best off with a mixture of trees. It may also make sense to try and grow a tree which is not well represented in the area so that bartering is a more practical proposition.
We have just (in February, an ideal time of year) planted forty fruit trees at our home in the mountains of central Italy. It is too cold to grow lemon and orange trees unless they are put under cover in winter, but we have made a grand mix of apple, pear, plum, greengage, cherry, apricot, peach, nectarine, fig and pomegranate trees. We were advised by the garden center where we bought the trees to plant them randomly since some parts of the ground may suit some kinds of tree better than others but this is not predictable. Apparently cross-pollination is not something which needs to be considered.
The plot chosen for an orchard would, in an ideal world, be a rectangle. This allows for neat rows and controlled distances from one tree to the next. In practice this is rarely possible. Our own plot is a sort of rhomboid, but we have nonetheless managed to achieve regular rows. The distance between trees we have set at five meters, rather more than suggested by the garden center, but more sensible for future cultivation and mowing with a tractor.
The preparation of the ground is important it you are to achieve the highest possible yields. In our own case, three-year-old cow manure was ploughed into the ground first. The holes were dug with a mini-digger which then smoothed the ground round afterwards. Hefty stakes were cut, sharpened, and driven into the ground, and the trees were tied to them by mean of elasticated plastic-covered twine. The expert who tied the trees subjected each one, as he went, to fairly vigorous pruning, rather to our horror since the plants seemed small enough as it was.
An orchard is not particularly attractive when first planted. It has a certain neatness, but it requires imagination to visualize the trees covered in leaves, blossom and then finally fruit, and the soft grass underneath. It is for the future that one engages in planting an orchard.
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