Planting fruit trees

[BigBill]

My wife started planting fruit trees from the left over pits/seeds from the fruit. I told her to plant them in large pots with a little manure.(processed chicken manure) By the end of the summer the white peach trees are over 3' tall and planted in the yard now. This has been so successful were going to plant all our fruit trees this way. Of course i lost part of my garden where i plant corn. This is also manure fed were she planted her trees.

I want to plant regular peaches, honey crisp apples, pears, plums and grapes too.

I brought home some honey crisp apples from VT while returning from a hunting trip and the misses made an apple pie with them and it was the best apple pie i ever had. I didn't know what kind of apples they were because the bushel was unmarked. It took me sometime searching to find out what apple they were. The apples are so sweet she uses less sugar in the pie too.

[RaymondDurban]

Home grown fruit always tastes better than store bought.
Here in Florida I have a Navel Orange, Grapefruit, Persimmuns, Mullberry, Blueberry, Blackberry, Pears and a Muscodine grape vine. The oranges and grapefruit always go into the holiday ambrosia pot!

[Rudi]

Well, Em and I have experimented with a few fruit trees .. mostly apples, plums, pears, cherries and peaches. Yes you can grow peaches this far north. We are also trying a few other varieties.. like apricots (but not much chances with those I think), Nectarines we hope and we have a coffee bean and an orange but they cannot go outside. Will never survive a frost.

Grapes are good though.. 3 varieties.. 4 vines. lots of fruit.

Hoepfully we will be successful.

[phildidit]

just bought two apple trees to plant and some blueberry bushes, hopefully we'll have some good fruit in a couple of years.

[Don McCombs]

Bill, if any of the fruit tree and vine seeds that you are starting are from hybrid varieties, the trees most likely will not produce what you are expecting. Most commercially available fruit tree, bush and vine varieties are hybrids and have been reproduced by grafting. If you are starting seed from older non-hybrid varieties, you may be OK.

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

One thing to watch in planting apple trees. In this are we are experiencing problems with a fungus called cedar-apple rust. On cedars it appears as a spongy mass with tentacles, and is mostly harmless to them, but it's spores spread to apple trees causing the fruit to be inedible, and the leaves to have brown spots. Only way to completely get rid of it is to cut all the cedars in a 4 or 5 mile radius. it has resulted in a lot of established apple groves being destroyed in this area.

[TJG]

The genetics in apples are such (I've read) that you can't plant the seeds and end up with the same type of apple. Most of the time a person gets a wild apple that is useless.

As an aside: Johnny Appleseed was popular with folks long before apples were cultivated and bred for eating. At that time apples were used for cider...hard cider, that is. Years later, during prohibition the apple industry tried to promote apples for eating. The slogan "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" was created. Just like the slogan "Coke, the real thing", simply a slogan.

I love my orchards. They are young and I'm just starting to get fruit, apples, cherries, pears and plums. In fact, I just finished fencing in several trees and nursery shrub areas so that the deer and rabbits don't eat everything this winter.

Have fun with your fruit trees. Does anyone know where I can get winter-hardy apricot trees? I'd like a few of them.

Todd

[DanR]

When you started your trees did you dry the seeds first?

[Don McCombs]

What's the best online source for fruit tree seedlings?

[DanR]

Check with your County Agent. They might have some for free.