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After many years of growing our gardens & orchard thanks to Stark Bro’s Nursery, I’m pleased to announce that I have partnered with them this growing season. I’ll continue to share content about growing your own food, but now some of those plants have been provided by Stark Bros. Links to Stark Bro’s Nursery are affiliate links. Your price and shopping experience remain the same, but I will receive a small commission for any sales generated.
When planning our orchard at our new property, we knew we wanted to space out our fruit production over many months. With careful planning, we have selected fruit tree varieties that will provide us with harvests during 5 months of the year.
Pollinators
When choosing fruit trees for your backyard orchard, you need to be mindful of which trees will require a pollinator for fruit production. Pomes, such as apples and pears, need specific pollinators. Stone fruits often do not require a pollinator, but you will get better yields with one.
When selecting pomes, make sure you select at least two varieties that are compatible with when they bloom in the spring. Trees can have similar bloom times but different harvest times.
Purchasing Your Fruit Trees
Once you’ve decided on which trees you’d like to grow, the next step is purchasing your fruit trees. While all big box stores carry a limited number of fruit tree varieties, your best option for creating an orchard is purchasing bare-root trees from a reputable nursery, such as Stark Bro’s Nursery.
By selecting bare-root trees, you have a much wider variety of fruit trees than you’d find at the store. You also receive your trees in a dormant state, so you can plant them as soon as the ground is workable. For me, that is late March.
Choosing Fruit Tree Varieties
We are in Zone 7A in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We are in an area that has 4 seasons, with around 1700 chill hours. Not all fruit trees are compatible with all growing areas. If you visit Stark’s website, enter your zip code, and their site will let you know if the trees and plants you are looking at are able to be grown outdoors in your area.
Varieties We Are Growing in our Backyard Orchard
Cherry Varieties
We have opted to grow bush cherries on our property. They are pruned to under 7′ tall and grow in a raised bed. We have two Juliet Cherry bushes. This is their third year, and based on the number of buds on them we will get our first sizeable harvest.
Plum Varieties
Some plums require pollinators so we were very selective when it came to selecting a plum tree. We visited a local farm stand that sells plums by variety so we knew the flavor profiles before selecting a tree. Our decision was a Santa Rosa plum. Last year, we got quite a few plums and I’m hoping for a proper harvest this year.
Pear Varieties
We have two pear trees in our orchard because pears do better with a pollinator. We have a Bartlett and a Moonglow pear. This will be our third year with the pear trees, and it is the first time they have both flowered. We are excited to see if the trees produce fruit this year.
Peach Varieties
Peaches are one of my favorite fruits for fresh eating, but also for canning. I prefer yellow flesh, freestone peaches for canning and baking. Freestone varieties tend to mature later in the season than clingstone varieties, but I’m okay with waiting. We grow Hale Haven and Early Elberta peaches.
Apple Varieties
We have more apple trees than any other fruit trees on our property. We eat fresh apples, but I also can applesauce and apple butter, plus make hard and sweet cider. Having a variety of apples growing on our property allows us to enjoy a variety of flavor profiles from August through November. We grow Gold Rush, Gala, Liberty. Red Delicious, Cortland, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, and Braeburn apples.
5 Months of Fruit Production in the Orchard
Our orchards start producing in July and we are harvesting something regularly through November. That’s five months of fruit production in the orchard.
- July Harvest – Santa Rosa plums; Juliet cherries
- August Harvest – Gala apples; Bartlett pears; Early Elberta peaches
- September Harvest – Hale Haven peaches; Moonglow pears; Honeycrisp, Cortland, Liberty & Red Delicious apples
- October Harvest – Braeburn and Granny Smith apples
- November Harvest – Gold Rush and Pink Lady apples
Adding to Our Orchard
This year, we are adding a variety of potted citrus trees that will be outdoors among the orchard during the nice weather and will be moved once it gets chilly. This year, we added the Gold Rush apple, which is one of my favorite apple varieties for fresh eating and preserving.
We are planning for the future of the orchard as well since we have only been at this property for four growing seasons. I am still working to get things just the way I want them.
I would love us to get to six months of orchard production. To do that, we would need to add fruit varieties that harvest in June since not much can be harvested in December in our agricultural zone (the exception is citrus if we bring them indoors once temperatures drop). For a June harvest, we are considering Goldcot apricot or a Spring Satin Plumcot, and we have enough space in our existing orchard for one more stone fruit tree.
Do you grow fruit trees on your property? I’d love to hear about what varieties you grow and enjoy. Let me know about them in the comments, or tag @HomegrownHuston on Instagram to share!
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