How To Plant A Mixed Orchard

How to Plant a Mixed Fruit Orchard

TRANSCRIPT (abridged)

Hi, I'm Frankie from ashridgetrees.co.uk, and today I'm going to show you how to plant a mixed fruit orchard. Today is a great day for planting; it's February, a little bit mizzy, but this is a perfect time to plant bare root trees.

So the first thing you need to think about is where you're actually going to plant your trees. To find the perfect site, you want somewhere with really good, drained soil, and you want at least six to eight hours of sunlight a day.

Here is my site, as you can see behind me. What I've done is marked out the area with these old stumps just to show where I want to plant my fruit trees. You want to plant them about 20 to 30 feet apart. This ensures good light that gets to the canopies of the trees.
Make sure that they don't grow too close together so that when they're in full growth, they have room to produce the fruits that you want.

So today, we're doing a mixed fruit orchard, but you can use the same techniques for just an apple orchard, pear orchard, and more.

I've chosen some trees for our family, what we want to grow and what we like to eat. I've got a Prunus avium 'Summer Sun' cherry tree. So these are all half-standard trees, so they're going to grow to be nice big trees. I've got a couple of cherries, a couple of apples, and a pear tree. You can go onto our website, get pre-made fruit tree collections, or select the trees you want using our pollination checker.

Now, let's get planting our trees. What you'll need is a spade, stakes, ties, possibly mulch mats and pegs, some rootgrow, gloves, and a mallet for banging in those stakes.
You may also want tree guards to protect the trees from rabbits and deer.

One of the other things you may need is some extra compost. I've got good draining soil here, so I'll use excess soil to backfill the holes. 

Now I've got my two apples; I've already planted my Bramley, which I will show you at the end, and I've got two eating apples: Katy, which is juicy and fruity, and Cox's Orange Pippin.

Now I've got the trees in place where I want to plant them. I'll dig a square hole, probably twice the size of the actual root, just to make sure I can get all the roots in. You want to dig a square hole instead of a round one to encourage the roots to spread out.

I'm going to take off this top layer of grass and start digging down, and keep the soil that I'm going to backfill. 

You'll see here where the root collar (meant to say graft union!) is, that bit here where it juts out: make sure that you don't put the soil above that. 

I'll dig down deep enough, ensuring the soil covers the roots nicely. I'll place a stake slightly to the side, leaving a gap to tie my tree, ensuring it's level. Now that it's sturdy, I'll plant the tree, give the roots a bit of water, backfill, add root grow, and completely backfill.

I've excellent soil here, a bit rocky in places, but I'll work through it. Now that the hole is deep enough, I'll plant the tree, securing it with a tie for backfilling. I'll add a bit of rootgrow, position the tree, backfill, and water it in.

Next, I'll put the mulch mat on, cutting a slit and pegging it down to secure it in place. Finally, I'll add some tree guards to protect against rabbits.

And there you have it, our first tree planted for our orchard. This is the cherry tree, and we're now going to plant the next ones. It's the same process, and hopefully, I'll speed up the video for you.

As you can see, we now have the whole six trees there, creating a great orchard. You don't need huge amounts of space, but you can definitely plant your orchard. Thanks for watching.