Fruit Trees

[kareid]

I want to plant fruit trees in my oddly triangular side yard.  I'm angsting about how many and what sizes.  I want apple trees and maybe a pear tree.

The space is a right triangle with the top tip cut off. It's about 23' across the base, 23' up the left side to the broken tip, 7' across at the flat end, and then has a long angled side back to the

Comments

[lakmiseiru]

The one thing to watch out for (that you doubtless already know) is the likelihood of dwarf trees going semi-dwarf. We planted some pears that should have been dwarf, but they grew up to about 15-20' tall, while the dwarf apples stayed dwarf. Just something to keep in mind in case you've not run into this yourself. You could also consider two semis in the back and a dwarf in the front, especially if it's of a different type - that might get you a somewhat layered look, which could be nice. Otherwise my personal inclination would be to go with the semi-dwarfs (though make sure you have a way to pick them), since you've made the investment to stay for a while.

[kareid]

I think I may be leaning towards two semis now, though I think it means no pear tree for now. I'll probably get a Baldwin and something else. I'm looking at fedcoseeds.com/trees.htm and they have about 10 M111 semi-dwarf varieties. I have a ton of ladders around the house, which I think will be fine for picking even if they're not orchard ladders. And maybe if the apple trees go well I'll get ambitious and espalier a pear on the fence or something.

[balmy_fool]

Do you want to be able to use the space underneath the tree? Full-dwarf trees are super-easy to pick, but you can't use their footprint for much else. My dad recently switched his orchard to all full-dwarf rootstocks. The only issue that we've had is the trees getting too heavy with fruit for their stunted limbs.

[kareid]

That is an interesting point. I hadn't been thinking much about how high the bottom branches would be.