All trees are on semi-dwarf root stock. I am pretty set on the varieties that I am planting (already ordered and coming) but I could add one or two if I needed to for pollination purposes (I checked and believe I am good on what I have chosen.)
What I could use advice on is:
1) Spraying cycle � specifically do I need to do anything this fall? Is there a good list of when and with what to spray for a yearly cycle?
2) How should I prepare the ground around the trees (weed control fabric/watering ring/etc.)?
3) What and how much fertilizer to use? I am going to have a soil test done by the RI master gardeners (who will test for pH for free) and then adjust it to ~6.75 for all of the trees. Is there any fertilizer for micro-nutrients that I need to be concerned with? I also heard to use anything but aluminum phosphate to adjust the pH.
4) Am I missing anything? Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
5) Almost forgot - how much water should I be providing for the trees if I put in a drip irrigation system? How many times a day?
-JD

It will really take your trees five to six years to start producing so do not be disappointed. My orchard is going on nine years old and my plums, peaches and apples are finally coming ink in the right size. I still haven't seen a pear but that combo tree only went in five years ago.

On this site your 'go to' people with the best info are Scott Smith, Fruitnut and Harvestman. They seem to have the longest resumes in professional growing. There are many, many excellent backyard orchardists in this forum and I cannot name them all, but they really know their stuff. Email me and I'll send you my spray schedule and where I buy my products. 8 Trees will not take much to maintain. Before ordering (do you know where you'll be ordering from?) ask for suggestions on this forum. A mackintosh needs a pollinator so having two of them isn't great. All you need is one. Hope this helps, Mrs. G

I wonder why you choose Rainier cherry. Do you know anyone who grows it successfully in the east coast? I think it's a west coast cherry. Does it cross pollinate with Black Tartarian? Black Tartarian needs cross pollination.

I am having a landscaper clear and regrade/plant part of the lot that was overgrown with shrubs. He is getting the trees from the wholesaler that supplies Eastern CT/Western RI. I am not sure of the name - he said they supply a lot of the local shops.

The Mackintosh trees were from the previous owners (not our favorite type of apple) but we figured we would try to save them. If they don't produce we would end up getting rid of them.

MaMuang, I choose Rainier because it was available from the wholesaler and it cross pollinates with black tartarian. Also, I like the idea of having the yellow cherries that it produces to add a little color and variety to the fruit we will be harvesting.

Thanks for the feedback I will post pictures once the trees are in.

Personally I love Cummins. I have bought many, many trees from them.

There are a lot of good places to get trees. Here is a link to one discussion: Mail Order Nursery Reviews

I love my landscaper, too, but he does not know anything about fruit trees.

Wholesalers sell fruit trees to Home Depot and Lowe's in my neighborhood. Not all the fruit trees they sell are appropriate for our climate i.e. Bing cherry, They sell it anyway. I feel that Rainer in the east coast is the same as Bing.

If you want yellow cherries, White Gold is a good choice for for it's self-fertile, proven to grow well here and be fruitful in our climate.

I totally agree with buying bare root trees. It's easily established. Once you learn about rootstocks, you can have a better idea how soon a tree will fruit for you.

I bought a potted Honey Crisp, unknown rootstock (I was a rookie back then). It took 7 years to fruit (a bit) and it skipped this year. I have other apple trees that fruit a lot sooner. I learned from my mistake.

Mrs. G is right about being patient. European pears can take a long time (I mean 8-10 years) to fruit. You may want to check out a Harrow Sweet or aHarrow Delight variety. It can fruit in 2nd year and tastes good.

My first big lesson for a home orchard is to select varieties that do a good job of defending themselves against disease and insect damage - and the popular varieties (like the ones this grower is selecting because they were available locally apparently) are usually bad choices. I have collected articles and information over the years that describe varieties that meet these criteria, particularly great heirloom types - think about it, there was a time when no one considered spraying their trees with pesticides.

My second big lesson is that I do not want to purposefully set myself up to have to aggressively spray. Even knowing there are non-pesticide alternatives like Surround, etc., my preference is to minimize my need for action to prevent crisis. I take good care of the things I grow - I improve the soil constantly, I set things up to where I do not have excessive weeds everywhere, I follow what's happening with insects and disease because it is something I like. I am not a commercial grower with everything on a scientific schedule, and I don't want to be. It's a home orchard - I want it to be easy.

I have collected articles and information over the years that describe varieties that meet these criteria, particularly great heirloom types

Will you share your list?

As for the no spray varieties, while I appreciate using less chemicals, I understand that you realistically need some. I am a chemist by day to support my hobbies and I have no problem handling, measuring, and using the proper PPE for this.

This has brought up a question or two:
1 do I order now for a spring ship date? Is earlier better so I get the varieties I want?

2 what suppliers do you use for your chemicals and tools?

Thanks for all the help!

One thing I noticed about VanWell's rootstocks is that most will take a long time to come into bearing. Dwarfing rootstocks not only help the tree stay to manageable size but also improve precocity.

" I think van well nursery will have everything we want with added bonus of being relatively close.".

You are in RI and Van Well is in WA. I would not call that relatively close. Cummins nursery in NY and Adam County Nursery in PA are a lot closer to you. Another nursery in WA I like is Raintree Nursery.

Re. chemicals, it depends on what chemicals you need. Common ones like myclobutanil, fungicide for apple cedar rust, can be bought at Home Depot under a brand name like Immunox.

One of the fungicide I rely on is copper. I use copper hydroxide with a brand called Kocide 3000. That one you need to google and buy the cheapest, smallest amount you can find.

You can find almost anything on line.

I grow Rainier cherry here and as cherries go it performs pretty well, varieties bred by Cornell for our conditions are not much better as far as cracking goes, but I don't think cherries are worth growing in a small orchard unless one loves cooking with them and grows sour cherries. When we get a period of rain during ripening, all varieties seem to crack and rot -or at least crack if you keep them coated with fungicide.

White Gold might be an exception, but I haven't fruited it yet. It may also be possible to grow it without netting the trees from birds because it is pure yellow. However, it is not known for being high quality.

I will try to offer some more advice as time permits. One thing I can say is that peaches are the quickest most rewarding thing you can grow with Japanese plums coming in second. They bear young and you can get quality impossible to realize from purchased fruit. By the third year you should begin harvesting if you give them what they need for vigor.

Also, you should try to make purchasing decisions wisely, but fairly quickly. If you order from Adams or Cummins they are already sold out of many varieties (at least Adams is). I use both east and west coast nurseries, but prefer the closer when possible.

The advice about getting earlier pears by ordering a Harrow Sweet is valid. I get fruit from 2-year trees in my nursery and it is a very, very good pear. Don't know how well it would do there, but I expect as well as any.

Reason being, there are some pests and diseases which are not well controlled by sprays of any sort. Fire blight and wooly aphid are two that come to mind. By choosing varieties and rootstocks with resistance to these and other potential problems, you can make your orchard life easier in the future.

The first article I saved against someday wanting to plant apple trees and other fruits was in Mother Earth News, Aug/Sept 1994, "Not All Apples Are Created Equal." I liked it because it had a chart of disease resistance and insect resistance. The truth is that 100 or more years ago they grew apples and didn't spray chemicals, and growing something to eat at home is different than growing something you need to be able to ship across the country. I've found lots of other information from state extension publications and all the key universities that do agricultural research. A lot of the growers include charts and more about selecting apples and selecting rootstock.

Seeing beautiful apples in a completely neglected orchard, as well as comparing the condition of common varieties growing right next to them (with diseased and knarled branches, missing leaves, chewed up and badly mangled fruit), showed me the value in paying attention to variety - and that was here in Virginia. Certainly I may purchase a Golden Delicious apple from a grower that constantly manages their orchards, but I know I do not have the desire to work that hard to grow it at home. That there are varieties that have great taste, but also exhibit high disease and insect resistance, makes me want to select those for my home.

See, with all your research you didn't find out that old-strain yellow delicious is actually pretty disease resistant. You might want to run by important research info here to see what folks who actually grow fruit in home orchard conditions have to say. The universities only really know about commercial production- Cornell didn't help me at all in picking varieties or finding a low spray approach for sound fruit- they didn't have a clue. They pushed varieties like Liberty that don't get scab but are insect magnets.

I was still going to order a couple peach and plum trees from stark bros. they said they will not have their spring trees listed till jan on their site. But a couple questions:

1) any must try's for Japanese plums or peaches that are zone 6 compatible?
2) any to stay away from (mostly for fresh eating, canning, and freezing.)
3). Does anyone have any experience with hardy kiwi in zone 6? I have a 2 story porch that I want to put a lattice with a vining plant on ( about 16' wide x 10' high) that I thought this would go well on. It is westward facing and gets full afternoon sun.

Thanks again for all the info I am sure you guys have headed off a couple of major mistakes by me already!

I think I caught all the iPad autocorrects but if not please excuse them.

-jd

If your apple trees are on free standing rootstock, your family will, in fact, be very unlikely to consume a crop from both trees when they have assumed their space and are really putting out apples, but that is 7 years away (apples tend to be relatively slow). Cortlandt are poor storage apples and become mush after about a month or so in normal cool storage.

Fortunately, apples are easy to graft to. When I started harvesting fruit I started trying many more varieties and my favorite choices changed radically. You taste a new apple you love and you can graft it on an existing tree and have fruit form the graft in 2-3 years.

If your experience with apples is tasting ones brought here from Washington State you really don't know what any given variety will taste like from your own trees anyway. I've always thought of Cortlandt as a New England apple.

This is silly.

100 years ago they had different pests - they didn't have the brown marmorated stink-bug. They didn't have the Asian Citrus Psyllid. Etc.

They also didn't have nearly as tasty fruit as we do today, or the standards we do today. There are apples that you'd compost that they'd eat out of hand.

The "real" truth is that although undoubtedly 100 years ago unsprayed fruit existed (it also exists today); the bulk of commercially grown fruit was heavily sprayed. Way farther back than 100 years ago too.
The only thing that precluded more spraying wasn't the lack of available spray chemicals or the need for spray, it was the fact that it was far more labor intensive and therefore more costly. Folks also weren't as used to perfect fruit as today, so what would today be perhaps unmarketable was just fine in those days.
London Purple and Paris Green were the insecticides of choice and I'd guess lime-sulfur and other mixtures of sulfur were the fungicides of choice. Dormant oils were already well understood and utilized, The aforementioned insecticides were lead arsenates which were probably quite effective at killing everything. The greek poet Homer described the benefits of the "pest averting sulfur".
Olpea recently mentioned the use of nicotine sulfate marketed as "Black Leaf 40" which apparently was also quite effective, but was rather indiscriminate as to who or what it poisoned. same as the lead arsenates.

No...things weren't really any different 100 years ago other than far more dangerous chemicals were used.