r/BackyardOrchard • • 16h ago

New apple trees

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9 Upvotes

Are these new fruit trees planted too deep? Too much mulch?


r/BackyardOrchard • • 20h ago

Cambridge Gage Plum was the winner this year for me, anyone else try these?.

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16 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 19h ago

Bird boxes

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6 Upvotes

A house in the trees. At the cider and perry orchard we practice organic methods and pest control. And we have put up nesting boxes for birds as small as Rifleman and large as Ruru amongst the trees. The birdsong can be deafening sometimes


r/BackyardOrchard • • 13h ago

We purchased this house in March of this year. Didn’t realize it had an apple tree until we removed a ton of overgrown foliage that was in front of it. Is there any saving this? Obviously been reaching for the sun for years.

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2 Upvotes

As you can see, it’s leaning quite a bit, and one of the larger branches is currently being supported. I’m not sure where to even begin with pruning or whether the tree can be brought back into better shape without damaging it.
I’d also love help identifying the apple variety! The apples are pretty tasty, but we have no idea what kind they are.
We also have a bunch of very overgrown beaked hazelnut trees that we know absolutely nothing about. I’d appreciate any advice on pruning, maintaining, or rejuvenating those as well.
Zone 7a


r/BackyardOrchard • • 21h ago

Pruning Opinions for First Year Apple Liberty side branch

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2 Upvotes

I’m wondering what to prune if any come this late winter. I want to do what’s most healthy for the tree structure as we can have some wind here during storms. I was aiming for single central leader but the tree had other ideas.

It’s a Liberty on semi dwarf rootstock from Dave Wilson Nursery, planted 2026 spring. It grew a second trunk from an existing side branch that was pruned back before shipping. The side branch comes out from the 15 inches above ground. The tree put most of the first year growth there and it’s now taller than the original trunk. The almost horizontal part is about 3 inches and is now thicker there than the main trunk at the fork.

I hear trunks in general will smooth out and big bends eventually get less extreme as the trunks thicken. In this case should I just keep the second trunk and prune the original one above the fork ? Or is it no big deal to cut the big new growth and keep tue original trunk? Or just let it grow a few more years without major pruning to sort itself out?


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

How do I prune my peach trees?

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22 Upvotes

I just got these from a nursery in Texas and it’s my first time owning a stone fruit , so do I do a heading cut and when should I do it I’m in zone 9b /sugarland Texas. If you can you please highlight what I should cut ,any advice would be so appreciated!


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

Pear grafting update.

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7 Upvotes

A grafting update, 95% of the recent whip grafts have taken and are growing well. Cutting back the none graft branches now there are functioning leaves on the graft. Grafts include our own perry pear "Carterton" and some wild pear close to Pyrus pyraster genome.


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

Beautiful green orange tree showing this on leaves. (Newly inherited)

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3 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

Great bloom on the star fruit this year!

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3 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

First year with new plants

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4 Upvotes

We plan on wrapping them but does anyone else have recommendations? The trees I believe are two we planted at the end of winter first couple weeks of spring.


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

How to practically prune my peach trees

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3 Upvotes

I have two peach trees I got as a gift a few years ago and wasn't able to get into the ground this spring, after having them in containers for over a year. They had already grown past what seems to be the ideal state of pruning based on what I've read and have gotten even bushier now, and even produced fruit (none I got to actually eat) this year. The leafier plant gets more sunlight and has a crotch that seems decently suited to ideal branching for fruit production (the close-up pic); the less leafy plant got damaged by a falling branch this year and also sits in a less sunny spot, its taller and more gangly and doesn't have a very ideally shaped center. Based on what I've read it seems like the only real way to achieve ideal shape for fruit production is to heavily prune back to basically heavy whips, which seems excessive, so I thought I'd get ideas here!


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

When do I transfer?

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2 Upvotes

I posted previously about this. My son wanted me to germinate a mandarin seed, and it grew now I need to know when to transfer it to a bigger pot. I don't want to take out all the soil to check the roots but I don't want the poor thing to die because the roots don't have enough space. Is it ready to move to another pot or stay? I also, very luckily, have a huge colony of springtails in there I don't want to shake up too much and want them to transfer with the plant because they are so helpful.


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Pome fruits aka apples pears and others.

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30 Upvotes

Proto-pome fruits, the earliest evolutionary ancestors of apples and pears did not have a large false fruit structure derived from the hypanthium. The extra genes that allowed this development resided in the genome from 66 million years ago when there was a whole genome duplication event around the time of the dinosaur extinction event, in the ancestral lineage of the Rosaceae family.
However it was not till much later that the specific pome-bearing tribe (Maleae) began diversifying during the Oligocene epoch, approximately 30 to 50 million years ago when an opportunity arose for some of these genes to be activated to create sorbitol production and several survival changes that sorbitol allowed. One was the development of a large pome fruit to attract the newly arrived megafauna in the mountains of Central Asia. The earliest proto-pomes resembled hard achenes similar to modern rosehips. The hypathium enclosed the ovary similar to pomes but the seeds inside were encased in the dry achenes.
When sufficiently dry, they simply split open whilst still on the tree to let the wind, water, insects or small mammals carry the tiny, lightweight seeds away. The shift to fleshy "False Fruits” happened when the proto-pome hypathium began to absorb the sorbitol the leaves were now producing, swelling up around the ovary to create a fleshy wrapper.
In most plant families, sucrose is the primary sugar translocated from the leaves to the fruit via the phloem. However in pomes most is converted to sorbitol the alcohol form of glucose. Because sorbitol is a sugar alcohol, it holds more energy on an equivalent carbon basis and can be packed into the phloem at incredibly high concentrations without triggering the osmotic stress that high sucrose concentrations would cause. This allows the tree to flood the young, developing hypanthium (false fruit) with an immense volume of carbon and water, driving rapid cell division and inflating the tissue.


r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

My sitaphal (custard apple/sugar apple) tree has grown split like this. Should i chop off one half of the tree? Will that kill it ? Or its okay to let it grow as is?

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3 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

AVOID "SIMPLY TREES" just SCAMMERS

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1 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 1d ago

Could this tree actually... make it (update to previous post)

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1 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Saving tree

2 Upvotes

Excuse me if I get something wrong as English isnt my first language and some of the specific vocabulary is unknown to me

My boyfriend's parents decided to cut down an appke tree in the backyard of his family home. He always says how apples from that tree are the best he ever had and now hes very sad about it. They will cut it down in February maybe March, so we cant wait for seeds to plant (it didnt have fruits this year because of ground frost that came in april) so we have to do a graft (I hope i got the word right). How do I proceed with it? When is the best time to do it (middle-eastern europe). I watched a few videos and to my understanding I have to buy something like a different little apple tree and like bond them together (?) I'd be grateful for any tips

Thanks


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Redhaven my first peach 😎🍑

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14 Upvotes

Any tips? Any tricks? I live in Surrey bc Canada, we get too wet so I have a way to move the tree under protection for the winter and just hand water, I grow a crap ton of citrus, also have a apple in the ground, guavas inside so tell me? Can I dwarf this tree like a citrus? Will it work as a large bonsai? If not I do plan on repotting in the spring, they don’t do well in the ground here because of fungal diseases n such, I have suffered through gardenias, orchids, jasmine, daphne, vireya, this should be fine right? How do they respond to root pruning? I assume they are hardy trees like it’s a peach….. someone convince me everything I know is slightly ok for them 🍑 they grow a lot of these up in the okanagan in bc Canada so I just want my fav tree and a slice of the interior in my yard! Any suggestions i greatly appreciate ! Send me your peach pics and tell me ur thoughts on redhaven or your fav cultivars, Saturn lowkey is so stunning lol I pruned (sterilized) a few dead twigs that died back hopefully that’s fine right now thanks for reading my first post on my first stonefruit ever 🥺🍑💕 means a lot to me


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

How do I prune this apple tree?!

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8 Upvotes

Moved into a rental that had an amazing cooking apple tree but needs love - how do I prune before winter ?!


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Any Ideas on ID?

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2 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 3d ago

Last of the season

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43 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Bark beetle or?

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5 Upvotes

Young orchard almond, quince, apple, alricot, Mediterranean,late October. The same tan clumps that crumble like soil appear on tree bark (forks, wounds), on concrete poles, and on painted metal fence parts. One tree, when peeled, shows fine winding galleries in a fan pattern with many tiny round exit holes. I also found a yellow larva ([size]) in a split tree.

1) Frass, termite shelter tubes, or mud-dauber nests? Quickest way to tell?

2) Does the gallery look like a bark beetle (Scolytus)?

3) How do I get rid of it?


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Is there anything I can do to save this peach tree and stop it from happening again?

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6 Upvotes

I used to have big ugly fencing around all my fruit trees but foolishly decided they were no longer needed. 2 days later I found this gash on a peach tree from what I'm assuming was a deer.

Is there any way to keep this tree alive? I put it in 5 or 6 years ago and it's been fruiting heavily the last 2.

Also, what is the best way to keep it from happening again? They're in my front yard so I'm hoping there's something cost effective that will look decent.


r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

I think I got scammed- dont think columnar apple trees grow like this

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1 Upvotes

r/BackyardOrchard • • 2d ago

Bark line in peach tree trunk

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1 Upvotes

Hey, everyone. I'm new to growing trees and I'm not sure if this is normal. My peach tree is finishing it's third year and grew massively this year. Now, heading into winter it's starting to drop leaves and I noticed this line going up the trunk. Seems like there is less bark, but I don't see any sign of any damage to the trunk outside of the. Is this anything to worry about? Thanks!