The Orchard Guide

Pomme and Stone Fruit - Orchards of 'Little Oak' and 'Moorfield'.

Canadian Goldrich Apricot harvest time at Little Oak.

Welcome our Orchard Guide: Pomme and Stone Fruit. This one is a little bigger than our last couple of guides so please go through to the Substack website or view on the Substack app because the email format will be truncated.

This is everything we have learnt, experienced, been challenged by and been successful with, over the course of the last decade and a bit with the orchards we’ve created at both Little Oak and Moorfield. This is not a definitive guide to pruning fruit trees. The world of pruning fruit trees is a myriad of techniques, opinions, ideas and theories and these are just ours, and what has worked for us and what we’ve had to contend with in the planting of over 80 fruit trees on our two properties……so far. This is a living and breathing document (as with all our guides), that I will update, and let you know when I have, as we experience a new climate and new challenges and victories here at Moorfield that I think you might find valuable or interesting. This is a huge area to cover so I have done my best to concentrate this information into a digestible amount of information to be able to put into practice, I hope you find it useful. So, lets begin……..

Not all fruit trees are created equal, there are nuances involved with growing and caring for your various fruit trees and they cannot all be treated alike.

In this guide we are looking at our experience of having planted and grown over 80 fruit trees between Little Oak and Moorfield, we’re not orchardists but we know how to grow a successful home orchard. In this instance, we are looking at the pomme and stone fruit varieties that we have grown here and at Little Oak, and how to get the best out them from selection of stock to planting and ongoing care.

We will also address what to consider when planting either an orchard on a larger landholding as we are here and have done in the past, at Little Oak or how to create an abundant orchard with less trees, in a smaller backyard setting. A subject matter I worked a lot with my customers from both rural to urban areas, during my years spent studying horticulture in a fruit growing region and nurseries in both regional centres and in the city.