Hundreds of Pounds of Fruit

I plant my fruit trees close. I mean, really close. These are planted 3 feet apart.

I do this because trees actually don’t need a ton of space between them. We see these recommendations because they stem from commercial growers and their requirements for space to get their tractors and other equipment through easily.

Tom Spellman, of Dave Wilson Nursery, stated a long time ago that fruit trees can be grown very close together so long as you commit to summer pruning to keep the trees small.

This is the major reason why I plant trees so close together. I keep the trees small so that I don’t have to get on a ladder—and potentially break my neck—and so I can plant tons of different varieties that have different ripening times.

Wouldn’t you rather have 25 different fruits that give you fruit the entire year rather than just one tree that gives you way too much in a little amount of time and then have nothing the rest of the time?

Yet even though I plant fruits close together, I still get hundreds of pounds of fruit. These four Freckle Face nectarines and four Burgundy plums are giving me well over 100 lbs of fruit. I reckon each tree is yielding about 20-25 lbs of fruit this year.

That is more than enough.

The one thing I wish I did was plant more variety. I planted four of one type but I should’ve planted four different types. This is at the school farm I manage but I plan on doing this at my house. Every new tree I get will be a different variety so I can have fruit the entire year.

Next up are Flavor King and Dapple Dandy pluots! Summer is in full swing.