The goals I have for my orchard may be different than your goals. I'm hoping to have a very low spray orchard with long lasting trees, and I had as much room as I wanted for my plantings. Fruit taste and quality, production, and precocity took a slight second to factors like disease resistance, some aesthetic qualities (external support required, etc), and senescence.

So far, the fruit part of my orchard contains:
Freedom, Liberty, Arkansas Black, and Virginia Beauty apples all on EMLA111 semi-dwarfing rootstock
Magness, Moonglow, Potomac, and Seckel European pears on OHF87, betulifolia, and OHF333 rootstock
Black Gold, Black York, and Regina sweet cherries on Mahaleb and Mazzard rootstock
Montmorency, Northstar, and Surefire sour cherries on Mahaleb and Mazzard rootstock
Brown Turkey fig
Wonderful pomegranate

My apples, pears, figs, and pomegranates are staggered with 25' spacing and the cherries are spaced 33' apart. Most home orchards and more and more commercial orchards are using dwarf or small semi-dwarf rootstocks. There are quite a few growers, using dwarf rootstock, that plant their trees in rows with spacing between trees as close as 5' or even closer. Spacing depends on rootstock, scion variety, amount and style of pruning, how long you plan on keeping the trees (many commercial growers replant every few years), maintenance and harvesting issues, and environmental factors, but, in the end, you want to eliminate shading of foliage.

I'm just plain unqualified to give much advice about spraying schedules or fruit tree pruning. Pruning fruit trees is different than pruning trees and shrubs for ornamental or silviculture purposes. I would recommend searching the Fruit and Orchards Forum for more information. There are many posts discussing the different pruning methods and advantages or each there. You'll find a variety of opinions, preferences, and experiences regarding both pruning and spraying. When you figure out the pruning and spraying stuff, come to Knoxville and teach me! Even after reading quite a bit, I'm still feeling a little hesitant about pruning and training my trees.

What kind of fruit trees are you wanting? How important is each factor (taste and quality of fruit, amount of space available, disease resistance, ease of maintenance and pruning, how soon you will have fruit, how much fruit you'll get from each tree, etc) to you?

Hey Brandon,

On another post you mentioned named cultivars of our native persimmon. Are you familiar with any, and could you recommend one? also, if you go with a cultivar does it matter if you have wild ones nearby?

Thanks,
Frances

Hey Frances,

There are lots of Diospyros virginiana cultivars. The best selection I know of is at Nolin River Nut Tree Nursery (excellent Garden Watchdog rating, except for one "nut", ha!). They have descriptions on their site. I will post a link to the site below. Anyone interested in growing native persimmons, pawpaws, or just about any type of nut should check this place out.

Wild D virginiana around here have 60 chromosomes. D virginiana in northern states are the 90-chromosome type, and are generally larger fruiting, better tasting, and more productive. Most commercially available cultivars are from the 90-chromosome race. Another race/variety is D virginiana var mosieri, which has only 30 chromosomes. When a 90-chromosome cultivar is planted without a 90-chromosome pollinator but within pollination range of wild 60-chromosome pollinators, the seeds often abort and the fruit can be seedless or have few seeds.

In that earlier post you mentioned, I wrote, "If you get a cultivar, get 2 different cultivars that have the same ploidy (number of chromosomes)." That was bad advice for a couple of reasons. First, the only reason you would have to have 2 different cultivars of the same race (number of chromosomes) is if you wanted viable seed. Most growers want good fruit, not viable seed. Secondly, American persimmons are normally dioecious (either male or female). You would need a male and a female (not just two different cultivars) of the same race to produce viable seed. My brain cells weren't connecting (as usually).

Here is a link that might be useful: Nolin River Nut Tree Nursery

Hey Brandon--

Thanks for the info. Good stuff. It's my yard where I'm thinking of planting apple, cherries, pears, just for my family. The Belle of Georgia peach that I planted last year is doing well. It put out seven peaches this year, and the squirrels were kind enough to let them get ripe before they took half of each one.

Most everything I've read made me think that, to produce nice, good-tasting fruit you had to prune and spray all the time. I'm pretty obsessive about my gardening, but that sounded awfully high-maintenance.

I have a blank acre back yard, so plenty of room, but I don't want to use much of it for fruit production, if that makes sense. Are there apples/sweet cherries/pears that don't require a pollinator? Will crabapples pollinate, say, Red Delicious?

I'll poke around some more of the Orchard forum, but it's always nice to get local advice -- and your other post indicated you were looking for something to talk about!

Best of luck with your orchard. I'd love to see some pics.

"Most everything I've read made me think that, to produce nice, good-tasting fruit you had to prune and spray all the time. I'm pretty obsessive about my gardening, but that sounded awfully high-maintenance."

Dwarfing rootstock, disease resistant (not just plain disease resistant, but resistant to the specific diseases commonly found in your particular area) varieties, and disease and problem resistant rootstock can reduce the time you have to spend from 6 hours per day down to 1 or 2. (-;

There are self-pollinating varieties of most fruit, but you'll usually get more fruit with a pollinator even with those varieties. You're right about the crabapples pollinating your apples. There's almost always a crabapple close enough to help pollinate apples, but can you really stop at just one variety of apple?

Only an hour or two a day??? Can I take Christmas off?
Sign me up. Ha ha

Thanks again for the advice, and let's see some pics when the blooms come out.