Given a choice, most people want small fruit trees, no taller than about twelve feet; trees that produce a couple of lug boxes at most, top quality fruit for fresh eating, fruit for pies and jam, and fruit for friends. A commercial-size fruit tree overwhelms the family garden and often the family gardener as well. The trees grow too tall with the fruit out of reach. They’re hard to maintain. Even a semi-dwarf tree grows so large and produces fruit in such quantity that the fruit becomes a nuisance instead of the pleasure it was intended to be.

Yet most of what we understand about growing deciduous fruit trees has been borrowed from commercial orchard culture. Pruning methods promote maximum tree size for maximum yields. Spacing accommodates farm equipment. Neither consideration has much practical application in the family backyard.

Semi-dwarfing rootstocks can only do so much for size control. The final size of a fruit tree is really up to the pruner. We think the best height is one that makes it easy on the gardener: a good height for your fruit tree is as tall as you can reach while standing on the ground.

Bare-root trees cut back to knee-height when first planted branch well within a gardener’s reach. These trees can stand alone, or be planted in quite close proximity, as a hedgerow of different varieties for fresh fruit over a long season, or even three and four varieties to one planting hole.

All a gardener needs is a sunny patch of soil and the gumption to insist that the tree stay small. With summer pruning trees are easily kept to a manageable height. Summer pruning means simply this: if it gets too tall cut it back; if it gets too thick, thin it out.

This winter, when the bare-root trees arrive, we’ll be offering instruction on backyard orchard culture in addition to our regular class on traditional pruning practices for established trees. If you can’t wait that long, check out our current stock of fruit trees, and pick up a pruning handout at our main counter.

–Ann