You Can Grow a “microgarden” in Your Garden
I have a problem: my garden has a finite size. It will only fit a limited number of trees, although I’ve been trying to squeeze in more for years. The solution could be a microgarden, which offers certain benefits. First, all the fruit on your trees is accessible (because there’s nothing more frustrating than a peach being out of your reach) because the trees are kept small and the fruit is encouraged to grow close to the ground. The tree’s small growth means you can pack more things into less space. The ability to have many trees instead of one allows you to diversify your harvest or improve pollination of one type of fruit tree by having several trees of the same type instead of just one.
With such small trees it will be easier for you to fight pests and viruses. A tiny tree is much easier to spray than a fifteen-foot one. To make this task easier, there is an ever-increasing amount of fruit crossbreeding to make trees more compact and create hardier fruit breeds. Now you can grow olives and citrus fruits in the cold or apples in the desert.
Start by choosing the right rootstock.
What you may not know about the fruit trees we buy today is that almost none of them are grown from seed. Instead, a young branch of an adult fruit tree (scion) is grafted onto the young trunk of a completely unrelated tree (rootstock), which is known to be particularly disease or weather resistant, very tall or very small. A scion will grow in place of the rootstock, and you will end up with a fruit tree that has the fruits of the scion and the characteristics of the rootstock, like a dwarf nectarine. The most common reason people choose rootstock is height. To create a microgarden, you need to select dwarf grown fruit trees that will not grow taller than ten or twelve feet, and there is a difference between dwarf and semi-dwarf trees, which are 12 to 15 feet and are probably too tall for a microgarden. You will prune the tree to be even less than the full height of 8-12 feet, but you want to start with a tree that is already prepared to grow as small as possible.
How to choose a variety of fruit trees
I spent this weekend at One Green World , a national fruit tree, shrub and vine store. They have the most extensive catalog of fruit trees I have ever seen, including almost a hundred varieties of pomegranate alone. I spoke with Matt Wodish, a member of the One Green World team, about how to choose trees for a micro-garden. I had room for four trees in my yard. I’ve been researching mini or micro gardens for the last few months and there seem to be some general trends. Apples and pears were common, and given the variety of varieties available in stock, it made sense. Plums were popular, as were peaches. However, the truth is that any fruit will do as long as it is available on a dwarf rootstock and the variety is suitable for your growing zone. This could be mulberries, cherries, olives and even citrus fruits.
Fedish told me to look at loquats and persimmons as great ideas, but I focused on peaches and pomegranates. He led me to Eldorado and Bonanza peaches, both of which are available nationwide. I couldn’t get over how small these peach trees were: less than three feet with roots, but full of branches and buds. I selected two Gidranar x Gulosha pomegranates and was able to see what they would look like mature as one of them was planted locally.
When to prune fruit trees
In some videos, I’ve watched micro gardeners come out of Home Depot with 8-foot fruit trees and cut them down to hip height in the parking lot so they can fit in their car and start pruning. I showed up at One Green World with pruning shears, ready to take this drastic step, but Vedish urged patience. Especially for stone fruits, spring is too wet for large cuts, he said. He suggested waiting for a drought this summer.
Typically, plants are pruned when dormant, after fruiting or flowering. So late summer is a good time to prune stone fruits and quinces. The best time for apples and pears is autumn or winter. Medlars are pruned in late winter or early spring. While these are general guidelines, it is always a good idea to consult your local nursery to determine when to prune based on local weather conditions in a particular year.
Where to start pruning fruit trees
Understanding how the nuances of pruning, particularly the angle and location of pruning, affect tree growth will be key to the success of your garden. As a general rule, never remove more than a third of a plant or tree at a time. In almost all cases for a microgarden, your first pruning cut will be to cut the plant at hip height, regardless of what is growing above that cut. You want the cuts to be at a 45 degree angle so that the branch will grow from that cut. Think of the cut as if it forms an elbow.
Each cut creates branching, with new branches forming from the nearest growing point (spur) on the cut branch. By cutting the main trunk of your tree, you will force the tree to form branches at this junction that will grow horizontally instead of vertically, and each of them will grow more branches – and now the fruits growing on those branches will be much lower to the ground.
How to prune fruit trees long term
After the initial pruning, subsequent years will focus on helping your fruit tree maintain its shape and balance. You always want the center of the tree to be open and spacious, allowing airflow, sunlight and pollinators to flow through. The likelihood of disease increases if trees or plants have many leaves or branches in a crowded environment, and the less fruit you produce, the larger and tastier those fruits should be anyway.
The first pruning each year should be to remove all branches pointing inward rather than outward. All branches should move up and away from the center. Next, you need to consider branches that intersect other branches that should be removed. Any small, dead branches should be cut back. Finally, on each tree you need to install three to four strong lead branches (leaders), which will make the tree balanced, with a large airy center. There are excellent videos on how to prune using this method . For the first few years, you should limit the amount of fruit produced by removing flowers from the tree (to prevent them from developing fruit) to give the tree time to develop strong roots and branches.
Concerns about microgardens
There are some concerns about having trees so small, and these should affect where you plant and how you maintain your micro-garden. Toy breeds often do not have the same disease resistance as taller or regular breeds. This can be mitigated to some extent by continuing to spray your trees with products appropriate for your region. In the humid northwest, we treat stone fruits with copper to prevent leaf curl and other diseases, and this is much easier if the plants are kept small. Another problem is that the roots will not be as deep and this will affect the stability of the tree. Microgardens should not be used as windbreaks in the yard, and you should consider staked trees for stability. While pruning, you need to be careful about maintaining the balance of the trees to solve this problem.
On Saturday I dug holes about three times the width and depth of the tree roots and planted my new mini trees in the front yard. These trees are so small that they won’t need initial pruning to hip height, but next year I’ll be pruning them to keep them miniature and hopefully within two years I’ll be harvesting fruit from them.