Introduction

Do you want to grow fruit trees but you don't have a lot of room. Then container gardening is for you. I'm going to cover what we have found to work. I'm not going to cover common fruit tree disorders. However I will cover what can happen when growing in containers.

Choosing A Container

You have a lot of container choices. Choose a container that allows the roots to grow deep. The bigger the container the better. We now use wine barrel halves for our trees. I wouldn't use a container smaller than 24 inches in diameter.

Container Drainage

If you are not carefull you will drown your trees. It is critical that your container has plenty of drainage holes. Our containers have more holes then swish cheese. Drill plenty of holes in your container. When you think there is enough holes then keep drilling. We used a 3/8 inch drill bit for our holes.

We learned this the hard way growing tomatoes in containers. Our tomato plants were wilting towards their demise. We supported the container with its plant in mid air and drilled more holes. Lucky for us that brought the plants back to life.

Watering

Fruit trees need alot of water. When placed into containers they may need more. Tree and container size determine how much and how often you need to water.

Tip #1: Each time you water be sure the container draines. You want to see water on the ground. When the Tree is large harmful amount of salts can collect in the soil. Heavy watering helps remove these salts.

Tip #2: Water your plants mid day. This will cool off the roots. You like a cool drink on a hot day and so do they.

Tip #3: Let the soil tell you when to stop watering. When you first start to water the soil will soak up the water rapidly. When the soil soaks up the water slowly and drains then you are done.

Tip #4: Use a drip system for watering.

Pruning

I'm not going to cover how to prune each type of tree. There great pruning guides to help you. We will be pruning our trees for container life. Tree height will be limited to 6 to 6.5 feet. The tree diameter will be kept between 4 to 6 feet depending on the tree. Hopefully ours will more look like bushes then trees.

Other Tips

Tip #1: Boy its hot out here. When in containers fruit trees cann't take high temperatures. When the day time highs go above 100 degres its time to do some extra watering.

Tip #2: You did give your containers wheels didn't you? Do yourself a favor, put wheels on those large containers. This tip is for your back. We didn't put wheels on ours since they aren't moving.

Our Trees

Here's info about our trees.

Apple: Gala

July 2010

This is the 2nd year for the tree. We bougt the tree in Jan 2009. It was put in too small of a container for the first year. Very little growth. Growth this year has been wonderful.

Apple: Red

July 2010

This is the 2nd year for the tree. We bougt the tree in Jan 2009. It was put in too small of a container for the first year. Very little growth. Growth this year has been wonderful.

Peach: Elberta

July 2010

This is the first year. Great growth.

Pear: Bartlett

July 2010

This is the first year for the tree. We bought it late in the bare root season.

Pear: D'Anjou

July 2010

This is the 2nd year for the tree. We bougt the tree in Jan 2009. It was put in too small of a container for the first year. Very little growth. Growth this year has been wonderful.

Plum: Burgundy

July 2010

This is the 2nd year for the tree. We bougt the tree in Jan 2009. It was put in too small of a container for part of the first year. Very little growth. Growth this year has been ok. We did a no no and let some fruit grown on it. This slowed the growth for this year. And yes we knew it would.

Plum: Mariposa

July 2010

This is the 1st year for the tree. We bougt the tree in feb 2010. It was put in too small of a container for the first year. Growth this year has been wonderful.

The Final Word

Keep checking back I'll be adding pictures and more information.

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