Your New Fruit Trees
Fruit trees can not only enhance the beauty of your garden, but provide a great source of delicious, inexpensive and healthy food. However, care must be taken when considering adding fruit trees to a garden resplendent with flowers, shrubs, hedges, bushes and the like. Fruit trees need not only full sunlight for their best production, but they also require adequate space for the development of their root systems. Plant fruit trees the requisite distance from other trees and large shrubs so that they do not have to complete with such other plantings for water and nutrients. These distances vary greatly, Full-size apple trees can require a 25-foot distance between plantings, while a dwarf apple trees may flourish with only an eight-foot distance.Sweet cherry trees generally require a greater planting distance than sour cherry trees. Be sure to look for the requirements of specific fruit trees prior to laying out your garden plan, and certainly prior to planting.
Proper pruning of your fruit trees will improve their strength and longevity, and maximize fruit production. In addition, well-prunned your fruit trees will be an even more attractive addition to your garden. It is important for all trees to remove dead branches, suckers, and the water sprouts rising upward from the trunk and main branches. When branches are conflicting against each other, or cross or grow too close together, prune out the weaker of the branches. Consider that branches that leave the trunk at too sharp of an angle are prone to breaking. By pruning and training your young fruit trees from the time of planting, you can develop strong trees that that will likely have good fruit production.
Applying adequate amounts of fertilizer will also help to produce strong growth, but care must be taken to avoid excess fertilizer, which may produce weak, leggy growth and hinder fruit production.
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