Planting Our Mini Backyard Orchard

Today we’re talking through planting our mini orchard in our backyard. One of the things I always hear from people who are looking to expand their gardens and increase their self-sufficiency is to plant more fruit trees.

So how that we’re somewhere with a little yard, we decided to get some trees in the ground. The long-term goal is to convert the back end of our yard to our mini orchard. Our total plot is only about .25 acres, but just under .2 acres of that is the backyard. It might not sound like a lot—but with some careful planning, we’ve been able to really maximize the space!

Sourcing our trees

The first step was to source our trees. We knew roughly the part of the yard we’d put the trees in—about 250 square feet in the back. So we used that rough measurement to decide how many trees we’d buy and which types.

While we were researching our first few fruit trees in 2023, we spoke to a local nursery who recommended that we purchase our trees from Stark Bros. That’s where they sourced theirs, and they didn’t have many in stock that we wanted at the time.

Stark Bros isn’t cheap—but you’ll get good quality plants that are packaged well and super healthy. They also have a wide variety of different plant types and sizes (like dwarf and semi-dwarf—perfect for small spaces like ours).

Planning the layout

Before everything arrived, I made a spreadsheet of all of the plants we ordered and already had. Then we made a rough mockup of the space. The picture below shows roughly where I wanted to plant things based on the spacing they required.

I put the trees that would get the largest in the back, working my way forward to the shorter dwarf varieties. This is based on where the sun rises and sets and intends to minimize any shading toward the front of the garden.

The large thing with the two X’s in it is a mulched bed we put in last year with all clearance perennials in it. It’s part of the ongoing “get rid of grass and grow productive things instead” plan we’ve been working on.

The two X’s are two trees we planted about 2 years ago—one is a dogwood and one is a redbud. Those are pictured below, and we worked around them. I won’t say I regret them…I planted them because I love them and they are native. But if I could do it again, I’d probably make them fruit trees 🙂

Fine-tuning placement

Once the trees came in and we were ready to plant, I grabbed the tape measure and started fine-tuning the placement. Mike and I butt heads a bit on this. He wanted the trees really close together, I wanted them farther apart to give them more room to breathe when they are full grown.

We ended up meeting in the middle of where we each wanted them 🙂 And if any are too close, we’ll prune them appropriately. That’s a problem for 8-10 years from now though, isn’t it?

Digging & planting

Next it was time to dig and plant! The soil here is…not great. It’s very rocky, dense, and clay-based. So I amend the soil for anything that goes into the ground. But the back of the yard is the worst! It’s so untouched, it was very rough to dig.

Mike took the lead on this while I was working one day. He got it all done in about an afternoon. Below illustrates how we planted each of the trees to give them a good start this fall. And these are good steps for planting most trees in the ground, too!

Step 1: Dig a hole

Dig a hole about 2x the size of the root ball. If there isn’t much of a root system because the tree is quite young, I’d dig about 1 foot wide and deep.

We used a tape measure not necessarily to measure the size of the hole, but to check how deep the tree would be planted in the hole. We didn’t want to bury the trunk too deep—this is bad for trees. You want it to be at surface level.

Step 2: Amend soil

To improve our soil when we plant things in the ground, we backfill the planting with a mix of about 50% native soil that we’ve loosened up and 50% leaf compost. We buy bags of leaf compost when we need it and use our own compost when we can.

Step 3: Plant the trees

After mixing this up in a wheel barrow or bucket, we put a bit into the hole, set the tree, and then fill in around it. We also patted the dirt down gently with our feet to stabilize the tree as we filled the hole up completely.

So much digging in this dense dirt…our shovel finally broke! This shovel has been through a lot!

Water regularly

We tried to time our planting to occur the day before a big rain. When we planted these trees, it hadn’t rained in well over a month—just awful! This also probably contributed to how difficult it was to dig back here.

So after we planted these trees, it rained for about 16 hours straight. AMAZING! This is exactly what you want for anything new you plant. If there’s no rain in the forecast, make sure you water the newly planted trees regularly.

If it’s spring or summer and quite warm, that means water them every day. Sometimes even twice a day if it’s really hot. But that’s a great reason for fall planting. It’s cooler and the roots won’t be super stressed and deprived of moisture.

Hopefully all of these newly planted trees and bushes make it through their first winter! I’ll do an update next year on them and their progress. Fingers crossed it’s only a few years before we begin getting fruit from some of these!

Pin this!