r/FruitTree

Hello everyone,

My wife and I are independent growers in the high-desert region of the Pacific Northwest. In 2024, we invested everything into a beautiful piece of land with soil that had been carefully developed over 20 years using organic methods, with the goal of building a legacy organic stone fruit and nut orchard, along with a cannery to process our crops locally.

Late last year, our dream faced a catastrophic setback. Our property suffered an off-target chemical drift event from a commercial applicator across the street from us. The persistent herbicide (Aminopyralid) completely strangled the vascular systems of our 458 mature peach trees, resulting in total canopy mortality.

We are currently working through the state regulatory and legal channels to hold the negligent parties accountable. But as land stewards, we refuse to just sit around and wait for a courtroom. We are moving forward right now to actively heal our earth.

Because Aminopyralid binds tightly to soil organic matter and targets broadleaf plants, we are weaponizing biology to clean the slate. We are launching a multi-year soil remediation plan utilizing deep-rooting, fast-growing forage grasses (like Sorghum-Sudangrass and oats) that are completely immune to the chemical. These roots will fracture the soil profile and pump massive amounts of oxygen down to the native soil microbes, forcing a microbial population explosion to naturally digest and break down the toxin. We also plan to plant rows of sunflowers as natural phytoremediators to pull remaining residuals from the topsoil.

We have launched a YouTube channel to document every single step of this biological recovery—from independent soil core lab tests to the day our new certified organic peach saplings can safely go back into the ground.

https://youtube.com/@orchardquestions?si=sGkrsgjJmzqIyKo-

If you would like to follow our journey, watch our soil recovery videos, or partner with us in crowdfunding the heavy costs of excavation, biological soil amendments, and our future main street cannery facility, please consider checking out our restoration fund.

🌱 Support our Farm’s Recovery & Replanting Fund here: https://gofund.me/d5586cff2

Thank you so much for standing with independent family farms and backing the resilience of our soil.

— Nicole & Seth

Hey all, first time posting in here. I have 3 Bartlett pear trees in my yard and only one of them is showing this weird tendril/growth on new tree growth, I can’t find anything online, does anyone know what it is? Should I be worried about it contaminating my other trees? The tree next to this one bore fruit this year but this one did not.

hey all, thanks for the advice on the last lemon tree. learned what rootstock is and ripped the whole thing out.

trying to replace with orange tree now, and dug a whole a little further away.

Soaked the ground with water to make digging easier (and ran into a nonfunctional pipe that i dont care too much for, so disregard it), and it seemed like the dirt was a little more "clay-like". also need to trim a big dead branch on a nearby olive tree to ensure more sunlight (little shaded in the pic). there is a nearby Japanese plum tree that is very healthy (should be somewhat similar ground, but seemed less "clay-like")

is this still a good place to plant new tree, or find a better spot? would just work better aesthetically and in a layout sense, old lemon tree was just in the middle of a more usable area

any other tips for the initial planting into the ground?

This ever-bearing dwarf mulberry tree is happily growing in a guild under 30% shade cloth in zone 9b Florida. Plant ID said yellowing leaves are due to too much upward growth (it’s a little over four feet tall), and said we should prune. However, I’ve also seen pruning isn’t usually done in spring/summer.

Any advice if we should prune it down any? Also not sure if any special way they need to be snipped, or how far down. Thanks in advance!

Any orange pros here?

I planted this satsuma about 4 months ago, overall the tree looks pretty healthy. The leaves are bright green but they are a little curled up. I don't think the tree is thirsty as the soil around is very wet.

Is this anything I should be worried about?

My 1-2 year old brown select satsuma took a beating during the winter freeze but is coming back better. I thought I had pruned it correctly based on LSU ag recommendations but looking on this sub I think these split branches will be a problem . Should I prune one of the main branches so it doesn’t split the trunk down the road?

My fiancé added a ton of fertilizer to the tree without diluting it. I suspect that’s what caused this. I tried to rinse out the soil several times over the last week ad nothing.

My wife and I bought a house, she’s a physician and we’re only visiting the house for another week before we head back to CT (for a month) for her to finish residency. While here we noticed a large amount of dandelions in the backyard which she wanted removed. I went and bought a Scott’s spreader with some weed and feed and admittedly didn’t read the directions nearly as well as I should have. I used it around an Aronia bush, as well as a cherry plum and mulberry tree. Both trees are 12ft tall or more. I’ll post pictures of the mulberry (picture with the yellow slide very visible) and cherry plum (with the slide barely visible) so you can gauge size. It was a single instance of using it yesterday. I read to potentially soak the ground decently to try and dilute it a bit? I’m hopeful that in the worst case they survive with some shock but don’t die. Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙏

Last year the world was not kind to my peach tree saplings. I was worried they both would die. One seems to be sprouting some leaves while the other (like 10 feet apart) isnt doing too well? Do i just pull it and plant a new one? This is my first adventure with fruiting plants so any advice is surely welcome!

Different stages of the process. The sapling is that of a Dalhari Chamba(wax apple)

Hi Reddit, I have two apple trees (Jonathan and Ruby Darling) that are suddenly browning and losing leaves! Gonna add a ton of info just to rule everything out:

I planted in late March this year. Bought them from Stark Bros nursery. They were not bare root, they were "Easy start" because the specific varieties I wanted weren't available bare root. But I gently rinsed the roots off and planted them diy bare root lol so I could make sure there would be absolutely no girdling. They're planted in an area that gets full sun all day. Clay soil, but I made the holes significantly bigger than needed and mixed in a light amount of compost and other soil from a different part of the yard to help soften it up a little. Covered the area surrounding them with a thick mulch, but left a hole around their trunks so the mulch doesn't touch. The graft is also safely away from the soil and mulch! I deep watered about once every week and a half, always checking the soil first with a moisture meter and it never left the "ok" middle position. This spring has been unsually warm (70s/80s but 40s at night) and rainy for my area, but it's an extremely light rain. We're not even getting 1/4in per day, if it rains that day at all.

For about a month they were doing fantastic, growing new leaves very quickly. I'm in zone 6A and we did have 2 snowstorms shortly after planting but they trucked through it like nothing happened. About 2 or 3 weeks ago, sorry I'm a bit iffy on the timeline, we had our last frost. No snow though just slightly below freezing temps overnight. Shortly after that, I noticed the tips of some of their leaves browning but I assumed it was frost damage.

Fast forward to now, I just got back from a short weekend trip to see they have lost all of their lower leaves and the remaining ones are significantly worse off than before. I am afraid they're dying and I want to save them! Pictures attached, please help me figure out what is wrong! First 5 pictures are the Ruby Darling which is doing much worse, last 5 are the Jonathan.

Any advice or guesses helps, thank you!! These are my first trees and I'm fairly new to gardening but I thought I was doing everything right!

It was planted 1 week ago from 6 gallon nursery pot. the top node looks half rotten. It did not look like this when planted. Tree is about 4 ft tall and the wound is about 3 ft high (1 ft from top). It is not a graft wound that is at the base.

How to save?

Should it be covered in wound paint? Cut below? Fertilized?

The previous owner had stakes on every limb. I removed them and the branches are long but bendy. It's about six years old, growing very quickly, and has given no fruit yet. The tree was grown from seed, and I planted a Reed a few feet away (probably way too close but it gets lots of sun in that area, and I'm in SoCal). This avocado tree is taller than the house now and I wonder where I should trim. Also, should I leave the leaves that are growing at the base alone, to protect the trunk/branches from the sun?

White stuff appearing on my leaves. Is it bad bugs? What should I do?