In this episode, Brad and Shaun discuss how to get started with a home orchard. They discuss considerations for growing peaches, apples, pears, figs, blackberries, blueberries, muscadines, and strawberries. They also discuss the importance of variety and site selection as well as care and maintenance. Check out our website for more helpful info around the homestead!
Home Orchard Resources
In this episode, Brad and Shaun discuss how to get started with a home orchard. They discuss considerations for growing peaches, apples, pears, figs, blackberries, blueberries, muscadines, and strawberries. They also discuss the importance of variety and site selection as well as care and maintenance. Check out our website for more helpful info around the homestead!
Home Orchard Resources
Around the Homestead Podcast
Getting Started With a Home Orchard
Transcript
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Welcome to around the Homestead podcast, where we share information on topics from gardens to goats,
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our aim is to provide small farmers and landowners valuable education on projects that may arise around the homestead.
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Whether you have been on the homestead all your life or you had just began the farm lifestyle,
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we hope you garner helpful tips to make your lifestyle most rewarding.
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Now here are our host Brad McGinley and Shaun Rhodes. All right.
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Hello, and welcome to the next episode of Around the Homestead podcast,
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I'm your co-host Brad McGinley County extension agent in Grant County and my co-host Shaun Rhodes is over in Scott County today.
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Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about some home fruit production and there nothing better than a homegrown apple.
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I remember growing up as a kid, picking them apples off an apple tree pulling your pocket, knife out and cutting it up and eating it.
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Though in the core to the horses, there's nothing better than that, Shawn. No, no.
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We used to go by on a tractor, go into the field to work all day and come out and find a tree and grab a peach or apple off of it.
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That was the best you ever had, Brad? Oh yeah, even the Green ones green apples is good on them.
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Yeah, trees do so. But but there are a lot, a lot of things to talk about when we talk about growing fruit, you know, around the homestead.
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And one of the main considerations I think that you have to think about is the weather and climate limitations that we do have in Arkansas.
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You know, we we're kind of prone to late frosts.
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And so we kind of have to think about those things as we, you know, when we plan what we want to grow in Arkansas.
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You know, there are some crops that are a little bit more susceptible to freeze and cold injury,
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you know, because you think about what's blooming around that time of year.
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And so we have to think about that and be be mindful about that as we select what crops we want to grow and the different varieties you want to grow,
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Shaun. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that that is definitely one of the biggest detriments to the yearly fruit crop with trees, especially is frost damage.
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And there are some of them as we get into this weekend and just briefly that are more susceptible to that,
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that actually bloom earlier than the other some others.
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Yeah. You know, the other consideration that I think that we have to think about is that I always tell
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people that when when they come in the office and they want to plant some fruit trees or,
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you know, in their yard or around their homestead is the level of management that it really takes to grow fruit successfully.
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So let's Shaun, let's just talk through some of these.
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Let's start with the tree fruits, and let's just talk through some of these different species and what route,
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what's required for their level of management.
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So, you know, one of the first ones I want, the main ones I really won't talk about is peaches and nectarines.
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You know, we have people come in here and they'll sit down with me and my grandpa.
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Will I remember he used to grow the best peaches in the world and I want to do that, you know?
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Oh yeah. And. And it can be done, but Peaches are one of the most high maintenance crops you're going to grow around the homestead, Shaun.
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Yeah, that's true, and it's one of many more. It seems like it's pretty much if they are not managed intensely, they're not going to make,
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you know, it's not that they're not just going to make a little.
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Usually you're just not going to get nothing. And I tried to deter people from trying to grow them because.
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If you really don't know a lot about them and how to handle it, you're going to be disappointed.
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In the long run with how it goes.
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Yeah, you really are going to be disappointed and especially, you know, we have a lot of people that want to grow stuff organically,
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and it's almost next to impossible, if not impossible, grow organic peaches in Arkansas.
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It's just not going to happen. Pretty much.
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If you do get fruit said you might, you better be willing to spray ever 10 to 14 days regularly on a regular schedule.
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If you're going to get fruit out of a peach tree. At least that's what I usually recommend to my clientele come in the office, Shaun.
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Yeah, and that's just the years. That's a frost. Don't get you blooms, which is, you know what to put the three out of five?
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Yeah, and that's that's what we don't want.
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This is one we talked about earlier that that that you do have to think about, you know, that is subject to these late freezes and frosts.
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And, you know, we used to say, you know, or average freeze or frost date was this or such and such and April or
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But anymore it seems the weather pattern there. You know, the normal is there is no norm for the weather pattern anymore.
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You know, we're liable to get a light free late freeze in early May.
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You know, so just hard to tell. Yeah, sure.
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Is the next one kind of the next couple that are on my list that I think people,
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if they want to grow tree fruits can be successful with are apples and pears.
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I think that especially if you choose the right varieties as you're planting those I think most people can be,
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most homeowners can be fairly successful with both of those crops Shaun.
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Yes. And I don't know. I have heard I do have some.
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Issues, and it's not foolproof, but.
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They tend to bloom later if you select the correct ones, they they they end to be more resistant to some diseases that will destroy the fruit.
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They do have some insect issues, but a lot of times I can overcome those as well and make you some make you some nice apples.
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Yeah, I think so. And I think one of the main issues that we fight on both of those is fireblight.
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And you know, we see that a lot, especially in pears in the spring or early summer.
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Basically, you know its name because it just looks like somebody took a torch to the end of that.
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Then, you know? And that limb? And so that's something we do see a lot.
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You know, it's not going to kill to completely kill the tree if you if you get it under control.
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But it's something you need to be be aware of, certainly.
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So but I think you can be successful with those, you know, the next next couple that are on my list is ones that we don't really talk a lot about.
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I don't have a lot of requests for information on these.
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You know, a lot of times plums, apricots, cherries, those are all ones that are a moderate level of management.
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But some of those again, you know, your chance of success is is is pretty low in Arkansas and some of those, Shaun.
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Yeah. You know, we're.
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Oh, when I was a kid, maybe two or three times, I was actually seeing some apricot grown on a tree in my grandparents house, but not very often.
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And cherries the same way they were really a tree the year they made.
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But it might have been one out of 10 plums used to make quite a bit.
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And you can do all right with plums if you get the right trees that don't bloom them so early.
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One of the biggest things I see with them is is the early blooming and frost the real susceptible to frost.
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Because of that, there's a disease called Black knot that I see a lot in plums anymore that seem to.
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At a problem level, you know, actually kills the trees, but cherries and apricot.
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Yeah, you know, most people finally figured out it's not worth it.
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Yeah, yeah, we had a plum tree. My parents said it's one tree was growing up in it.
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It was, you know, it made plums.
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Quite often it did have some black knot it in it and it looks like a black knight on the side of the tree, basically, you know,
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and eventually that Black knot did did take out the tree, basically, you know, but but the years that we had it, we were fairly successful with it.
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Another one that that I think that that I don't know much about.
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Maybe, you know more about Shaun is figs, figs.
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You know, they are fairly low maintenance and you can have pretty good success with figs in Arkansas.
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Yeah, it seems like again, it's kind of a.
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Specialty type deal, and you're going to have to be very particular where you plant those seemed to me like an.
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I have had some homeowners in the in in the town here where I'm at that that are successful with the figs and.
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You know, if you've never heard a lot of people's never actually seen or eat a raw fresh fig fruit.
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And they're pretty they're really good. Yeah, I've not been completely honest, I've not had a lot of experience with those figs.
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I know that my my mother in law, she grows figs and she always makes strawberry fig jelly from the figs she grows.
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And that's really good. But you know, I've I've consulted with a lot of a lot of clientele and they seem to, you know, seem to do fairly well.
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So one of the things that we were talking about, Shaun, all we were talking about, you know, each one of these tree fruits is that,
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you know, when it comes to comes to going and getting a tree cultivars selection or variety selection is really important.
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It's one of the most important things that we can do for fruit production.
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Yes, it is, and you know. When we get into these fruit trees and things that are are grafted trees,
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we've got to remember we have a variety and then we also have a root stock selection.
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So you know, you've got two variables working there that you've got to line up to get what you need.
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And everybody needs to remember that a lot of people don't realize the the bottom
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part of that tree is totally different from the rest of it above the ground.
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And so we'll talk about that rootstock to yeah,
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and we might as well talk about it right now because that root stock really affects what size of tree you're going to have, you know?
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Yes, that's the main thing, huh? Mm hmm. And besides the tree is important when it comes to things like pruning and spraying, you know?
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You and I probably grew up when our, you know, our grandparents had apple trees that were 30 foot tall.
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You know, they had the standard sized trees, you know, and you try to get up and prune that, you know,
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or spray that that takes specialized equipment in a tractor and a, you know, whatever else to get up there to get to it.
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Yeah, it's just it's not going to happen. But yes, so you need to know when you're ordering trees.
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If their dwaft or semi-dwarf. You know,
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it's been my recommendation pretty well to just recommend dwarf rootstock on
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l about everything that people do because those trees will get plenty big,
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you know? Yeah, yeah. And whatever you know, if we would, I would recommend that you look at a, you know,
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a catalog, you know, and from a nursery or go online to a nursery web site.
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And they will tell you, you know what? Those root stocks, how how big they will be if you're going to buy a dwarf tree, how big it was going to be.
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And they'll even tell you, you know, once it's in full production, how much production you you're planning on getting from that size tree,
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a dwarf three or semi-dwarf or standard size tree didn't know what you want, but they'll tell you,
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you know, the mature heart of those trees, how much production you're going to get from from all those trees.
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So those are all good things that you need to think about as your planting trees.
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You know, one thing we hadn't talked about when we talked, we hit those tree fruits.
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But I really think and what I try to stress to to.
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To homesteaders is really look hard at our small fruits because I think we can be pretty
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successful with stuff like blueberries and blackberries and muscadines and fairly successful,
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even strawberries in Arkansas. Oh, yes, yes, I believe so, too.
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And if you're wanting fresh fruit, it's going to be your your best option.
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Yeah. To to make sure you have some every year if you if you do some of these other other things,
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a small fruit, as we call them, most of them are not necessarily on a tree.
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Look, there they are fruit nonetheless. Yeah.
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And really,
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Arkansas is known worldwide for blackberries just because we have one of the premier BlackBerry breeding programs at the University of Arkansas.
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University of Arkansas Blackberries have grown all over the world.
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Dr. John Clark is the breeder fruit breeder up there at the university,
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and he is well known and well respected for his BlackBerries that he has come up with over the years, Shaun
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Oh, yeah, yeah, he's always told me, I think, what is it?
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They're grown on every continent. Except Antarctica.
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Maybe? Yeah. So basically, if you see a BlackBerry variety and it has an Indian name, Ouachita, Navajo.
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All of those types of varieties that's in Arkansas developed BlackBerry.
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And these aren't the blackberries that you probably grew up going and picking in as a kid.
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You don't have to fight the chiggers, and you don't have to fight the thorns to get to these kind of blackberries,
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and they're going to fill your bucket up a lot quicker than I was a little wild BlackBerry, Shaun.
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Yeah, that's true. Most of those BlackBerry varieties that have been in the Newer,
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BlackBerry varieties that have been developed, you know, there are thornless varieties.
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And so they, you know, you don't have to fight the thorns,
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and the fruit size is just incredible on some of those varieties you're talking about, you know, fruit as big as your thumb, you know?
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So just keep that in mind because they have a lot of great varieties and they even have
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some of the newer varieties that that are called primacane fruiting blackberries.
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Because blackberries usually fruit on the year, one year old wood the problem of converting blackberries, even fruit fruit on one year old wood.
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So there's a lot of they've come a lot of ways with blackberries, and I think that's something you really should look at.
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Consider looking at when you're talking about growing fruit.
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The other one is blueberries that I think can be fairly successful with those blueberries.
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The consideration is they are acid loving plants,
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so they site selection and soil testing is going to be even more important for blueberry production, Shaun.
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Yeah. Yes, they are going to.
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They grow in a little bit different soil conditions than pretty much anything else, we try to grow in a garden or an orchard.
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And so once you get past that, which is easy to do.
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Blueberries are very popular. Everybody seems to do seems to want blueberries.
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As far as harvesting my others, despite trying to pick myself with those things, I could take forever.
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But yeah, anyway, that aside, most people really enjoy it and do enjoy the fruit,
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and they're very healthy and is a good fruit, very versatile fruit that freezes well easily and can be used in things.
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And so I understand why it is so popular.
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But yeah, they can be grown. And the good thing about them is, I mean,
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you can grow three or four or two or three plants and get a lot of blueberries and right there in the yard somewhere.
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Yeah, not take up a lot of room. Sure. Yeah, that's that's a good point.
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You could even, you know, a lot of people even incorporate the small fruits into their landscaping, you know, so that's even another consideration.
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You know, when we talk about blueberries,
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there are some variety considerations that we have to think about kind of broken down into three separate groups.
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You have the northern highbush varieties that are typically grown in the northern part of the state and in further north southern highbush varieties.
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You can grow them in the lower part of northern Arkansas, Arkansas through central Arkansas.
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And the rabbiteye varieties, which you probably want to select if you're in far southern Arkansas, Shaun.
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Yeah, that's that seems to be right.
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And. Those lines aren't straight lines.
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I have found and producers tell me that, you know.
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They say you can't grow these here, but I'm doing it. You know, I think it's a badge of honor or something they're doing.
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They say we can't do, but anyway, you do need to study that.
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No, I mean, there could be a whole podcast. Yeah. Talking about blueberries.
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Yeah. But so that is something you need to look into.
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There are variety selection. Very important. Yeah. With the blueberries.
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Yeah. You know, another small fruit crop that that I grew up on is muscidines.
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And I mean, I grew up, you know, my grandparents, I grew up on muscadine jelly, basically, you know, they it.
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You know, we never had a tame one what we call tame when ours were all wild in the mountains that we would go get ever fall.
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Yeah, we pretty well. That was our that was pretty much our only fruit.
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Mm hmm. That was put up around the homestead and used year round from frozen or jams and jellies.
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We actually made a lot of pies. Hmm.
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My great grandmother would make muscadine, two or three different types of mesquite empires was pretty well, the predominant way we used them.
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Hmm. Well, you know, they're one of the probably the easiest ones to grow.
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They have since they're native. You know, they have relatively few pests and problems that we have to try to get through.
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And there's a lot of those tame varieties that have a lot of good varieties.
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One thing you have to look at is they, you know, they do have male and female plants.
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And so a lot of times I know you probably experiences and woods shaun.
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You go out and you see a muscadine vine, but never has any muscadines on it.
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Well, you know, because it's probably a male plant, you know?
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And so it's going to ever have muscadines on it, so depending on what variety you select,
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you have to have a certain number of male plants for a certain number of female plants you plant.
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But they do have self fruitful varieties,
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and I know I planted a few a couple of years ago that are self fruitful and you don't have to have a male and female plant.
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So, but that's just another one you might want to consider. Really easy to grow.
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One thing right on the muscadines, Brad.
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The the commercially available ones that we're talking about, you don't have to plant a pollinator that's not going to fruit.
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Nowadays, most of them are called soil fertile. Yeah. So they pollinate other plants and theirselves.
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Sure, they will produce for you. So you can you can get fruit off all your off, your all your vines.
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Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's a good point in.
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But yeah, they they they're easy to grow. It does require some pruning and some training does require a trellis because they are vine.
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So it does kind of require some planning ahead and how you're going to grow them, but certainly one you can be successful with.
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You know, strawberries is another one that if you want to grow a few strawberries in your yard, you can be successful with those.
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We actually grow strawberries in our school garden and have been fairly successful with those actually really successful with those,
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depending on the variety. Selection is again important.
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They are one that are subject to frost and freeze damage because they are they are blooming during that time or we can have frost or freezes,
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so it's something you might want to consider.
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And the homeowners and the homeowner setting strawberries are treated, usually treated as a perennial crop,
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so you can grow those, you know, keep those same plants year after year.
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However, over time, if you have plants that are several years old,
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you tend to build that start to build up some disease issues in those plants over the time they are subject.
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You know, if we have a really, really wet spring,
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they are subject to to some rot diseases on those berries because those berries are soft and tender and they're they
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are subject to a few rot diseases that you need to think about in the way we treat them in our school garden.
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And, you know, in commercial production, they're treated as an annual crop.
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So we'll build plant strawberries usually around the first of October,
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and we'll harvest those usually and you we'll put a cold frame on and we'll start harvesting them in late March and all the way through April one.
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And then we'll put those plants out and start over in the next year.
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But but it's one year if you want to be successful with, you know, you can be.
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It is a little bit more high maintenance than, say, blueberries or blackbird Shuan.
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Yeah, it is, especially if you're going to grow them as we call Matted Row.
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Yeah, permanent type weed control is very intense and usually it involves the hands and a hoe.
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And so it's something that can't get away from you.
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Pretty easy. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
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Well, let's talk a little bit about now that we've kind of worked through some of those different species and fruits that we can grow in Arkansas.
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Let's talk a little bit about site selection and I think here locally.
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One of the most important things that I think that we need to think about for site selection is drainage.
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And so, you know, all these plants, you know, they like they like water, but they don't like wet feet.
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So drainage is is key that that, you know,
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if you're a good heavy rain that that water comes in and it drains off and it's going to have to drain off fairly quickly.
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And one of the ways that we usually tell people to check the drainage is basically,
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if you were to dig, you know, just a hole in your yard about three foot deep,
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they just take a pair and just posthole diggers, dig a hole eight inches around three foot, they fill it with water.
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If that hole drains in twenty four hours, pretty much all fruit crops can be grown in that location.
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If it drains, if it takes about 36 hours or drained, we can grow apples and pears,
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and probably even pecans we didn't really hit the pecans, but you can probably grow some pecans there.
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And then if it doesn't drain in 40 48 hours, you still got standing.
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Water in that hole is probably not a suitable site for fruit production, Shuan.
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No, it's not. And it's it's just it's not going to work.
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They're going to die. And they may struggle along for a year or two, but they're eventually not going to make it the they are in that wet ground.
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Yeah, yeah. You know, another consideration is try to avoid planting these in frost pockets, especially stuff that's kind of susceptible to,
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you know, susceptible to late freezes and frost like peaches, blueberries and those kinds of things.
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You know, if you if you're in a frost pocket,
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it basically if you're in a if you're in a valley where that cold air kind of settles down in the bottom of that valley and you're in a frost pocket,
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you're going to be more susceptible to a late freeze or frost.
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So just those are all just considerations that you might want to think about.
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You want to again, we want to set our roads and in where we have good air movement around those plants.
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And so just those are all considerations that we have to think about when we go to think about site selection.
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And really, drainage is even more important than fertility, in my opinion.
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So it's really important that drainage is right. So, you know, anytime we want to plant a new crop, Shaun,
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we always want to recommend that we would take a soil test before we before we get started on that.
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Yes, that's very important. And realistically, it's probably more important just to get an idea where we are on our pH.
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Mm-Hmm. Especially, you know.
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If we're talking about blueberries, it's it's the number one most important thing to do so that you know where you need to be with those.
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And other than that, I think it's kind of like trees is the first year we need to be careful with our fertilization.
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But you know, if, if, if areas well drained, I don't care what kind of soil it is, you can feed it enough and it's going to work.
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More better learned, and it will be if it's not well drained and you think it's better, soil.
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So yeah, you know, it's always best to go to that well drained area and no matter what kind of soul tap there is versus the wetter or soil.
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Yeah, for sure. Yeah, those are all things and taking a soil test.
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It doesn't take just a few minutes to get a soil sample down to your local county extension office, and the soil testing service is completely free.
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We need about one pint of soil.
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So just go around to your area that you're thinking about playing your fruit crop and take you four or five, you know, dozen sample sub samples around there.
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Put that in a bucket mix all that together. So we get a representative sample of the whole area and then bring down to your office.
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About one pint of soil. We'll send it off to the soil Lab usually takes two to three weeks to get results back.
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So and that'll kind of give you that snapshot that Shaun was talking about specifically about soil pH,
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because that's really important when we talk about blueberries to make sure that soil pH in the right range and really for all the fruit crops,
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but blueberries more than any other because they just don't do very well and soils
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that are that are hot the age and they just have a totally different requirement,
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they require that acid soil. And so they're in the same family as azaleas, so they can't they take that acid soil.
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So so they that's that's critically important with that as well.
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So we've talked about site selection, we've talked about what we can grow.
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So let's talk a little bit about choosing plants and how to how to get quality plants.
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So I think getting a quality plant is always key no matter what we're talking about, fruits, we're talking about, you know,
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home vegetable garden, butterfly garden, whatever we're talking about, getting quality plants is really key and important, Shaun.
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And you know, you can get a lot more varieties.
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If you think about it, you look at these bareroot fruit tree varieties.
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There's a lot of those out there and you know, the variety selections, a lot, a lot broader if you think about some bare root options.
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Yes, and it's usually quite a bit less expensive and.
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In planting fruit trees, I try to recommend most of the time people to go to bareroot route just because of the expense,
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and they seem to do just as well, not better than container trees.
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I have people all the time. You probably run across this too.
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They'll look. They'll see those big trees somewhere set out for sale.
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You know, in those pots and they're blooming little bit there like man I can peaches
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fruit next year? This year they're already there?
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You know, maybe, maybe not because of stress and shock of moving those trees into the ground is usually pretty severe,
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and they don't just do as good as you might think they will. And so my is a good option.
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Plus, it'll seem to be less expensive and you can get what you want.
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You don't have to just take what's there. Yeah, most of the time those will be mail order type deal.
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Yeah. And they will be shipped to you.
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Yeah, you have to be careful about going to the big box stores and seeing all those fruit trees they have set out there.
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But there's just a variety that they have at those those stores.
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Just because it's a varieties for sale here in Arkansas doesn't mean it's a variety that we would.
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We would recommend that we grow in Arkansas. You know, most of the time when I look at them, I'm clueless at what it even is,
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and I've never even heard of those varieties that you've seen most of the time.
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Yeah, it's it's usually obscure stuff from I don't know where.
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Yeah. So that's that's really important.
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And there's a lot of great mail order catalogs, lot of great websites you can go to in really order some quality plants.
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It might cost you a little bit in shipping, but in the long run,
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you're going to be happier with the result by just ordering the right varieties and getting those quality plants shipped to you.
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Plus, you can you can pretty much determine what time of the year you know you want those shipped.
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Now one thing that we haven't talked about Shuan , you know, we had a previous podcast where we talked about planting trees in general,
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you know, but the time of the year that we want to plant some of those, you know, that February March timeframe is a great time to plant fruit trees.
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But if we're going to order mail order, we may have to be a little bit proactive and think about ordering those ahead of time.
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Be honest with you, if you're going to plant containers, you need to be a little more proactive, many more from what I have found.
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I had a gentleman just this week that was wanting to plant some trees and you know,
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I asked them if they had actually tried to find any yet like we were talking about variety selection and came back a couple days.
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And sure enough, you know, they were out already and were like, Know, if it didn't come a light freeze, they might get some in in February.
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But so if you're planning on planting fruit trees and you want to have the ability
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to pick what you want and be sure you plant what you think you to plant
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I would advise. And in early fall, late summer, most of these nurseries, you know, most of them seem to be in Tennessee.
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A lot of them that sell these fruit bareroot trees that will ship'em to you.
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They will take your orders sometime in the summer when they start lifting trees,
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and then you can have them shipped to you whenever you want, when they lift.
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And that seems to be the best way to make sure you're going to get what you want when you want it.
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Yeah, that's a good point. You know, one thing we didn't talk about Shuan, we talked about variety selection is pollination requirements.
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Something like, you know, apples.
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If you're going to plant an apple tree, you may have to consult with that nursery about, you know, if you're going to plant a certain tree,
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you may have to have a pollinator tree in order for that apple to be pollinated at the correct time and for you to truly get fruit.
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Yeah, I know I planted as an apple trees about three years ago and two or three years ago,
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and and that was one of my considerations was I was really wanted in Arkansas Black Apple,
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so I had to really look and consult with the nursery and a couple of different websites.
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And I actually talked to a fellow county agent that's fairly knowledgeable about fruits,
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about what variety should plant with an Arkansas black apple in order to get it pollinated the way it needs to be pollinated.
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Yeah, exactly. So those are all things that you need to think about.
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And as far as maintenance on fruit crops, you know, again,
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there are a variety of insect and disease issues that that once you have that tree in the ground that you're going to have to think about,
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you may want to consider getting on a regular spray schedule. Just a, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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the old saying and and so just to prevent some of those those issues because they're going to arise if you have fruits or,
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you know, specialty tree fruits.
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There are a whole lot of diseases that we have that we could talk about and insect, especially on peaches, but something you need to think about.
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Annual pruning maintenance is something you also need to consider.
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Keep those trees pruned up so that you can get an adequate amount of sunlight down in there to those to those buds so they can grow those fruits.
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So those are all maintenance considerations that you need to think about if you're going to plan on planting fruit trees, Shuan.
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Yeah. And that's something that once you are doing that, you need to drill in there a little bit deeper.
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And you know, we're not going to cover all of those things today.
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But no, there's things you need to to research and do correctly.
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Yeah. And that's where you know you need to call us or or go to our website.
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And we have great publications for that and variety selection, too.
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Brad, I would mention before we close, we need to make sure everybody goes.
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We have great fact sheets that have Arkansas varieties listed and for each different fruit and small fruit.
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Yeah, we do have some great fact sheets. Our website is uaex.edu, excuse me, uaex.uada.edu.
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You can access those under the home and garden section.
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There's all kinds of fact sheets and we actually give you recommendations on like Shaun said about variety selection.
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There's some fact sheets on individual fruit crops far as you know, growing those.
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So there's a lot of great information on our website,
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so I would encourage you to to find that looked at up and and it'll help you make an informed decision.
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Contact your local extension agent. Reach out to Shaun or I. We can put you in touch with your local.
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county extension agent, if you can't get hold of them, we'll be happy to help you in any way we possibly can.
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We hope that you have enjoyed this episode of Around the Homestead podcast.
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I know we walked through a lot of these fruit considerations,
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and I hope we didn't discourage you from growing fruit because you be you can be successful with growing fruit in Arkansas,
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but you do have to be mindful of your your selection of what fruit you want to grow.
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But until next time, we'll see you around the homestead.
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We hope you enjoy this episode of Around the Homestead podcast to learn more about today's topic.
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Be sure to visit our website at uaex.uada.edu
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Be sure to join us next time on around the Homestead podcast.