Fruit trees in a temperate climate: planting tips, rootstocks, mulch, prune, thin fruit 

I’m binge watching all these episodes, there can’t be a nicer bloke on the internet.

This man's way of life is where the world is headed. Don't let the media fool you.

Charles: "I could then go ahead and show you each tree in turn..." Me: *grabs cup of tea* Oh, please do!

I hit the 👍 button on these videos before I even watch them. Best garden series on the web.

OHMY GOSH! I love this guy! Charles, your heart and nature is a BLESSING dude! You really have a way of lifting other's spirits by just speaking a few words.... Thanking God for you and your work! Big hugs!

The information you so generously share is priceless

Sat in my potting shed, with my brand new wood burning stove next to me ( a roasting 25 degrees ) watching this, whilst drinking a cup of tea. Looking out onto my garden, wondering where I can fit an apple tree. Always hit the like button before the video starts, as I know it’s going to be good. Merry Christmas to you, and everyone.

The fruit-growing capital of the world, New Zealand (I've been to South Island 3x) often grows fruit trees very close together, pruning them so they're like a hedge. In fact some NZ websites claim that one can harvest 13,000 lbs of apples off an acre, and when I heard THAT, I planted my fruit trees growing here in the AZ desert, putting another tree in between the ones I had planted 24' apart, so now they're 12' apart. Why? because WATER is the biggest issue, and I don't want to waste a DROP of water in my orchard. I love apples in an orchard because apple juice is easy, and my animals eat the apples, even my Great Pyranees dog ("Tundra") eats them in her breakfast meal, with carrots and eggs. Apple juice is great for cleaning water spots off the sink, especially if it has turned to vinegar. Yours look very marvelous, Charles. When I juice them, the chickens eat the pulp if I can't use it any other way, or my goat, named "Heather".

I just LOVE YOU! Thank you for sharing your beautiful connection with the natural world. Parents, take note: This is real, devices are not. Go outside and play!

I LOVE that you've shown yearly in the year and then fruiting, this take so much time and effort and I really appreciate it

Thank you, Mr. Dowding. You're such a pleasant man and your videos are a real gift.

Quite probably the most informative fruit tree video I’ve ever watched. Eternally grateful for Mr Dowding’s willingness and ability to share his knowledge.

Thanks for a delightful fruit tour...your green thumb sure extends beyond vegetables! Congrats!

I simply love your channel! Finally a practical realistic gardening channel for people in the UK!! I cant get enough of your content since i discovered your channel!

You are such an awesome educator!!! Love your videos and hope to incorporate all the principles you teach. Love the “ no dig” idea. Please keep sharing!

Always a joy to watch these beautiful videos Mr Dowding. 30 minutes of serenity. Thank you very much and a merry Christmas to you and your family.

Wonderful to see your orchard. What a joy to grow apples, pears and plums. I'm in the tropics and surrounded by fruit but it's paradise everywhere.

I never knew that apple trees took a year off, sometimes! Wow. Love this series. Absolutely a RU-vid gem.

You have lots of fruit trees Charles, very impressive. I just pruned here so I was very exicited to see your new video. It is so satisfying to grow fruit, watch it come along and then eat it off the tree. Glad to see you do that at the end. My favorite is to go out back when the kids come home, pick the apple and then slice it up for all to enjoy. So rewarding.

Another great informative video, thanks Charles! I did not know that I needed to cut back on apple production. I have done my summer pruning already so now I will have a look at the apples. I luckily inherited my apple trees through the purchase of my new home so trying to learn as much as I can from you.

6 month's in the making this video. Respect Charles

Apples, even though considered common and blase'...….are actually very very tasty. In example, no one ever thinks about eating an orange until your sitting next to someone in the lunchroom peeling one. The smell of it gets in your nose and the primal human kicks in, and you want one. Mr. Dowding, we are not all blessed with your almost perfect 4 season British climate, but I love your videos.

ROFL my mouth watered when he bit into that apple. Thanks for all your knowledge and hard work. I am multi sowing my radishes thanks to you. 4 seeds to a place, 9 places to a square foot. Delicious cherry bell.

Thank you for the tour. I too share my fruit with some insects (and squirrels). I am thankful for the bounty.

Hello. I just planted 3 apple trees 1 plum 2 blueberry 2 peach and strawberries. I also have a small garden. My suburban yard is not that large. But I'm trying to grow as much as I can. This is my second year. Trial and error. I enjoy watching your no dig videos. You have helped me a great deal. I even have less weeds than last year. Compost and mulch. Have an awesome summer. See you on your next video

A good thing from this lockdown, it's led me here. Blows Gardeners World out of the water. Brilliant videos, 100 of them by the way.

Man, even your voice is perfect and just so calming.

Another great informative vid , I have had a Victoria plum in garden for around 6 years and never had a plum , so the pruning shall start and hopefully next year I’ll be plum happy 😃

After asking about winter veg types i found out you literally wrote the book on it. Witch after the Christmas financial low has subsided i will be getting for next year. Mr. Dowding, thank you for all that i have been abule to learn from you this year. I hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. I look forward to learning more from you in this next year. This video taught me what we did wrong this year and lost all but one fruit tree. So we can fix that and we can better protect my beloved Anjou pear tree. Thank you so much. Sincerely, John

i live for fruit trees, some might think its sad, but i feel like everyone else is just dangerously lost ;)

Simply sublime! Sir, you are a wealth of useful information.

First time I've actually understood fruit tree pruning despite numerous books, articles etc. Thank you for your wonderful videos!

I don’t grow fruit, (no space), but boy was it good to see the sunshine! Love your work Mr D, please keep it going, Richard

que alegría! no tengo mucho espacio, casi nada.. pero cuanto que estoy aprendiendo y que valioso!! gracias Charles!!!! te envió mucha energía, la mejor.. y los mejores deseos para ti amigo!!!

I am so grateful for my Jakob-Fischer apples, a flavour you cannot buy. Growing fruit is a good thing to do.

Thank you for removing fear of growing fruit trees! Am in similar zone to yours (8A) in South Carolina USA, where previous commercial apple growers have retired out almost completely. Will take a couple of years, but will soon have the crisp, wonderfully fresh apples I learned to love while growing up near these former orchards. This is an excellent description and example of how to do it on smaller, manageable scale.

I really enjoyed this video. I have just 1/3 acre and have started 2 peaches, 2 apples one mulberry, 3 figs, and two failed cherries. Planning apricots, almond, plums next!

A joy to watch on a winter morning. I’m not sure what rootstock I have on my Lidl and Aldi 9.99 specials but the apple ‘champion’ wasn’t a bad little eater for it’s second year, and the cherry ‘starburst’ produced 3 lovely cherries 🍒 in it’s first year. Nothing on the Victoria plum or on the pear ‘Clapp’s Favourite’. I will be doing a bit of grafting for multiple varieties when I can get hold of some suitable scion wood and have the apple and pear espaliered along the fence as room is a bit tight. All trees heavily mulched and I have marked my calendar for summer pruning at the beginning of July:-)

Thank you, Mr.Dowding! I love your videos and Ive learned so much from you! Hello from Dickson, Tennessee, USA!

I bought a quince seedling from Puglia 8 years ago an this year we had about 10-12 large Quince, probably helped by the drought. Made lovely jelly and jam. Also a great year for Olives

Thanks Charles for all your great information and for being so kind, humble and charming in your videos. This info is much appreciated as I'm planning a row of 8 little fruit trees , as you have done. Wish I had this information before I let our Pear trees grow about 30 foot tall! I don't know what to do about those monsters now; they produce fruit like crazy, but the pears are as hard as a rock and never get soft... my donkeys get to eat all of them...every single year.

Great information. I always learn something worthwhile. Root stock sizes are fascinating. We lost an old Apple tree in our yard two years ago and have been looking to replace it, if not just for the flowers the bees love so much.

Good video, thanks. I find it interesting how a person (me included) will forgive scab and insect spots on fruit when home grown, but will seek out perfect fruit in a store. If more people grew their own the levels of pesticide use would probably go down dramatically.

I learned so much about fruit trees. I have only a few right now but big plans to expand to fruit and nut trees in South Carolina. Problem is that humid & hot summer, destroyer of plants. The rest of the year is perfect for growing...but summer is the best weeder of the weak.

Mr. Dowding, If you have not yet figured out why the Good Lord has placed you on this earth, please allow me to tell you... To make videos as this to bless others into becoming the best gardeners! You are an inspiration to me and so many others I see commenting. This is my second video I have seen of yours and I have to admit, I am in love with them. Please don't stop the blessings. I am so excited to plant my trees in the manner in which you do, they are so beautiful. Be blessed my friend.

I am contemplating a small orchard in my small backyard as part of redesigning a veg and fruit garden. This was very interesting to me. Thanks!

Thanks so much for this video. So much valuable information. I have some apple trees, which were here when I moved four years ago, and I knew next to nothing about caring for them, but now I can get started. I had looked up pruning information on the RHS website, but found it daunting! I didn't know about summer pruning. Your vegetable garden is wonderful!

What a heaven garden tour. I have shared this video even with my non-English speaking friend, who loves gardening.

Thank you very much for taking us around your Apple trees.

What a wonderful video. I searched hi and low for this information a few years ago and didn’t find anything so helpful and informative. Thanks once again Charles for all your efforts we do appreciate all the knowledge you impart 🙏🏻😊☘️

i am very lucky because i can manage three languages, and this enables me to watch and follow Italian, French and English garden videos. I am noticing that you love your vegetables and you restrict the growth of fruit trees. Your trees seem not to use the benefits of bending long stems to generate more fruit on horizontal branches. I think this should be mentioned particularly when it comes to apples and certain other trees. Some of the tall branches in your garden could be bent to fruit and allow better air circulation at center of tree. Thank you for teaching us how to culture vegetables and fruit trees. Your English attitude and methodology has charm and is enjoyable to watch. I have been watching your videos more than once to make sure I get whatever I can from them. I take an interest in garden structures, field design, tools, and other things that belong to a garden. Really thank you Sir.

Thank you again for such an informative video. I am planting some fruit trees in the spring here in Ontario Canada and will follow your advice on pruning and thinning the fruit. This journey of growing food at home is made so much easier by hearing your advice and inspiration. Kind regards, Coreen.

Just a wonderful video Mr.Dowding. I could have watched all day. My little orchard is in its 4th year and i am looking forward to the future.

What a fantastic video, thank you Charles. Wonderful :) I bet you'd be an amazing fella to sit and have a good chat with, could listen to your expertise all day!

Excellent! No matter your growing zone, there's much to learn from Charles, in this jam packed episode.

Beautiful voice and interesting tips, thank you Charles.

I have your book on Organic Gardening. You comment that if your soil type was more acid you would grow a bunch of in-ground blueberries. I live just out of Vancouver, Canada - blueberry country. I am inspired now to plant a whole bunch of blueberry bushes rather than always wanting to grow what seems exotic! Lol, sometimes it takes somebody else to point out the obvious.

Fantastic Charles. I have a Jonagold out the back, consistent cropper and a big tree but I know I haven't been pruning it really correctly, now I will!

Thank you! Your videos are so informative and inspiring. Please keep it up, you are my favourite! From Vancouver, Canada.

Thanks so much for your videos, this one especially since I am planning to plant a bunch of one year old fruit trees next spring.

Iv'e never bothered with dwarfing root-stocks and multi grafted trees. My method is to get the variety of fruit tree you like (bare root). Plant as usual and then lop/cut the stem to the height you want the trunk of your mature tree to be. Want a dwarf tree? Cut the stem at knee height. Want more than one variety of a certain fruit tree? Plant the trees next together and then prune as if they were one tree. Easy.

Excellent video guys! Winter pruning tutorial next would be great :)

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Makes picking a new species for our garden easier!

Love your fruit tree we got Apples coming in the spring but all of are fruit trees will be grown under high tunnel, a little different way of growing!!!!🍒🍒🍒

What a wonderful holiday surprise! Thank you so much for this break from the craziness of the season!

Charles, this vid helped mean lot! We are moving into a 1.2 acre property and I have been snapping pics of your garden and putting the pics in on the property Google map. You are always an encouragement to garden better. It's amazing to me that on our search there are so many 1acre homes and no garden, sad state of affairs humans have got into

Thank you. Very interesting. I have a few fruit trees on my allotment which I'm afraid I've neglected a bit so this has given me the encouragement to get them back under control.

How fortunate you are!

Thank you for the tour of your fruit trees. From Central, southern Virginia U.S.A.

Hi Mr Charles, I love how you explain about the fruit trees.( I got four fruit trees at my backyard last year and I wonder if I can add more 😂😁) Would you make an update on your fruit trees? Thank you 😊

I love your fruit trees. We are putting in an Orchard with a focus on Antique apples.

Surely established HomeAcres! Amazing!!

Wow, inspiring. I've got to get more fruit trees in the ground👍

You give the best information possible. I have not watched a better informative video on fruit tree growing and care.

These all look delicious.

Beautiful orchard. Wonderful variety. Very inspirational. I'm very excited for spring to come and shop for a few varieties for my farm. Thank you so much.

Thank you Charles for explaining about the fruit and other bits it will be very helpful as my tree's develop.

I just love watching your videos, full of useful information very simply explained with lots of common sense. God bless you for sharing such valuable information not to mention letting us enjoy the beautiful garden of yours which is so uplifting. Also you talk calmly and slowly which helps us armatures to digest the exuberant amount of precious knowledge. A very warm greetings from Canada 🇨🇦

I love your videos Mr. Dowding. I only wish you had made this video last winter. I lost two main branches on my Victoria plum tree this summer because I didn't thin the fruit. I guess 100 plums per branch is too much for a three year old tree. Lesson learned (the hard way). Thanks for all the expert advise. I hope to visit your farm some day.

Yeah, this is my bread and butter. I totally agree, I also like to add charged biochar. It's so amazing. And swale systems are so great to incorporate into these also. I ave videos on both if you are interested Charles. Love your vids, you are in my top 3 of everyone in this space.

For what it's worth... For your Concord pear, try to spread/weight your higher branches just slightly so that the crotch angles are less narrow. Doing that will cause your tree to respond with blossoms higher up. I was told this by a horticultural educator and after trying I finally got blossoms on my tree. He said that will alter the hormonal balance of the tree and you will get more fruit (and ultimately a stronger tree because those narrow crotch angles are more prone to breaking.) Beautiful fruit trees! Do you think the lack of thinning overwhelmed the plum near the shed? I noticed it is not there any longer.

Very informative and enjoyable to see such beautiful fruit trees. I am on my second year this year of only four trees but hope to plant another two or three. Will look forward to watching more of your videos.

I could watch every one of your videos, so informative, relaxing, just plain nice. Wish I could be your friend, cheers from USA!

Good afternoon Charles, try doing some stretches on the bag. Make the branches more horizontal closer to 45 degrees

To hear Wren (your 3-year-old fan) yell, "Wait, that's not Jupiter!" was funny! My neighbor grows apples in Hawaii and it is a definite labor of love. When Wren was maybe 2.5, he went and picked all 5 of the apples about two weeks before they were ready! We had to bring them to our neighbor with an apology. She didn't mind too much; they were still yummy. He also went through a phase of picking all the cherry tomatoes when they were green. Gardening with someone so small takes a lot of patience.He has planted his own bare root apple trees recently, so hopefully he will have some apples to share in a few years! I think we've learned the apple lesson though and now he leaves our neighbor's alone until she tells him he can harvest them. The trees are so small and just the right size for little boys to pick apples! I can understand the temptation. Just the other day he picked *all* our lemons. I am glad he aspires to have a garden like yours. He's ready to clear out all our grass. He tells me, "Don't worry, you don't need to dig anything!"

Your garden all around is so beautiful. I love your collection of fruit trees. Thank you for sharing.

I was given a small apple tree that had been growing next to an older apple tree by a person that had lived there all her life as had her parents and the original tree was there when they built their home possibly 80 years ago. It produced delicious sweet, crisp apples but the variety is unknown. It has survived many freezes in our hot, humid Florida 9a zone which is amazing since normally we can't grown apples well here. BUT, it came with a bit of fungus on it and I was told the parent also had that and she just rubbed it down each year with a fungicide so I did, too. But I do think the fungus is in the soil. QUESTION: The fungus grew all summer on my tiny tree along the whole woody (tiny) trunk and I treated it with copper fungicide, but it just died then grew back immediately. We had a very cold spring, HOT summer with continual rain daily for months so assume the fungus was very happy. Sun was not very good and I had a horrible garden but everyone did so my question is do I remove the one foot tall tree and wash away all the dirt then replant or just keep treating it hoping last summer won't repeat? I really wanted to save this tree as it obviously likes this area (normally) and that makes it a perfect apple tree for us. Her tree gets fungus mold growing each year but since my tree is still so tiny, it has stunted it. How should I treat it?

My Dad had about 12 apple trees in Wexford, 6 cookers, 6 sweet, I think 2 of each of 6 varieties. No clue of the names. Never trimmed, sprayed, thinned, nothing, but they always did well. Neighbors kids loved them too much, so when we grew up and the parents grew old, they cut them all down. Sad. Blackbirds and Thrushes used to love eating the fallen ones in winter. The garden was more of a wild forest than anything else, there were briars at the base and so on, so basically it was a wildlife haven of which we got as many as we wanted. Rarely had a problem with codling moth, oddly. So it goes to show that while you can carefully look after them, often, you dont need to, so long as you dont mind your fruit not being perfect. I'm now in California, we have 100-degree (F) summers, no rain from March to late October, and the 30-yr old apple tree in the garden where I am now is really a picture of decrepitude - it's core is gone, long eaten by termites, branches fall off here and there, it desperately needed pruning (which I did), and every year every second apple has maggots in. Disaster. I stopped thinning the apples because although nobody used to eat the apples, when I thinned them, and they become bigger and sweeter, the relatives found out and came down to "visit", stripping the tree like magpies. So now I dont bother. But I'm working on the peach - thinning like crazy, because they are otherwise tasteless. I have a nasty scale insect thing that I think the ants bring onto the tree, so I've started wrapping sticky tape around the base to stop the ants. We'll see if that stops the scab appearing next year. The overall take home is that some fruit grow well in your area, some dont. If you pick the ones that grow well in your area, your work goes down dramatically. Here, figs and apricots and citrus grow healthily and abundantly, but I'm having problems with blackberry, raspberry and apples (summer water, mainly). So try everything and find out what grows best in your garden. Then decide if you want the trouble for the rest. My new introductions this year were mulberry and tangerine. We previously had a fig that never ripened properly. I gave up trying to fix it, and cut a branch from a neighbor's tree that was fruiting well, stuck it in the ground,and this year harvested a great crop! So check the neighbors gardens too. Solves a lot of gardening problems. Same goes for some veggies. Claytonia grows wild here, and parsley and rocket are self-seeding.

Your knowledge is mind bungling. How did u accumulate so much knowledge

You are absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. I was about to go fruit crazy. I realize now I need to plan this out and think about what things will look like in 5 to 8 years.

I do love a gardening man in a corduroy jacket

Merci pour ce joli tour !!! je suis admirative de tout ce que vous faite et de votre méthode pour faire pousser vos plantations ! Je souhaite qu'elle se développe sur toute la planète ! J'adore les pommes c'est mon fruit préféré et vous en avez une telle variété c'est magnifique! Brigitte

Thank you, Charles, for sharing. It’s so nice to see a sun filled garden in the middle of winter. I grow my fruit on espalier trees, and I always feel like leaving more fruit when I thin it, and my reasoning is that I just have less tree, less brunches, for the root. Does it make sense? So on my 6 year old espalier apples I leave a cluster of 2 apples every 4 inches or so. I summer prune a lot to keep the shape right and to make sure there’s sun and air on the fruit, and I am pretty proud of my apples and quinces.

Charles you are the best! Thanks from Vancouver Island Canada 👍🏼👍🏼

Amazing looking fruit trees. I wish I could grow more types of apples but living in a zone 10 in southern Florida I grow mostly tropicals. I am on my 6th year with a beautiful starfruit tree that just produces amazingly. I really enjoy your videos and to hear the knowledge and the passion you have makes for a wonderful learning experience.

Charles have you ever considered doing audio book / podcasts. I could listen to you talk about gardening all day. I know you are a very busy man but i'm sure they would be very popular.

You are really some special kind of person. So interesting. Always look forward to your videos.

Great place! beautiful fruits.

Fabulous thank you Charles, my apples are on their second year so this video will come in handy 👍🏻

Nice shirt at the first part of your video, I went to Mae Hong Son but never go to Pai... Your fruit trees are amazing, I tried to grow apple from seeds no luck... will try it again.. after saw your videos really inspiring.