When I was a kid I saw someone who had an orchard at their house. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I would go into forests and figure out which berries I could eat. When I was a kid, we would go to orchards in the country and eat the fruit and I couldn't believe how good it was. When I was walking home one day, a hippie lady gave me some of her Concord grapes. I couldn't believe how good they were and how different from bland grapes in stores. When I finally bought a house, I started. Vern Nelson, who is a HOS member, wrote a column in the Oregonian for years. He also informed me about the HOS. Just listening to smart people like Ted Swenson and all the other HOS members inspired me to try experimenting. You people have had to witness all of the strange experiments I have tried over the years.
John S
PDX OR
fruitman25 said
I was wondering if any one could share how they started their orchards?
The first year I bought my home was 1991 which came as an empty lot. So I planted 3 apricot trees for fruit of which two years later I had to replace them with plums that are still here today.
See [left side within picture] below taken today. Left is my now mature turkish tree hazelnut version of my afternoon shade tree from the west hot suns. Works very well, leafs out late etc. However city squirrels (seeing the damage as a result) halted future plans to multi-graft it so... after trying apricots squirrels became my #2 lesson. 
John S said
Just listening to smart people like Ted Swenson and all the other HOS members inspired me to try experimenting. You people have had to witness all of the strange experiments I have tried over the years.
It is better to learn local for sure. 
We can grow fruit trees in our backyards for many kinds of things as even California and some cases better, sweet cherries for example. Of many home tests that have come along are a couple of ways (or ideas) of increasing bee pollination and increase the effective bloom period fruit flowers can have (to the bees) so that the bees can find you a crop.
Idea-1: [as per example image right side] grafting sweet cherry to a special 5" interstem of plum of between my upper blackgold cherry [hard to see upper graft in image] on the stump of Krymsk-1 rootstock below grafted at the height of 5 feet. Normally blackgold on gisela-5 rootstock it past midway blooming.
Idea-2: that I have more experience with, is to brush latex on half your flowers, in turn those painted delay bloom about 10 days more. Has worked well with pome fruits as well, though not generally always so important. These results I once posted pictures of on my early blooming asian pear were once lodged on the older forums. Now I think these results are due to the exclusion of oxygen or air due to the fact I had created some bud death when placing it on as early in "too early" as January. (before you see any white tip seems just fine)
Good thanks to another well seasoned and inspiring person (ie old NAFEX forums from 90s) Jerry Lehman who is one of the original creditors of the paint idea. I personally use mt711 by mannington, an indoor latex based glue, but a bit harder to come by and pricey!
Hi Fruitman,
I live on the west side of Portland, not really in any incorporated area, but in the East part of Washington County.
I bought a cherry tree at Fred Meyers for $7 bare root. It was about 20 years ago, when I bought a house. It died in the clay, but I bought a Gala apple, which I don't like that variety for here on the west side. But I grafted about 40 other varieties, after taking the HOS classes,and also have many varieties of plums, pears, other cherries, persimmons, and some exotic fruit and many berries, vegies and mushrooms. I just keep learning from people like those on this site and try to share my ideas with others.
John S
PDX OR
I grew up in Newport, Oregon. When I was about in the 5th grade I decided I wanted to grow an apple tree. My parents were OK with that, so I found one in a catalog at a price I could afford - 99 cents. It was a 'Red Rome Beauty'. I didn't know anything about climate, disease resistance, etc. so the apples it produced were not real appealing. I learned a bit about pruning and pruned it a few times, but it never was real healthy. I don't think any apple would grow well within a half mile of the beach, which is where we lived. But the tree is still living today.
My wife and I moved to Camas in 1990. Our lot is 0.7 acre, about 1/3 mile from the Columbia river (although about 475 feet feet above it). Our backyard is about 0.5 acre, and was covered with himalayan blackberry plus an ancient English walnut and Winter Banana apple. I think the land had been some kind of orchard many years before we bought it. Anyway, shortly after moving in I bought a couple of apple trees at Fred Meyer and planted them in the backyard. Unfortunately I forgot to place a sign saying "For human consumption only" so the first winter the rabbits snipped one off and badly girdled the other one. I had some tree seal, so I sealed the girdling, figuring I had nothing to lose. To my surprise, the tree recovered, and is still quite healthy and productive. Unfortunately I didn't save the label so I don't remember what variety it is. And I learned an important lesson about protecting small plants from rabbits.
The Winter Banana apple tree was in rough shape when we bought the lot (completely hollow, broken branches, etc.). But it still produced tons of tasty apples. An ice storm about 8 years ago finally broke it in half and it did not recover. But I grafted a few cuttings onto my other tree. I have grafted about 25 varieties onto it.
Circa 2002 my wife bought some unusual apples from the grocery store for me. I liked a couple of them a lot, so I saved the seeds, thinking I would get a tree of the same variety (yes I was more ignorant than I am now). I ended up planting out three seedling trees in the backyard. Two were kind of stunted, and one was super healthy and grew quickly. The healthy one was in a bad spot so I moved it next to the fence and is now squeezed in between a cedar and a sequoia (though I plan to cut those down in the next year or two). It's apples are quite tasty and healthy, and the folks here encouraged me to give it a name and hand out scions. So that is the "Miss Jessamine" apple, which I named after my daughter. Of the other two, one just never really grew much so I ripped it out. The other one kind of plugged along until about 4 years ago when it seems to have overcome whatever was holding it back. It produced one apple two years ago, and about 20 small-ish apples last year. I brought a few to the fall show for people to try, but I realized later that those were not even close to being ripe. The ones that I had left on the tree tasted much better when I picked them in mid November.
Around 2010 I took a permaculture class from Toby Hemenway, which started me on a path toward turning my backyard into a permaculture food forest, a path I am still on. Around the same time we hired a landscape designer to draw up a plan for our backyard, which at the time was focused on native plants. I am still implementing that design, but I have switched a lot of the native plants for food-producing plants. But still I consider the native plants to be the foundation of all the life in my yard. I have all the large trees and shrubs in place, and many of the smaller shrubs. I am still working on the guilds, although I have largely let nature drive those, i.e. I let many of the "wild" plants grow if they are not invasive and provide some useful function. I am also working on a large raised hugelkultur vegetable bed. Another huge project (perhaps a bit too huge) is an 8'x8'x13' timber frame grape arbor, which is almost complete after being in process for several years.
So I have around 90 varieties of food plants, plus another 25 or so species of native plants, plus another 25 varieties of decorative trees and plants.
As far as production, up until 3 years ago I could eat everything that my yard produced. But that is rapidly changing. Now I don't even have time to pick it all, much less consume it. So I am going to try organizing harvest parties for family and friends to come pick my surplus. The tricky thing is I kind of designed the system to not all ripen at once, so I will have to have people come over numerous times. My main goal with the food forest is to be able to walk into my backyard every day of the year and pick something. But I didn't really think through what I would do with all the surplus. I have been pressing more and more things for juice, but that is pretty time consuming, plus I don't yet have a scratter so I am wasting a lot. I freeze a lot of the berries, but my freezer fills pretty quickly, and I am about a year behind in consuming the frozen things.
I have also been dabbling with mason bees for the last few years, they are a lot of fun. I use teasel and bamboo stems, and am also trying phragmites reeds for the first time this year. I harvest the teasel from my yard.
I also have a number of wildlife habitat projects in place and on the drawing board - bat house, bird houses, vaux's swift roost, pond, purple martin logs. I have also been trying to get the wild birds to consume codling moth larvae in the winter.
I grew up in a rural community / small town in the midwest, rural southern Illinois and Missouri. All of the generations of my family grew fruit trees or small orchards as part of their way of life. They didn't think they were doing something different, it was just the normal and expected thing to do. Usually they had apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums. My grandfather grew a few pawpaw trees too, and most of them had grapes. Having a home orchard was considered a normal thing to do, frugal, enjoyable, and healthy. My family thought of people who didn't have home kitchen gardens and fruit trees as, maybe misguided, or even a bit odd. 🙂
As soon as I owned my first house and yard, I added fruit trees too. When I bought my current place in Battleground, 2 acres, there were a few fruit trees. Each year I add some new ones, and each year there are a couple that don't make it. It's more than just being frugal for me, more a hobby, home science project, continuous discovery, continued learning, a conversation, and a peaceful way to be outside. There are a couple of trees that came with the place, but the vast majority were planted by me, in the range of 4 to 8 years old. A couple are new, and there are always new grafts, often via Home Orchard Society and its members. In addition to the orchard and garden, always reading and learning more about growing things keeps my mind active. I have many types of apples, Euro pears, Asian pears, Euro plums, Asian plums, pawpaws, persimmons, grapes, figs, peaches, a mulberry, a new quince, and just planted some chestnut trees this winter. I just keep adding a few new trees each year. Many were bought bare root via catalogs, and started some myself from seeds, cuttings, or grafting.
I never tasted a fresh fig or persimmon until I grew them myself. I couldn't believe I got this old without trying them before. Most years we have extras that we give away or dehydrate for winter use. The biggest challenge is deer, followed by voles and some diseases like peach leaf curl and canker.
Dad hauled us outside of Portland to ‘You Pick’ whatever was in season, so we’d always have a fresh box of fruit around. His grandfather had homesteaded in the foothills of Oregon’s Coast Range, planting an orchard I came to know as a child, spending as much time there as possible.
Watched my Great-uncle collect, store, then graft various fruit & nut trees on the homestead; he’d married into the family, with incredible orcharding skills from ‘across the valley’ where his family grew peaches, prunes & walnuts. In the early 80’s, I inherited the place - and went nuts 
- topwork grafting, bridge grafting wounds, restorative pruning ..and planting.
Relatively young, I joined the HOS. Inspired by Jim Gilbert, as well as the home orchards we’d tour of members, I began to push the limit with ‘unusual fruit,’ like persimmons, figs & kiwi. They worked! - often better than ‘the usual suspects,’ along with grapes, Asian plums ..and those usual suspects. I had a pretty good run, having given 3 tours of the place to the HOS.
I’m now on the Blue Ridge of SW Virginia… Planted 6 fruit trees and two grapes a year ago, and all are doing well. Though starting over, I’d not be without an orchard ... it’s likely in my blood
I came to rural Clackamas County 30 years ago and bought a fixer house with some acreage. I met locals Ken and Winnie Fisher who introduced me to HOS and I started planting and grafting. Their grand kids visited last year and I pointed out the Spitzenberg that I planted that first year based on Winnie's recommendation.
We now have 25 or so apple varieties and another 25 odds and ends fruit trees of the usual suspects. We love our hard cider and experimenting with adding other fruit juices to cider both to use up the bounty and for the joy of the unknown that turns out great. Our most recent blends involve quince, current, Logan berry, plum, elderberry and hop.
We dehydrate a lot and bag varieties separately. When we share them around folks are amazed to taste something really good that they've never heard of before.
And folks love blueberry apple sauce, quince chutney, peach salsa, kiwi ginger jam. The yummy never ends.
Growing stuff is a labor of love, a hobby, a vocation. I met a kid - a teenager - who has lived his whole life in an apartment in the city and knows nothing about growing, nothing about picking and fixing fresh food. I sense a spark of curiosity, so perhaps with some mentoring I can pay it forward.
This topic hasn't been active for 2 months. Many interesting stories are brought out here by several interesting people and ideas, so bumping this seems like a good idea. This is also sort of my own continuation of history (pictorial by Jafar above) of my nut shade tree above.
My only dfference is this time centering everything around rootstocks that I find work the best for yards. I am going to list 4 pictures only by link to keep the respect for the layout.
Some that know me here from years past might know that I read lots of things related to fruiting advice, but sometimes I make mistakes in my observations. If I am ever wrong please jump in and correct me.
My wonderful afternoon shade tree was an idea that I picked up on after living in an apartment long ago while having the home that I am in now. While exploring one of the university gardens around Seattle, there is and had been a turkish hazel tree growing next to other example nut trees. *The exampled turkish nut tree looks already like what I saw before. (*advance planning) This link is my own yard one.
Once you stand under one you would know why. For example: turkish nut tree
The lack of any volunteer vegetation from the ground was the decision maker clincher. Second to that it is not seed invasive like my neighbors maples are to my gutters! (I don't think you can expect the same from other hazelnut species in other orchards, true?)
Now Plum Roots (multigrafted to common root):
These last pictures are of a same tree per similar no maintenance situations about rootstock named Citation.
Citation is truly one friend I had wished I had known about in my (the instance of) first place. I have tried Shiro on St julien A for long enough, 10 years or more, will endure through all areas of grass, then 20 years, just getting worse. (re-contruction and excavations underway). Similar consequences in just a few years grown 2 examples the krymsk-1 plum root, my compost pile, nothing grafted. Not good either or any choice for the perfectionist that I am for long term.
Online patent research in the past has always helped me know what it is I am receiving all the time at the retailers other than the citation now only available pre-grafted. Hmm. Citation can be our backyard Savior, Let's get it back Mr Zaiger. I suppose it has to be protected now as a trade secret when all patents expire as they do. If not, well done Zaiger, please answer your phone if we call you. 
BTW, well, the one top branch is Owen T plum which might be well suited here. The tree came as 'emerald beaut' on citation. EB never performed well. They did do slightly better than several test branches of notoriously (for our area) bad and almost zero production plum-cots. So keep an open head on the Owen T. (currently they seem to be getting closer to harvest)
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
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