What varieties did you plant? Most fruit is in full flower here. Too late to plant. And digging holes in autumn wouldn't work because with our wet winter weather the sides would soon cave in.

I see about the holes. Our apples and pears are in full bloom and nearly full leaf. Peaches are iffy here due to lack of summer warmth. But my neighbour has one on a south facing wall and the flowers are pretty much over. We plant fruit trees in late autumn and winter here when they're still dormant.

Digging the holes well ahead of planting is a great idea, but it definitely requires advance planning. :) I'm jealous of the Northern Spy!!!

I'm z5a NY and I can just see buds forming on my cherry trees.... April is the time for planting fruit trees here.

Brrrr.

Bit different here. These are 2 of my neighbour's apples which hang over our fence. We do pretty well for apples. He's fine with our picking them.

I was near a house today that had an apple tree in the yard.

The apples were almost the size of tennis balls but still too green to eat.

Sounds like you have a nice orchard there porkchop.

It's mid-winter here, and my apple trees have already started flowering. Absolutely crazy, and with late frosts still to come, there'll be no fruit for another 18 months if I'm lucky...

Awwww, shaxhome, I know that feeling. I have zero cherries on one of my trees this year.

BillMN, I grow Lodi apple which is about the color of a tennis ball when ripe. :) The squirrels are already stealing them, so they should be ready any day!

"Sounds like you have a nice orchard there porkchop."

It's coming along but not without occasional problems. I can't seem to get a sweet cherry to establish to save my life, yet the wild cherry trees are everywhere {shrug}. I lost a beautiful young apricot tree to animal damage -- I took that one hard because it was my fault, I didn't get the protection up soon enough and the trunk was destroyed. I put in a replacement this year ("Moorpark"), it's been hanging in there quite well through the intense hot spells we've had. Lot of rust on the apples, I'm going to have to figure out control methods for that.

No peaches this year, though I had a terrific harvest last year. The trees look healthy, though, so probably just a weird blip this year. This is the first year I finally have a few pears to harvest. Only the "Seckel" bore this year, but the other pears are busy establishing themselves and putting on lots of growth. Same with the apples, though I do see a couple apples scattered between the five apple trees I have.

Patience is the name of the game with fruit trees, and man it is a LOT of work to grow fruit well, but the rewards are worth it -- there is simply nothing like fresh fruit off the tree bursting with flavor. You just can't buy that kind of flavor at the grocery.

A lot of more recent breeding has concentrated on precociousness (could apply to any of my teenage grandkids), so waiting 7-10 years for fruiting maturity is as thing of the past. If you are disciplined enough to remove the tiny second year fruitlets, you may see decent crops in as little as 3-4 years.

I have given up on veg at the allotment but held on to all the fruit trees. I will say that every year, cropping is highly variable, with a whole range of (ahem) issues which occur.For me, the bindweed absolutely wrecked my strawberry beds and all the apples were colonised with one of those mothy web infestations and just as the blackcurrants reach peak cropping, bloody big bud turns up like a bad penny. Otoh, I. have a nice crop of red filberts which the squirrels have not (yet) discovered and the almond seems to have mostly missed out on the dire curl, so a decent almond crop beckons. O, the cherries were fabulous but only lasted on the trees for a week or so before being fried by sun and heat. I was able to be extremely generous to allotment neigbours though.

It is all so worthwhile, Porks (even though I used to resent the hours and hours spent picking and preserving). Best of luck with your new orchard.