Growing Small Fruit Trees: The First Year in 4 Basic Steps

• Prune a dormant, thumb-thick sapling about knee-high, or 18 inches from the ground, when you plant in late winter.
• After buds begin to break the first spring, choose your scaffold. Pinch off all extraneous buds or prune a little lower to a height where the configuration of leafing buds suits you.
• Near the summer solstice, prune to slow growth and begin to shape your scaffold. Remove any redundant branches and make heading cuts.
• In winter, prune to open the interior of the tree and form a well-balanced shape. Remove dead or diseased material.

Why Not Choose a Genetic Dwarf Tree?

Genetic dwarf fruit trees have their short stature bred into their genetic makeup. Genetic dwarfs aren’t grafted; they grow on their own roots. On average, they stay between 6 and 8 feet tall, but are known to be less vigorous and have a shorter lifespan. When a fruit tree is bred for one quality, such as size, then other traits, such as fruit flavor, climate adaptability and overall vitality, become necessarily secondary. By selecting for size, you will miss out on the tastiest varieties.

Some fruit trees are available grafted on ultra-dwarfing rootstocks. These trees stay quite small, a petite 4 to 6 feet, but because of their extremely small root systems, ultra-dwarfing rootstocks present many of the same problems genetic dwarfs do in terms of short lifespan and overall plant health.

Most nurseries offer fruit trees grafted onto semidwarfing rootstocks. People seek these out with reasonable expectations of smallish trees, but semidwarf only means “smaller than standard.” If a full-sized fruit tree is 30 feet tall, then a semidwarf might grow to be as tall as 25 feet.

If you want a broad variety of choices, opt for a standard or semidwarf variety. The regular and strategic pruning described in this article is the best way to limit the size of a fruit tree.