Planting a fruit tree in autumn: from buying it to its first winter

A fruit tree is a decision that lasts decades. Which makes it all the more annoying when the freshly bought tree sulks through its first summer or never breaks bud at all. Usually that is not down to the cultivar but to the how and when of planting.

The good news: in autumn the garden works for you. Plant between leaf fall and the first hard frost and the tree goes into soil that still holds warmth and stays moist all winter. It has nothing to do but grow roots. Below is the whole route: what to check when you buy, how to pick the spot, how to plant step by step, and what the tree needs from you through its first winter.

Bare root or container?

Bare-root trees leave the nursery without a pot and without soil on the roots. You can only get them during dormancy from October to March, and that is precisely their advantage: they are moved in their sleep and barely notice the disturbance. You also see what you are buying. With container stock the root system is hidden, and a root ball that has spiralled in its pot often stays a knot for years.

Container stock is on sale all year and can in theory be planted any time. In practice a container tree planted in high summer establishes worse, because in the heat it has to root and supply a full canopy at once. Bare root in autumn is almost always the smarter and cheaper choice. The pot only pays off when you have to plant outside dormancy.

Buying: how to spot a good tree

A tree with poor roots never catches up, however carefully you plant it. So turn the tree over before you buy and give the underground half as long a look as the crown. Freshly lifted stock feels cool and damp, and the roots are pale where they are cut.

If the cultivar you are after is not in stock locally, it is worth looking at mail-order ranges. Bare-root trees travel well during dormancy, they arrive packed in moist material, and they then belong in the ground within a few days.

Form and rootstock decide the size

How big your tree gets depends less on the cultivar than on the rootstock it is grafted onto. The same apple ‘Topaz’ reaches a good two metres on a dwarfing stock and eight on a seedling. That matters enough to deserve its own piece: understanding fruit tree rootstocks.

Next to that stands the trunk height the nursery sells you as a form. A bush tree carries its crown from about 40 to 60 cm and can be picked from the ground. A half standard starts at 100 to 120 cm, a full standard at 160 to 180 cm and needs a ladder, but you can mow or keep chickens underneath it. For small gardens there are spindles, columns and espaliers.

Work out spacing from the final size, not from the sapling in your hand. Two metres between two half standards looks generous in November and is a problem in ten years that only a saw will solve.

Pollination: one tree on its own often sets nothing

Most apple and pear cultivars are self-sterile. They need a second cultivar of the same species nearby that flowers at the same time, so the bees can carry the pollen. In a built-up area the pollinator is usually somewhere in a neighbour's garden. On an open plot by the woods, probably not.

Settle that before you buy, not after the first season full of blossom and empty of fruit. Self-fertile and therefore uncomplicated are sour cherry, peach, apricot and many damsons. Which cultivars go together for apple, pear and sweet cherry is covered in the pieces on apple, pear and sweet cherry.

The site: sun, air, no frost pocket

Most fruit trees want sun, ideally six hours a day or more. In shade the tree grows but carries little, and the fruit stays pale and bland. The soil should be deep and not waterlogged. If water stands for days after rain, a slightly raised planting mound helps more than any drainage in the hole, because a deep pit in heavy clay turns into a bathtub.

Watch the lie of the land. Cold air flows downhill at night and pools in front of hedges and walls and in hollows. That is exactly where late frost catches the blossom, while a tree twenty metres further up comes through. Early-flowering species do not belong in the dip. What you can do when it gets close anyway is in frost protection for early-flowering fruit trees.

Planting step by step

1. Soak the roots and trim them

   Stand the tree with its roots in water for a few hours before planting, overnight is fine. Shorten damaged or very long root tips with a clean, slanted cut, which stimulates the fine roots. Cut crushed spots left by lifting back to pale wood.

2. Dig the hole generously

   Make the hole twice as wide as the root system and only as deep as it needs to be. Loosen the base with a fork and roughen the walls, so that in heavy soil the roots do not circle as if in a pot. Keep topsoil and subsoil separate on the sheet.

3. Put in a vole basket where you need one

   In vole country a basket of unplated, hexagonal wire mesh with a mesh size of about 13 to 16 mm goes into the hole. It has to stand at least a hand's width above the soil, otherwise the vole simply walks over the rim. Unplated, because the wire should have rotted away after eight to ten years, by which time the tree is strong enough.

4. Drive the stake first

   Drive the stake in before the tree, on the weather side, which here usually means west to south west. Afterwards you can no longer split a root with it. The stake reaches just below the lowest branches, not up into the crown, or the branches will chafe.

5. Set it at the right height

   Plant the tree as deep as it stood in the nursery, which you can read off the colour change on the trunk. The graft union, the thickened seam low on the stem, stays a good hand's width above the soil. Lay a batten across the hole and you will actually see the height instead of guessing it.

6. Wash it in, do not stamp it down

   Fill the hole with the soil you took out, no fertiliser, shaking the trunk gently so that soil trickles between the roots. Then water heavily until everything settles in. That closes cavities better than any boot, which only compacts the ground.

7. Form a watering rim and water in

   Heap a low ridge around the edge of the planting circle so the water cannot run off. Then give it 20 to 30 litres, in November too. Watering in is not irrigation, it is the step that presses soil and roots together.

8. Tie it in and make the planting cut

   Tie the trunk loosely to the stake in a figure of eight, with coir string or a broad strap, so it can move but not chafe. Finish with the planting cut, which brings crown and roots back into balance.

Voles eat the roots from below, and you only notice when the tree pulls out of the ground by hand in spring. The wire basket from the planting step above is the only measure that holds up long term. Keep the tree circle open as well, because a thick mat of grass is the cover a vole is looking for.

Hares and rabbits strip the bark all the way round when there is snow, and a trunk ringed like that is lost. A wire sleeve or spiral guard around the trunk, at least 60 to 80 cm high, is enough against hares. Where deer are about it is more like 1.2 m, or a fence around the whole planting. One thing matters: the guard has to let air through and must not sit tight against the trunk in summer.

Frost cracks happen on sunny winter days. The winter sun heats the south-west side of the thin trunk, at night the temperature drops back below freezing, and the tissue splits lengthways. The classic, cheapest and most effective protection is a pale lime wash that reflects the light. If white trunks are not to your taste, wrap the trunk loosely with a reed or coir mat instead, which does the same job and comes off again in spring.

Water it, even when it is cold

The most common quiet mistake after a good planting is too little water. A freshly set tree only has the root space you gave it, and in a dry, windy winter it keeps losing moisture through the bark with no way to top up. That is called frost drought, and it kills more young trees than the cold does.

The rule is simple. On frost-free winter days, check once whether the soil is damp a spade deep, and water if it is not. Through the first summer the tree is better off with 20 to 30 litres once a week than a splash every day. Only the large amount reaches depth, and roots only follow it down there. If you would rather not stand there holding a hose, hang a watering bag around the trunk that releases the water over several hours.

The tree circle: the most important square metre

For a young fruit tree, lawn is not a neighbour but an opponent. Grasses root shallow and dense and take water and nitrogen exactly where the young tree needs them. Trees standing in closed turf grow measurably slower than those with an open circle.

So keep the area under the crown clear, at least a metre across in the first year and later roughly as far as the crown reaches. Clear means either lightly hoed or mulched, for instance with wilted grass clippings or autumn leaves. Leave a hand's width free around the trunk itself: mulch lying against the bark holds moisture at the base and invites mice.

The tree does not need fertiliser in its first two years, by the way. What makes sense after that, and why too much nitrogen does harm, is in feeding and mulching fruit trees.

The most common mistakes

Planted too deep is the classic. If the graft union disappears below the soil, the cultivar roots through on its own and the tree grows far bigger than planned, usually only years later and by then beyond fixing.

The second mistake is fertiliser or fresh compost in the hole. The nutrients burn the young roots, and the soft filling tempts them to stay in the comfortable pit instead of growing out into the surrounding soil. What goes back into the hole is what came out of it, nothing else.

The third is a stake that stays too long or sits too tight. A trunk allowed to move a little in the wind builds girth. A rigidly splinted trunk stays thin and snaps in the year you finally take the stake away. After two or three years it comes out.

And the fourth is impatience. Blossom in the first season looks lovely and costs the tree exactly the strength it should be putting into roots. Rub it off. Why a tree sometimes fails to crop later on is in why my fruit tree does not fruit.

What happens in the first year, and what does not

Above ground it stays quiet at first. A bare-root tree often breaks bud hesitantly in its first spring, with smaller leaves, and that is normal rather than a worry. Underground it is busy. The growth comes in year two, and the first real crop depending on rootstock in the second or third season for a bush tree, and only after six to ten years for a standard.

What you can do in the meantime is write it down. Exactly when you planted, which rootstock is underneath, when it first flowered, when the late frost caught the blossom and when it did not. With a tree that will keep you company for thirty years, the memory is the real treasure, and after the third winter nobody remembers the nursery label. That is what Gartenkern is for: enter the tree once, date the planting, attach photos and notes, and look up in five years which week it came into flower back then.

Häufige Fragen

When is the best time to plant a fruit tree?

The leafless dormancy of autumn, roughly CW 41 to 48, as long as the ground is open and frost free. The tree then roots through until spring and starts with a head start. Early spring before bud break works at a push, and for peach, apricot and nectarine spring is actually the better date.

Can I still plant in winter when it is freezing?

No. Frozen ground cannot be washed in, and the roots get no contact with the soil. If the tree arrives on a frosty day, heel it in at an angle in loose soil or sand somewhere sheltered and plant at the next thaw. Sodden, smeary soil is also a reason to wait: digging then compacts it so badly that the roots cannot get through later.

Bare root or container?

Bare root, if you are planting in autumn or winter. Those trees cost less, the choice of cultivars is widest, you can see the root system, and they establish reliably. Container only pays off when you have to plant outside dormancy.

How deep does the tree go?

Exactly as deep as it stood in the nursery, which you can read off the colour change on the trunk. The graft union, the thickened seam at the base of the stem, has to stay a hand's width above the soil. Planted too deep, the cultivar roots on its own account and the dwarfing stock loses its effect.

Should I put compost or fertiliser in the planting hole?

No. Only the soil you dug out goes back in. Fertiliser and fresh compost against the roots do more harm than good. Mulching and feeding happen later on the tree circle, and not at all in the first two years.

How do I protect the young trunk from voles and hares?

Against voles, a basket of unplated wire mesh with a 13 to 16 mm mesh goes into the hole at planting, standing proud of the soil. Against hares and rabbits, a wire sleeve 60 to 80 cm high around the trunk does the job, and around 1.2 m where there are deer. Both belong to planting day, not to the first snowy winter.

Does every young fruit tree need a stake?

Yes, for the first two or three years. The stake holds the tree until the roots take hold and stops it being rocked loose by wind. Tie loosely in a figure of eight so the trunk does not chafe and can still sway a little, then take the stake away again.

When does a newly planted fruit tree bear its first fruit?

On a dwarfing stock as a bush or spindle in the second or third season, as a half standard after about four to six years, as a full standard on seedling stock only after six to ten. Blossom in the first year is better rubbed off so the strength goes into the roots.