Grow your own apples, figs, plums, cherries, pears, apricots, and peaches in even the smallest backyard! Ann Ralph shows you how to cultivate small yet abundant fruit trees using a variety of specialized pruning techniques. With dozens of simple and effective strategies for keeping an ordinary fruit tree from growing too large, you’ll keep your gardening duties manageable while at the same time reaping a bountiful harvest. These little fruit trees are easy to maintain and make a lovely addition to any home landscape.

In this practical step-by-step guide, gardening teacher Kath Irvine shares her wealth of knowledge from more than 20 years of helping Kiwi gardeners design, build, grow and maintain their own productive edible gardens. Kath's sage, hands-on, often humorous advice steps readers through everything they need to know to grow great produce at home, including garden design, tools and equipment, seasonal planting advice, soil fertility, seed-saving basics, managing pests and diseases, and how to incorporate organic and permaculture gardening methods into any home garden. While documenting a year on her own property, Kath shows how you can successfully produce bountiful crops throughout the seasons to provide a steady, daily harvest with minimal wastage. The book is illustrated with hundreds of stunning photographs and helpful hand-drawn illustrations that share clever design concepts and planting plans for gardens of all shapes and sizes. Kath is the perfect guide, and this easy-to-understand, comprehensive book is ideal for gardeners at any skill level, from beginners setting up a new garden from scratch, to intermediate trouble-shooters, to advanced green-thumbs seeking deeper knowledge.

Utilize your backyard so it becomes productive and useful . . . Attain self-sufficiency without adding more acres . . . Discover the delight and convenience of tree-ripened fruit . . . Enjoy a safe, healthful harvest of season-long goodness.This illustrated guide reveals the possibility of fruit growing success using a nurseryman's common sense approach to home-orcharding. It contains a basic step-by-step format to take you from planting to harvesting.Whether you are an optimistic beginner or an experienced fruit grower . . . if you appreciate earth-sensitive methods . . . this book is for you!

An up-to-date guide for commercial and residential peach growers . . . With an estimated one million trees producing almost fifty million pounds of fruit per year, Texas is a leading producer of peaches, and several popular seasonal festivals highlight the widespread enjoyment of and interest in this delicious, versatile fruit. In addition, a recent rise of interest in edible gardens and home fruit production has led more people to think about planting a peach tree in the yard—or paying closer attention to the one they already have. Jim Kamas and Larry Stein, drawing from their many years of experience and the best current research, provide authoritative advice for those who want to improve peach production, whether in a large commercial orchard or on a single tree in the back yard. With discussions ranging from site selection to marketing ideas, Texas Peach Handbook covers the basics of peach cultivation—planting, pruning, fertilizing, watering, protecting, thinning, harvesting—and gives both instruction on disease and insect control and advice on the financial aspects of the peach business. The authors also direct readers to other, more detailed or technical sources, for those who want to learn more about a given topic. For its useful information and expert guidance, this how-to handbook will prove indispensable for anyone who grows, or wants to grow, peaches.

This peach guide was written as a comprehensive guide to share proven techniques for beginning peach growers to ensure optimum success. Items, products, equipment, and plans of action are explored. Step-by-step methods of soil preparation and recommendations as to selecting the best soil are shared. Proper tree soil and scheduling for planting in addition to the appropriate, timely application of nonorganic/organic solutions to control insects/fungi and fertilizer are outlined. The formula for how many peach trees can be planted on an acre is given once the planting zones are determined. Illustrations on proper pruning in order to receive the most radiant energy from the sun in the ripening of the peaches are likewise included. The peach guide provides a brief history of the peach and the characteristics of the peach for the peach growers to have a point of reference while he or she is learning about the peach.