Most people thinking of starting or expanding a home orchard are doing so to provide a supply of fresh fruit for the table. In the post-1950 era, with supermarkets in every town and refrigerators in every kitchen, it is important to reconnect with the seasonal rhythms of nature as part of the planning process.

Any individual variety of fruit, grown in a particular home orchard, will produce fruit during a harvest "window" that may remain open from several days to about a month. Following the harvest, fruit will retain its high quality for a storage "window" which may stay open for anywhere from a few days longer to perhaps six months, depending on the kind of fruit, the variety, and how well temperature and humidity can be controlled during storage.

The role of small fruits

In Minnesota, the first fruits of summer come not from the orchard but from the garden. Strawberries, typically maturing in mid-June in Nerstrand, followed by raspberries a week or two later, are the beginning of the fruit season.

I do not grow these fruits (though fortunately, several people close to me do!), so I offer no advice as to their culture.

Tart Cherries

Tart cherries, also called sour cherries or pie cherries, or occasionally "Morello" cherries (after a similar cultivar popular in England), are the first tree fruits of the summer. Regardless of nomenclature, these fruits are still suitable for fresh eating at the peak of ripeness despite lacking the sugar content of Bing-type cherries common at the grocery store. Tart cherries are highly perishable, having a shelf life of no more than 48 hours, and are hardly ever sold through supermarkets for this reason.

Information on maturity dates is hard to find. Here is our experience:

Loss of the crop to birds is a major problem for small-scale growers. We use nets to protect the tree when the crop is small. As the trees get larger, a point is reached where the birds can only eat so many cherries.

Apricots

There is more to plant hardiness than cold tolerance, and this is more plainly evident with apricots than any other tree fruit that will grow in Minnesota. Apricots are the first trees to bloom in the spring, and a late frost often destroys the blossoms. Apricots are also susceptible to warm winter weather, which can cause them to break dormancy prematurely. Planting these trees in N-S rows provides some shade from the southern sun, delaying flowering, and avoiding both low areas prone to frost and particularly warm areas that would encourage an early bloom in site selection helps.

I do not get a crop every year. Nonetheless, in apricot years, the fruit is welcome both for variety and because it fills a gap in the calendar between the cherries and the plums.

I will be starting some new cultivars next year that originate from the Harrow research station near Ottawa. They are said to be a better tree than the Sungold and Moongold varieties, released by the U of M in 1960, that were the best available for northern growers for some time.

Our experience thus far is limited:

Apricots keep for about two weeks under refrigeration.

Plums

The earliest plums are ready at the end of the apricot season, and the late plums overlap with the early apples.

Plums keep for about 2-4 weeks under refrigeration.

Apples

The earliest apples suitable for Minnesota's climate are generally of poor quality for fresh eating. Our earliest apple is Duchess (also called Duchess of Oldenburg), which is excellent for pie but not really suitable for fresh eating due to its tartness, small size, and unrewarding texture and aroma.