Start Your Backyard Orchard with Tom Spellman | The Beet

Tom Spellman has 25+ years of experience in the nursery industry, specializing in fruit trees. He's known for the popularization of Backyard Orchard Culture, a method of planting fruit trees at home that maximizes production for the home grower, successive ripening, and unique pruning and plant care strategies that give a home gardener a ton of delicious, sweet fruit.
Connect with Tom: / @tomspellman
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[@CKemmerle1]

These interviews with all these high caliber people are a tresure trove. You gotta promote this channel more on the Epic channels so your subscribers get this info

[@djrbignell]

Agree!

[@not1moreinch332]

This man has forgot more about orchards than i will ever know. I respect him so much

[@ilianagamboa3272]

Very knowledgeable man in his field. Thank you for having him.

[@tommyhundersmarck7018]

Me living in sweden, hearing all this about getting enough chill hours.. only thing we talk about is getting enough sun hours.

[@DDWASH9595]

Thank you for having this man on I’m subbed to his personal channel too. Man has more years of horticultural knowledge than I’ve been alive #28

[@jayjohnson3724]

Love this new format. You rock.

[@FunAtDisney]

To Kevin and the Epic Gardening podcast team: This was hands down the best week of shows I have listened to in months on your podcast! And the reason is simple: Your guest Tom related everything he talked about to the average home gardener who has an average-sized property in an average neighborhood. So many of your podcast lately have been the exact opposite (the wacky “permaculture” one comes to mind). Of one week you have someone talking about letting your garden look like a forest and allowing all the dropper fall leaves to stay. The next week you get just the opposite where the person says you must rack those all of because of diseases and all. Still another will talk endlessly about the dozens often things you must do to compare pest and fungus and this and that…. All to the point I shut it off! Sometimes I think you all forgot the number one thing: Gardening for the home should be fun! A hobby for relaxation and enjoyment. Not something you need to constantly stress over (that is what your weekday job is for!). You need to get back to understanding what your audience is within your podcast (as you mostly do on your KZbin channels). Ditch the overly wrought, confusing and often counter dictating subjects and give us more of Tom! Please!!!

[@TheButterflySoulfire]

Very informative.

[@julipolito7761]

Awesome, posting! So much info! Thank you! 🌵🪴🌿

[@breik8183]

Can we peep that spreadsheet kev? 👀

[@cptnd3851]

great guest, love the two camera setup

[@ivanguajardo7111]

Tom did an interview where he basically disproves everything he just said about zone compatibility. In the other interview he points out how friends of his and people he has met plant trees not intended for the zone acclimate and adapt at a young age and actually thrive where they're not supposed to. I think sometimes you just need to stick the tree in the ground let it decide if it wants to thrive.

[@falynch]

But that's not contraindicating at all. There's a difference between sharing someone's experiences and premoniting best practice. He's promoting orchard planning here, not experimention. It's not a good idea to plan a orchard on the hopes you'll find the rare exceptions but to pick varieties that are known to do well in your area. Planting for experimenting and planting for fruit production are 2 separate every different purposes

[@kimberlydickenson9141]

This was amazing information, thank you.

[@glendaross692]

Great show. Thank you.

[@catejordan7244]

Great information. I just wish it didn’t focus so much on citrus as I’m sure many other viewers, like myself (Canada) are in a climate that can’t grow citrus.

[@thebeetpodcast]

Great point! We'll try to get more information on orchard selection that's more appropriate to the northern parts of the US and Canada in the future.

[@Zay_562]

I think I’d stick with the haas and fuerte and then graft scions of other varieties to them later on. That would be good content

[@ggrunau]

Great information. New to the fruit tree game... I want to try a (3) peach tree grouping here in a small Cleveland, OH lot ... any suggestions; taking into account rootstock compatibility and successive ripening? Thanks.

[@TheWiseOne6775]

Great interview. I learned so much. I would love to know if I want to plant a few different stone fruits in one hole, do I need to plant only the same type or can I plant say a plum, a peach, a cherry in the one hole. Or is it better to have all plums in one hole? TIA

[@TanjaHermann]

So interesting and great information for me despite being in a completely different climate zone here in Germany. Today, I have three cherries and two plums to plant but I'm still unsure when to do the first pruning. I have selected varieties on bush root stock but on two of the cherries it still says final height 18-21 feet. Currently, they are 3-4 feet tall incl. root stock and have 3-4 nicely spaced branches that the nursery cut back before shipping. Do I now let them grow for a full year or do I need to prune this summer? Any advice would be appreciated. I'm planting them less than 3 feet apart.

[@falynch]

Prune this summer, I'd also recommend staking out and tie in the branches where you want them to be. The first and second year are the most important in developing the shape you want. You can also bend branches downwards to create a weeping form and this will reduce vigor as well as encouraging earlier fruit production. I made the mistake of not doing this with my first cherry trees planted on colt. Now the tress form is very uneven and main branching out is way above head height. Now all my trees I've pruned and staked to get the shape and pickable height. My first trees the only way to correct now is a brutal topping and will lose 2-3 years of fruit whilst I correct my mistakes

[@falynch]

I've also earned to bud graft and graft and on the main stems I'll leave 1 as the variety and the other 3 grafting over to different varieties that flower at the same time but fruit at different times and a cooker. Fruit all season all as you'll never use hundreds of pounds of cherries or plums all at once and they don't keep fresh for a long time

[@futureenergy5408]

Too much conversation and too little content