How To Start A Fruit Garden - 7 Step Guide

    Written by Peter Otieno

Eating fruits? What a better and faster way to get vitamins and minerals like vitamin C, A, calcium and fiber necessary within our body. All you do is just wash, cut or peel the fruit, then eat raw. As people all over the world continue to add fruits in their diet either as an appetizer or desert hence the need for more fruit gardens to meet the demand.

A fruit garden is simply a type of garden whereby trees that bear edible fruits are planted.

It can also be referred to as an orchard, vineyard or fruit farm. Some of the fruit trees grown include apple, mango, lemon, grapes, orange, berries, banana and avocado trees.

Fruit trees are considered to be perennial crops in that you only plant once, take care and maintain them until they mature. Afterwards, they will start bearing fruits and you can harvest your produce season after season and year after year as opposed to a crop like maize which you plant then harvest the first season and in the next season you replant new seeds.

If you are a beginner or an established farmer and you want to start a fruit garden then here is my seven step guide.

1. Fruit Selection - It is important to know the fruit tree to plant which in turn will give you the fruits you want. This will require you to obtain a first hand information about the fruit you intend to grow.

The internet is your first source though you can still seek advice from agricultural experts and farmers who are into fruit gardening.

The basic parameters to consider are such as maturity period of the plant, pests, diseases, rainfall requirements and best agronomic practices for the fruit tree.

How I have seen people settle on a fruit tree to plant is by attending agricultural shows, seminars, farmer to farmer sharing knowledge, identifying market gap and expectations and experience that may be as a result of working in an orchard.

2. Location of Fruit Garden - Under this the first variable to look at is soil type. Fruit trees mostly grow well in deep drained loamy soil mixed with sandy soil. Loam soil retains more water while sandy soil alone will need regular watering.

The suitable pH is 7.0 which enhances absorption of nutrients by fruit trees. Soil pH is the measure of acidity or alkalinity of soil.

Second, determine the size of your fruit garden. A large sized fruit farm will have more fruit trees and a small sized will accommodate fewer number of fruit trees.

This answers the question, is it a small scale or large scale?

The fruit farm should be in a location that receives enough rainfall to reduce the costs and time involved in irrigating your plants.

Finally, do factor in, growing either different types of fruit trees such as orange, mango, lemon, avocado or planting one type. 

3. Layout of Fruit Garden - This is a plan both on paper and on ground to facilitate maximum utilization of your fruit garden.

For a start, erect a fence round your orchard to act as barrier with adjacent land and help you know your area of operation.

Plough your farm with a tractor and let it stay for a month( to allow for decomposition of plant materials and breaking of bigger lumps of soil) before planting. If its a small garden just slash and plant after buying seedlings.

Next, determine the number of holes to dig and the number of seedlings to plant based on the farm size, half an acre, two acres, four acres or ten acres. Then use required agronomic measurement for spacing the selected fruit tree.

For a mango tree the ideal spacing is 5 metres apart between tree seedlings and 10 metres for row spacing.

4. Buying Fruit Tree Seedlings - One thing to note is that nowadays, most of these fruit trees are grafted, that is they have shorter period to mature and bear fruits, furthermore they do not have to grow to a certain maximum height.

A mango tree that used to take six years to bear fruits now takes three years.

When buying seedlings, go to a certified fruit tree nursery that sells the grafted ones, like JKUAT Enterprise Nursery, Kibos Prison Nursery or buy from a trusted botanist who sells them. Check here https://www.farmlinkkenya.com/list-of-kephis-certfied-nurseries/amp/  to get a list of certified fruit tree nurseries in Kenya.

An average price is 100 to 150 Kenya shillings per seedling.

5. Planting Fruit Tree Seedlings - In this step, you have to hire labor to help you plant and number of workers might vary depending on you and the size of your fruit garden.

I suggest a two days work for a guaranteed uniform growth of fruit trees. The first day you focus on digging holes then on the second day you plant and water the fruit tree seedlings.

Planting time should be early morning from 6.00am to 10.00am and in the evening from 4.00pm to 7.00pm to avoid excess sunlight on seedlings.

Dig holes and apply correct spacing(as indicated in step 3) , then add organic manure in each hole, plant your seedling and irrigate with a water can or hose pipe.

6. Maintenance of Fruit Tree - This involves a variety of farm practices such as weeding, pruning, adding fertilizer, checking for pests, diseases, spraying and watering, throughout the life cycle of the fruit tree from a seedling to mature plant.

For a mango or avocado farm, weeding can be done either by using a jembe which is manual or spraying of herbicides on weeds.

Use CAN as fertilizer in early development stages of fruit to increase size and improve their quality.

Pruning is done twice or thrice depending on the type of fruit tree. Here https://howandwhentoprune.com/mango-tree/  is a detailed illustration on the pruning stages of a mango tree.

Irrigate in periods of no rainfall and check for pests and diseases which may affect plant during growth and before harvest of fruits.

7. Harvesting Fruits - This is the time you start reaping the fruits of your labor. 

Note that before harvesting their is a period of flowering so ensure your fruit tree get enough water, top dress with CAN just after onset of first flowering and check for pests like fruit flies  which may affect flowering.

After flowering, it will take 120 to 150 days (in the case of a mango tree) for the fruits to develop a maximum size after which you can start plucking, storing, eating some and selling to the market.

My Conclusion

As part of reducing harmful gases and fuels in the atmosphere, fruit trees need carbon dioxide (CO2) for survival. They filter air by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen which we breath in as human beings.

Therefore, planting fruit trees in our garden will not only give us tasty fresh fruits but help in cleaning air in our environment.

In as much as we love to eat raw fruits, do not take excess, for example since most of these fruits contain fiber an overdose can cause stomach bloat.

A fruit garden will enable making of fresh fruit juices thereby adding value to the market place and resulting to more profits to a farmer.

When you start this venture, be patient (trees take time to grow and bear fruits) throughout the shelf life of your fruit trees and apply the necessary agronomic practices.

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