By restricting the size of the fruit trees through various methods, to a size of your choosing, and planting them closer together, you gain these benefits:
– Optimum Use of Limited Space – you can literally fit dozens of fruit trees in an average backyard, and a respectable number in the smallest of backyards!
– Wide Variety – this system, on account of the efficient use of space, will allow you to plant a wide variety of fruit trees, so you can eat all different types of fruit from your home garden, rather than just one or two. Having multiple varieties also means that you can have trees which are pollinators for each other, ensuring better pollination and consequently, better yields.
– Sensible Production – the smaller trees will obviously produce much less fruit than full sized trees, but they will produce enough to provide for a family’s needs without wastage.
– Extended Productive Season – since you can plant more trees closer in together, you can have several varieties of the one fruit, that produce over different times in the season. This will give you fruit over a longer period, rather than having one tree producing for only a shorter period.For example, instead of one apricot tree that produces mid season, you can plant three different varieties in the same space, and early, mid and late season bearing apricot tree. This will give you an adequate supply of fruit over an extended period rather than a huge amount all at once. Plus you get a range of different varieties to make it more interesting!
– Ease in Harvesting – you decide how tall the trees grow, many choose to keep them as high as their arm will reach, so you can simply walk past and pick the fruit at your leisure.
– Ease in Maintaining – when the tree is not much taller than you are, tasks like spraying, pruning an netting are fairly straightforward tasks that don’t require any fancy equipment to accomplish.