Q. I planted ten bareroot trees I picked up at the orchard yesterday. I followed the directions from your Blog and everything went really well. I cut them all off at approximately knee height but when I got to the apple, I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  Should I cut off any side branches? Leave desirable ones? Cut them partially back? Or just leave them alone? I am planting my trees in hedgerows 10′ apart with 4′ between trees. A. In hedgerows make sure the trees are on very dwarfing rootstocks. M111 rootstock is probably not aggressive enough for planting that close. You could do them maybe six feet apart but four is really close.  Birdseye view of young apple tree scaffold limb development             If any of the branches can be bent down and they touch the ground they should be removed to the trunk. The lowest branches are probably going to be somewhere around 18 inches to 2 feet off of the ground.             On apples look for a whorl of branches, a minimum of four and probably a maximum of six, to leave attached to the trunk. These will be your scaffold limbs which are limbs that support other limbs which bear the fruit.             Otherwise, if this is to be a hedgerow, you can wire trellis the limbs to support them so they don’t touch the ground and you could keep limbs as close to a foot off of the ground if you wanted to.             If you are not sure what to do even after reading this just remove the ones that you know are too close to the ground and leave the rest, come to the orchard so we can talk, and address the problem next year.

Womack blackberry grown at the orchard Q. Have you had any luck with berries? I have a friend that says she does blackberries successfully. A. Some blackberries will do just fine here and others do not. Two blackberries which I have found to work well here are Rosborough and Womack, both of which you probably have to purchase online. They come from the Texas A and M breeding program. One that did not do well from that breeding program is Brazos. Dorman Red raspberry grown at the orchard             Generally speaking, I would not recommend most of the blackberries with native American names such as Apache, Navaho, Arapaho, etc. which came, I believe, out of the Arkansas breeding programs. Historically they have not done well here according to locals who have tried them so I did not bother trying them. Strawberries at the orchard             Raspberries have not done well over time generally speaking. I did try a Florida variety which had a lower chilling requirement and it failed here. I have heard some reports from locals where they had some success with raspberries but they either did not remember the name or had them in for only one or two years. Others have generally reported failures with raspberries.             Strawberries will do well with everbearing types probably doing better than the main crop varieties. You will have some iron chlorosis problems, yellowing, that will need to be addressed. I have liked them when they were growing under about 30 to 40% shade here.             With all of these you MUST prepare the soil adequately prior to planting.