Planting Fruit Trees Indoors

In the countryside, often you’ll see gardens of fruits trees being maintained for generations. That’s the great thing about the fruit trees. Once you have worked your way through the initial phase, all you’ll do is to bear the fruits of a settled garden for rest your life.

So, what if one wants bear the fruits of the trees grown indoors? If you have a spacious sunroom or a conservatory, then you have an excellent opportunity to grow few indoor fruit trees.

Plants are often bought from nursery in bare-rooted forms, where the roots are completely devoid of soil and thus exposed altogether. One needs to keep sure, that the plants are transferred to garden as soon as possible or to be kept in most soil or sawdust till the actual time of plantation.

Though, most of the fruit trees do require a bright sunlight to grow, few such as Apricots and Peaches often crop earlier in cover. A minimum of 6 hrs of sunlight is crucial to maintain a healthy growth, although many varieties are available in market capable of growing in partial shade.

And there are the dwarf plants for those, who don’t have enough space indoors. Capable of growing in containers, Citrus is one the most popular fruit grown as such. There are quite a lot of varieties of other indoor plants to select from, which include Peaches, Nectarine, Apricots, Mulberry, Figs, grapes etc.

The soil is required for such a project, needs to be well drained, so as to prevent roots getting drowned in water. Compost is added many a times, but proper mixing fully decomposed compost with the soil is recommended. The composition of soil is expected to be light and airy and mixing perlite in it is often the answer suggested. During the growing cycle, many grower tend to remove the top layer of the soil and replace it with compost altogether.

Planting fruit trees is a task generally carried out at the end of the winter as late as first half the spring. So, before getting the plants from nursery, it is always logical to get your timing right.

However, the process of planting could be extended if conditions wouldn’t allow it. This is countered by placing the plants in moist soil for the extended period till the wait for better condition continues.
While planting, a hole of least one meter in diameter needs to be dug. If growing in containers, the required size of 10-15 gallons is often in order. Plants are to be planted keeping in sight the darker coloration consistent with levels of soil that were observed in nursery. So, plants should be kept 1-2 inch above the soil with the uppermost root offshoot going in the soil.

Stakes are often employed to provide support for growing young plant. Well-decomposed natural fertilizers such as Seaweed meal could be applied at this stage, while use of hemp mat has its merits in preventing growth of weed in surrounding ground.

Other plants from the surrounding should be taken care of, unless raised beds are what the desired plants are being grown on.

For the first year, water and nutrients requirements of the plants should be entertained with utmost care. Water should be provided once or twice in a week, as the requirement can be assessed with apparent dryness of soil up to 2-3 inch. Multipurpose fertilizers with high potassium content can provide the micronutrients requirement of the plants. But, these fertilizers are not generally applied until the plant has reached as height of few inches.

Heading is done to for a growing plant with a height of 18-24 inches, thus forcing the development of lower branch. This practice is a prevailing method in use for indoor fruit trees.  Removing the first blossom is another, where the growth of the plant in given the priority, especially in the first year.
In absence of natural pollination activity, paintbrushes are used to transfer pollen from blossom to blossom. Any kind of infestation or appearance of a disease symptom should be dealt with discretion and extreme prejudice.

Establishing the fruit trees in the first year is important, because in years to come all we need to do is little pruning and heading. It won’t be too difficult to imagine a regular availability of fruits in later years.