I can't say I know much about Orchard care but I do know that suddenly in the past two or three years my trees are producing. I'll tell you what I did differently to make this happen. Or at least I think it's what made it happen.
I mulched heavily using the BTE method of free ramial wood chips from local tree trimmers. I've refreshed the mulch a couple of times as it breaks down. I added wine cap mushroom spawn to help break the wood chips down faster and also there's a symbiotic relationship between the mushroom mycelium and plants in that it helps the plants uptake minerals.
I prune regularly. While they're dormant is best, but if it doesn't happen you can prune almost any time. I'm going to be pruning in the next week or so. Since I missed the ideal time, I was waiting for the sap to stop running heavily. Now the trees are leafed out so I can also feed them to the goats. I'll do it over a period of several days.
My pruning method is pretty basic. Cut off anything that grows completely vertically. Cut off any branches that cross each other. Cut off branches that are going to make me have to use a big ladder to pick any fruit that might grow there. And finally, step back and take a look and cut off enough of the remaining branches that I could throw a cat through the tree in any direction. Not that I would, but I could!
I fed the trees with some minerals. I used a foliar feed that I bought from the chapter leader of our local BFA.
And finally, when the trees are blooming I go look for pollinators. I wasn't finding any so I used an artist paint brush to pollinate the flowers. I just touched the center of each flower and just moved from flower to flower like a bee would. I got a nice crop of fruit the following fall. I still hand pollinated last year even though I had a beehive because we had a cool spring and my bees were low in numbers. They never made it to my fruit trees. This year I went into spring with 6 surviving hives and that seemed to be the magic number for my property. In spite of the very cold spring again all my fruit was pollinated by my bees. I will need to pull a lot of peaches off the peach tree throughout the season and also prop up some branches. There are enough peaches on that tree to take the whole thing down. It's very exciting. Everything else on my property is developing fruit in spite of the cold.
