Found abandoned apple/pear orchard

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Old grizzly 708

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We have found an old home site with a 2 acre or so orchard . It is down to about 10-15 trees and the forest has choked off most of it.
There are deer,bear,and elk that feed from them so majority of fruit is pretty high.
I am looking for advice on how to bring them back to health.
The house that was there was last lived in around 1930ish.
 
First of all clean the area around the trees. Everything must go. By "everything" I mean dead fruit trees, forest growth, shrubs, undergrowth etc.
Second, the soil by now will be so depleted it will need fertilizing, but avoid the temptation of overfertilizing, as an excess of nitrogen will produce spindly, weak growth. Use either manure or a mineral fertilizer, applied at the end of the Winter when the soil begins to thaw.
Third, those trees will need to be re-trained. This is the area you'll be spending the most time and effort into. First try understanding what shape the trees were originally trained into: given the age is well possible they were originally trained as standard or half-standard trees, which isn't much used nowadays. The trees need to be pruned during Winter while they are dormant and regardless of cultivar is very likely they'll need spur thinning.
If the trees require balance correction, you'll need to carry out nicking and/or notching, which are done in early Spring as the tree starts vegetating again.

This alone should be enough to get the orchard restarted, but mind pruning alone will be quite the task and mind you'll only be starting.
Pollinators may have died out and, given this orchard's age, you may even get triploid cultivars with a single pollinator left. You may also have trees requiring bark-ringing, which is easier said than done, and as the rootstocks are highly likely to be pre-Malling and are surely pre-Bugadovski, they may have survived the graft and be the ones giving fruit now. These fruits are obviously edible but usually poor-tasting.

In short you have a Hell of a job ahead of you. :)
 
It might be beneficial to fence it off and let a few chickens free range, as they will keep most pests away, except for bears. Lol.
The chickens help scarify the soil and help arraite the roots of the trees.
 
In "finding" this, did you buy or rent it? Regardless of the state of abandonment, if you do not have any permission to be there, then you probably want to be careful with any alterations on the property, like fencing, cutting trees, etc. The land may still be used by an owner for hunting.

Are there any squatter's rights in your state (often called adverse possession)? Check that first.
 
In "finding" this, did you buy or rent it? Regardless of the state of abandonment, if you do not have any permission to be there, then you probably want to be careful with any alterations on the property, like fencing, cutting trees, etc. The land may still be used by an owner for hunting.

Are there any squatter's rights in your state (often called adverse possession)? Check that first.
That was my first thought too as to wether the property was for sale. The Op's post made me want to buy it, just like Lenny in Of Mice and Men.
 
In "finding" this, did you buy or rent it? Regardless of the state of abandonment, if you do not have any permission to be there, then you probably want to be careful with any alterations on the property, like fencing, cutting trees, etc. The land may still be used by an owner for hunting.

Are there any squatter's rights in your state (often called adverse possession)? Check that first.
I will talk to the owner . He allows anyone to hunt there, about 200 acres. The property is in forest reserve and will most likely never be developed. I think he will be good for the animals there.
 
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