Multiple-Budded Fruit Trees

Do you need more variety and longer harvest from a limited space?

The multiple-budded fruit tree is the answer! Multiple-budded ("Multi-budded") fruit trees will give you several fine selections of tree-ripened fruit from the space of a single tree. Offering varieties suited to many tastes and regions across the country, Dave Wilson Nursery has the largest selection of multiple-budded fruit trees in the U.S.

Compared to single-variety fruit trees, multiple-budded trees require some special consideration, especially with regard to pruning.

• When selecting a multiple-budded tree, look for one that has an even distribution of limbs around the tree. If the different fruit varieties (the limbs) are not well-spread on your trees, use a spreader to separate them.

• Multiple-budded fruit trees are grown close together in the nursery rows and this can result in some of the budded selections receiving less-than-optimum sunlight during their development.

• Always plant the smallest limb (the "weakest" bud) to the south/southwest to insure that it gets plenty of sun..

• Cut back the strongest growing varieties by 2/3rds.

• Cut back the weakest variety by 1/2 — or not at all.

• During the summer, watch the growth-rate of the smaller limbs to determine if pruning is necessary at that time. If the weakest variety is 1/2 the size of the others, it's best not to cut it back.

• Do Not! let one variety take over - or one or more of the the others may fail. Prune back the more aggressive limbs. Summer-prune when necessary in order to let sunlight get to all the developing varieties. The primary reason for the failure of multi-budded fruit trees is letting one variety take over which can cause the others to fail. This is most often due to lack of summer pruning when needed. remember to keep even sunlight available to all the developing selections.

• After the third season, maintain the multiple-budded tree so that each fruit-type grows in balance with the others.

Some of the multiple-budded combinations shown below are marked “any 4 of the 5 varieties possible”. This means that each tree is budded with five different selections, but at harvest time the smallest of the five resulting limbs is removed. That's how Dave Wilson Nursery gets a greater percentage of strong, 4-n-1 multiple-budded trees.

See the Nurseries Product Catalog for multiple-budded fruit tree combinations offered by Dave Wilson Nursery.

For retail sources of particular multi-bud combinations, see the Variety Finder in our Where to Buy pages.