Orchards Farm Expert 2017 Guide

Last update: 11 January 2017

Orchards means both fruit trees and shrubs. This is a very interesting alternative, however profitable only in the long run - in 3-4 months you won't earn for a new Aston Martin. In such short time, only the shrubs will yield some profit, assuming that you manage to plant them in the right moment, and allow vegetation that will end some where in late August/early September. The vegetation of trees takes a full year, so you need patience.

First, you need an orchard - you can either buy one or covert one of your own fields (you lose all crops from that field, remember - think twice before converting a field into an orchard)

Planting trees and shrubs isn't especially difficult - you need a tractor with a seeding platform, which is around 50,000 euro: that's a lot, but you need this machinery. Planting trees is rather easy, but requires precision - you need to drive over green markers scattered all over a field with the right speed - if you do that, your worker will plant a tree or a shrub. The process doesn't take long, but is quite mundane in case of bigger fields.

Should I invest in pesticides for fruits? Definitely. While in case of cereals it's not necessary, here it's strongly advisable to spray the trees with some protective agent - this will make sure the harvest is abundant.

Should I invest in an orchard combine, or just use a platform? While a combine is much more convenient, it's also pretty expensive, and if you only have a small orchard, there's no use buying one. However, if orchards are right up your alley, and you want to make a fortune on fruits, then you have to buy not only a combine, but also a sprayer. Without this, productivity will be much worse, which will influence harvests.

Having no combine can also problematic for another reason - harvesting fruits takes much more time, since all has to be done manually, starting from collecting the fruit, to moving the crates and loading them on a truck.

Still, fruits are not very profitable, certainly not as profitable as glasshouse crops. Then, an orchard is more expensive to maintain than a regular field, which can yield rape or potatoes (which make better profit). In order to maximize the profit, you should cultivate trees and shrubs on the same field - they're planted on perpendicular rows, which makes things a lot easier. Of course, fruits from trees are more profitable - around 20%-30% more.

One more thing needs to be kept in mind: grass has to be mowed regularly in an orchard. If the grass is too high, it will impair the harvest. Also remember to renew the shrubs every now and then - the amount of fruits collected from shrubs falls every 2-3 years. If that happens, you can cut all the remaining shrubs and plant the whole field again.