Listen and Learn

I have been gardening for many years now but am new to fruit trees. We love fruit at our house so I decided to plant some fruit trees a few years ago. First lesson, do your research on what kind of fruit trees you want to plant. Some require at least two of the same kind to pollinate each other, some are self pollinating. Take my pear tree, it is not self pollinating. So I bought another one to place beside it. Well, the deer decided to rub against it until it was almost dead. Thankfully it is coming back, but no pears this year.
I have one dwarf peach tree and one regular peach tree. The dwarf trees will produce fruit in only a year or two but do not get very big. Now my plum tree has been here for three years and this is the first year I have gotten fruit from it. A wise orchard lady told me to thin the plums before their pits got hard and to leave a 2-3" space between each plum. This would make for bigger better plums. It would also help from the weight so the limbs don't brake. So I headed out to the tree and could not bring myself to plucking them off. I didn't know which ones to pick, maybe I would pick the strongest ones and they all would die. So I left them alone. Well, now I have small plums. They are still very tasty, but not very big. Lesson learned. Listen to the wise ones and do some research.