Orchard Tree Plotting

Greetings all. This is my first post. I have a modest orchard on the coast of Maine in Cushing. Zone 5a. This is on an acre of land with main house and out buildings. My orchard was started in 1986 and now has approximately 80 trees: apple, pear and peach. Because of the presence of much ledge I planted trees wherever there was enough soil to accommodate the roots. The trees have been prolific, especially this past season:-)

As the trees are scattered around the property I want to find an app so that I can plot them according to spacing, size, etc. I am doing the plotting by hand, but it is not that satisfactory. So I am looking for an app in which I can plot the trees, indicate variety, year planted, size, etc.

While I have found apps for vegetable gardens, not any luck for a larger expanse such as I have.

It is good to be in touch and thanks for any help you can offer.

Waite Maclin
Pastor Chuck Orchards
Cushing, Maine

C. Waite Maclin

Hi Waite,

This post intrigued me. I found myself saying "oh, that would be a nice app to have" and after carving out a little time to do some searching -- found essentially nothing. Likely something exists, but it is not being well advertised.

Then it dawned on me that I had once sat and watched a field technician, who worked for the NRCS, create several map layers that he then overlayed on top of one another within a GIS program. He had a separate layer for 1) water features 2) roads and 3) fences for a given acreage.

He was using a program called ArcGIS, but there are plenty of others out there.

Good luck and please post up what you find out there . . . or if you decide to create your own

Gopher Hill Apples
Zone 8 in California

I use AutoCAD to create my own map. It isn't that accurate. One the trees get a little larger, Google Earth can be helpful too.

I use Illustrator with a google map on the background..