Animal Crossing New Horizons: How To Plant Fruit Trees

Animal Crossing New Horizons is possibly the biggest and most expansive game in the series to date, so expansive in fact that it can’t possibly tell you everything you can do without it being a bit overwhelming. If you’re wondering about planting fruit trees in the island living simulator, here’s what you need to know.

When every player starts New Horizons, they are assigned an island and also a specific fruit that grows on said island, which is then locked to the Switch system. For instance, we have apples on our island, so that’s the only thing that naturally grows there to begin with. Therefore, it’s vital that we go out and get some new fruit to plant so that we can continue to earn money from growing and selling different, non-native fruit.

You can find new fruit in a couple of ways. The first is to visit a friend’s island and have them give you some fruit to take home with you, or you can use a Nook Miles Ticket to fly to a randomly generated island and hope that it has a different fruit to what you already need.

Once you have the fruit you need, you will have to get yourself a shovel — either a proper or flimsy shovel will do. You can craft one yourself with a few common materials or just purchase one from Timmy Nook in Resident Services or later Nook’s Cranny.

Take this shovel and press A to dig a hole. Then, go into your inventory and select the fruit you want to plant and press A to confirm. Your village will chuck the fruit and then a sapling will form; it will take at least a few days until your fruit has grown properly.

To keep the fruit profits churning, make sure you don’t chop the fruit tree down and use a flimsy axe or just shake it with A to have the fruit drop down. Cutting a tree down will create a tree stump, and nobody wants to deal with those.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is out now for Nintendo Switch.