If you could only have one fruit tree...

[loligo]

... (or two, if your Chosen One needs a pollinator), what would it be, and why?

We have room for a few fruit trees, and I'm having a terrible time narrowing down my choices -- I want them ALL. So maybe your opinions will help me prioritize my list!

I already know I want to plant Nikita's Gift persimmon (an American X Asian hybrid). Our woods are full of wild pawpaws, and we live in a peach-growing region so I can get all the tree-ripened peaches I want for cheap at the Farmer's Market. So those three fruits are taken care of. But what else???

Comments

Serviceberry

[flora]

I realize I'm coming late to this thread... but if you're still looking for fruit trees, you might consider a semi-domesticated Serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.), aka Juneberry or shagbush or shadbush. They're beautiful springtime flowering trees/shrubs, they're native, and they produce abundant fruit with similar taste and use to blueberries (if you can get them before the birds do). Edible Landscaping usually has them in stock.

Re: Serviceberry

[loligo]

Actually, I just planted a serviceberry this spring! It's a shrubby cultivar that isn't supposed to get more than 4-5' high, though.

The jury's still out on how it's going to perform in my area. We had a very wet spring and it got all kinds of leaf spots, and then it got attacked by some weird caterpillar that I've never seen on any of my other plants. As a result of these two things, it has lost all its leaves! I see some new shoots ready to pop out at the base, though, so we'll see what happens.