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

[cyprinella]

I'd probably go with apples just because they store well and they're so versatile - lots of both sweet and savory uses. Sadly, my area is too humid to grow them well without a lot of spraying, or so the master gardeners tell me. I also don't really have room for a full-grown tree, so I went with lots of berries - blueberries, cranberries and raspberries.

[rainbow]

I'm shameless about always wanting lots of kinds of fruit trees. Fortunately we have room for as many as I could ever want now, but at my old house I had a 5 heirloom variety apple tree, a 3 variety apricot tree, and a 3 variety plum, so that I could have lots of different sorts of fruit in a limited area. (If you're not familiar with the multi variety trees, they're made by grafting different scions to the base tree so you can have one tree with different types of apples, stone fruits, etc.)

A big question -- what fruits do you love enough to use up (eating fresh, canning, freezing, etc) when the trees are more mature. If you like plums fresh but don't like prunes, canned plums, plum jam, etc., it's not a good choice. For me, I adore plums, apricots, cherries, apples, and figs, for instance, so I've platned some of each of those (well, excpet the plums; we've got wild ones and a newer one that the previous owner put in).

A lot comes down to your climate, too. Some fruits need a certain number of chill hours in the winter, and if you're in a warm winter climate they won't be good choices. And some do best with hot summers. Others like or hate humidity. Finding varieties that thrive locally helps narrow down the possibilities a lot.

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.

[xenacryst]

In my experience (which isn't huge), apples are both fairly easy and easy to take care of the influx at harvest time -- applesauce is easy, keeps reasonably well, they can be used in lots of dishes sweet and savory, as mentioned, and they keep pretty well, too. I suspect quince would be fairly similar here (I love me some mince pie made with apples, quinces, and raisins). And old apple trees can develop very wonderful gnarly personalities.

My mom has access to a plum tree that drapes over her back fence, and it's lovely, but we still have plum jam from the huge batch we made last year, and plums don't keep worth a darn.

My own favorite would be peach, because I simply admore the taste of fresh peaches and peach cobbler and I know how to freeze them. But if you've got plenty at the farmer's market, then that works.

ooooh - black cherries!

[cygnet]

No doubt about it, if there were plenty of peaches around in the local markets, I'd next go for a black cherry. Or two! :-) I *love* cherries! And if you have a big crop, they freeze really well.