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Garden Fruit Trees Provide Fruit when you Want It
Garden fruit trees are becoming a lot more popular nowadays, and little wonder. Shop bought fruit frequently tastes terrible, perhaps due to the chemicals used in growing them or perhaps the fact that many are forced or even picked green to ripen in transit. Whatever the reason, today’s fruit is tasteless. But not only that, the peaches are rock solid, and go bad before they ripen enough to eat, and the pears are the same – either solid or you can poke a finger through them.
The answer is to grow your own. Even people with only a small garden or backyard can grow fruit trees due the ever-increasing number of varieties that can be obtained on dwarf stock, trained to grow along fences as espaliers, or even as cordons that are trained up a single stem. The days are gone when you needed a farm-sized orchard for even a few apple trees, and many hybrids are now suitable for even the colder climates. You no longer have to live south to grow fruit trees.
Just think of the benefits: fresh fruit whenever you want it, fruit bursting with good natural flavor, full of juice and chemical free. Fruit that has ripened on the tree and not in a darkened box in the hold of a ship, or at the back of a lorry. Home grown fruit must be better for you than the papier maché sold under the name of fruit in today’s supermarkets.
So what kind of fruit trees can you grow in your garden? Do you prefer apples, pears, peaches, apricots or plums. How about grapes if you are into winemaking, or even cherries that can grow just about anywhere now. All of these are suitable for home gardens, large or small, as long as you take some simple precautionary steps before parting with your money.
Your supplier must be familiar with your climate. For example, if you are prone to early frosts, you will need a late flowering variety or you will lose all your fruit to a snap frost. Those not used to fruit growing don’t understand the damage that frost can do to the flowers. They might seem all right, but after a while they just wither and fall off the tree without fruiting. A local supplier, or one familiar with your climate, will understand that and be able to provide you with the right variety.
You might also need the right soil conditions, and your fruit tree supplier will again be able to help you with this. They will tell you whether you need lime, some sand to open up the structure and improve the draining, the right type of compost, and even the right type of mulching to keep in the moisture. You might need something different for each type of fruit. You will also likely need at least two varieties of each fruit that are compatible with each other for pollination. You can get self-pollinating trees, but it is better to play safe and allow cross pollination to occur naturally.
You should also make sure that the garden fruit tree you are purchasing is what you want. There are dessert and cooking varieties of many fruits, and you will need to know the details of the variety you are planting. Are your apples for eating or cooking. Are your pears for eating or juicing? Are your grape vines for eating or winemaking? Make sure that your supplier understands why you want a specific fruit tree, and they can then help you with your selection.
There are so many variables that you will not be able to make your own choice unless you are an experienced fruit grower. There is the climate, the pollination, the size and type of plant: fan, espalier or cordons, the soil, the fertilizer and even the age of the tree you buy. If you buy them too young you will wait a year or two without fruit: two years is a good age to purchase a fruit tree. Anything much older than two years might be difficult to transplant, since that becomes harder the older the tree.
Fruit trees are not grown from seed, but propagated on stock, and the size of the tree depends on the stock they are propagated on. Much depends on the area you have available in your garden for fruit trees, since the stock can provide apple trees from dwarves of around 5 feet high and branch spread to trees of up to 25 feet high and across.
Irrespective of the species, garden fruit trees will provide you with a regular supply of real fruit that gives a burst of pure flavor when you bite into it, and once you have tried it you will never buy an apple, pear or plum from a supermarket ever again.
Garden Fruit Trees, Apple Trees, Apricot Trees, Aprium Trees, Cherry Trees, Nectarine Trees, Peach Trees, Pear Trees, Plum Trees, Pluot Trees, Prune Trees
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