Fruit in your future? Start with small fruits, not tree fruits

Small fruits give you lots to eat,
Tree fruits often spell defeat.

I am 100% pro-fruit! I would love to see more fruit plants of all types grown across Maryland. But it saddens me to see gardeners become frustrated and disenchanted with fruit growing because their first attempt was with apples or peaches.

A National Gardening Association survey showed that 41% of U.S. households grew edibles in 2021, a 24% increase since the start of the COVID pandemic. Many new vegetable gardeners naturally see fruits as their “next frontier.” Most vegetable crops are annual plants while all fruit plants are perennials, living year-to-year in the same garden space for years and requiring year-round attention. You need to up your game for fruit growing.

My advice for the fruit-curious gardener is to start off with some of the small fruits that are well-adapted to Maryland’s climate and soils. Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, grape, and currants get their generic “small fruits” name because the plants and their fruits are small relative to tree fruits. Apple, European pear, peach, cherry, plum, and apricot are all popular tree fruits in the Rosaceae (rose) family. They also grow well in Maryland and many people plant or inherit them without fully understanding their requirements and challenges. As a result, we get a ton of tree fruit problem questions every growing season through Ask Extension.

If you had your heart set on planting apple and peach trees this year, please put down the mail-order catalog or close the browser window showing an everyday gardener picking bushels of fruit from a pristine apple tree and consider this:

  • Small fruits are less expensive to buy and maintain and take up less garden space. Even dwarf apple fruit trees can take up 75 sq. ft. of space. 
  • Small fruit plants are easier to incorporate into a home landscape. They are also easier to prune and manage and to remove if they don’t work out or eventually succumb to old age or disease. (Mature grape plants with their massive root systems are the exception). Removal of a fruit tree can be costly.
  • It’s easy to overcrowd a part of your yard with fruit trees by planting them too close to each other, to structures, or to other trees in the landscape. Shading leads to poor growth, pest and disease issues, and low yields.
  • Fruit trees need to be trained and pruned in a careful and timely manner, especially in the first 3-4 years. Small fruits tend to be more forgiving regarding training and pruning. 
  • Yes, small fruits have plenty of potential pests and diseases but they can be grown organically with very good success. Some problems can be tolerated, like the fuzzy gray mold fungus that attacks strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry fruits in wet weather. Others can be prevented or managed through good gardening practices (like proper spacing and pruning) or applying an organic pesticide (like spraying lime sulfur in early spring to reduce disease pressure).
  • Tree fruits, conversely, have more insect pests and diseases that are more difficult to prevent and manage without synthetic pesticides. Trees must be monitored more closely for signs and symptoms of problems. Even if you spray effective pesticides at the correct time, you can end up with poor control if your sprayer is not capable of covering the entire tree including the tops and bottoms of the leaves. Multiple applications are usually needed to control the major pests and diseases.
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Q&A: Fruit tree considerations for the home garden

a grove of peach trees
Peach trees. Photo M. Talabac

Q: I’d like to eventually grow some of my own fruit. What’s a good starting point and what do I need to consider?

A: It’s fun to try growing your own food, though fruit trees require the greatest amount of commitment and patience to be rewarding. Ill-prepared first attempts can easily end in failure. We suggest inexperienced gardeners or anyone short on time try small-fruit (berry) cultivation first before diving into fruit trees – they’re much simpler to grow, need little to no spraying, and take up less space – but if you do enough research to know what to expect, you can certainly start small so it’s not overwhelming.

Easier crops for a novice grower to start with include fig, persimmon, and some of the more esoteric fruits like jujube, serviceberry, and pawpaw. Ironically, the most popular fruits – apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry – are the hardest to grow well in our mid-Atlantic conditions. This is not due to temperature hardiness but rather disease and pest pressures.

Plan as much as possible first: where do you have enough space and the best conditions, how will they be cared for year-round, what problems should you anticipate, and how will you process the perishable harvest? Even when grown organically, there’s a lot of intervention and preventative treatments that will typically be needed to produce a useful harvest and to keep the tree healthy. After a problem arises, curative options are few, so knowing ahead of time what to look for and when is important in avoiding plant damage or a ruined crop for that year.

“Location, location, location” applies in gardening too. Fruit-bearing plants usually require full sun (6+ hours daily in summer) and well-drained soil to perform well. A site with good air circulation reduces disease, and proper pruning and training will make harvesting easier. Choose an area where you have enough space to avoid crowding and competition between plants. Different varieties mature at different sizes, and training style will also impact how much room trees use.

Most fruit trees are propagated by grafting. That means the variety you want is joined to a rootstock of a related variety for the purposes of improving hardiness, disease resistance, and/or dwarfing the plant’s stature for ease of maintenance and harvest. Terms like semi-dwarf, dwarf, and miniature refer to the overall growth habit compared to a full-size tree, not the fruit size itself.

Check which varieties need cross-pollination to fruit well, as some will not produce fruit if planted alone. Self-fruitful groups include figs, peaches, nectarines, and apricots, plus some varieties of apple, cherry, pear, persimmon, and plum. Keep like with like when you can, because cross-compatibility may not occur; for instance, don’t rely on pollination between an Asian and a European pear, or an early-blooming apple with a late-blooming apple. Web-based suppliers sometimes provide cross-pollination charts to illustrate compatible pairings. Avoid multi-graft plants (trees with several varieties grafted onto a shared trunk) unless you’re quite experienced because they run the risk of increased maintenance headaches or the loss of an entire variety’s crop.

ripening figs on a fig tree
Fig fruits.

Good inherent disease resistance goes a long way to reducing pesticide use and lowering the risk of bad outbreaks. No varieties are immune to problems, but those with noted resistance aid your efforts tremendously. It may surprise you to learn that some of the most popular varieties found at supermarkets are not the more disease-resistant options or even easy to grow overall. Ideally, narrow your options down by resistance traits first, desired flavor and other traits second.

Our website has a lot of information about growing fruit. You can search for a specific fruit type and find information on plant selection and good care practices.

By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun. Read more by Miri.