Advise on good book on fruit trees

Zone 5 and have decided to get into fruit trees next year. Thought I might study up this winter.
Thanks

Alas, I can't name just one. I am also in zone 5a and there is certainly a lot to learn about fruit trees. Here are some I have used:

Kent Whealy. Fruit, Berry and Nut Inventory: An Inventory of Nursery Catalogs Listing All Fruit, Berry and Nut Varieties Available by Mail Order in the United States -- the best, but no pictures. Nothing on pruning, fertilizing, etc, but everything you could ever want to know about cultivars of fruits for sale in US. Fascinating.

D. G. Hessayon, The Fruit Expert. This is available in most decent sized nurseries. Has a lot about pruning options. You wouldn't believe how many ways you can prune a fruit tree, depending on your goal. Trouble is varieties are mostly oriented toward England. Doesn't even mention many US favorites or dismisses them as so-so.

Manhart, Warren. Apples for the 21st century. -- Lots and lots of information on apple varieties for US.

In the end, however, I got the best advise from my local county agent. I live in a mountainous area with a short growing season which is also subject to late frosts. No book covered got this specific on what I needed. Luckily I took the Master Gardeners class, and the County Agent called in a speaker who had done trials for fruits and nuts at the local agriculture station and who knew what could handle our climate. The books were great, but I would never have chosen the varieties they recommended -- which turned out to be excellent.

These are two that I just ordered from amazon. Im thinking about putting in an orchard also.

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. Lee Reich.

Growing Fruit. Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Practical Gardening.

Pajar....,Thanks for the suggestion I will check that out. I also took the Master Gardening training but when it came to fruits and nuts I was either zoning out or missed that part or at that time wasn't too interested yet, because I just don't remember much of it. We tried to graph a tree talking about funny.....I was sure we were all going to cut off our fingers and then the doctors could graph those back on.
Our state conference of MG's said Missouri has the summer of Georgia and the winter of Minnesota so trying to find plants that can handle both the heat, humidty and cold with lots of wind is tough, especially if you get away from apples and pears.
Gloria thanks for the suggestions on the books I will check them out.

happgarden: I was looking for other fruits. Some pears do o.k. here but most apples do not. I was interested in checking out medlars, paw paws and quince (the fruit tree not the flowering shrub). persimmons, and pomegranants grow here.

Last year I ordered cuttings from the National Clonal Germplasm Repository at U.C. Davis. They have a lot of fruit trees to grow from cuttings or to graft if you have scions. But they don't offer any information about the plants. So like you, that's what I would like to read up on this winter.

happ, I agree with gloria's suggestion. Lee's book is great - I've read it at least 30 times. Highly recommended, but it covers small fruits as well as tree fruits. Not all is appropriate for zone 5, but most is.

Of the books I recommended the best for the South is the SSE book, but i have found a lot on the internet about what works in the South. For an overall view, check out this site:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/fruitgarden/fruitvariety.html

But look for growers that specialize in fruit trees for the South. Such as

http://www.justfruitsandexotics.com/Pears.htm

But there are others. Check out Miller's Nurseries. Do a google search on the fruits you find interesting.

Best of luck.

pajaritomt: thanks for the information. Ill check it out. What do you think of Stark nurseries for fruit trees?

I have had good luck with Stark trees over the years, but I don't think they carry as many types of trees adapted for the South as some nurseries. They do seem to carry a lot of persimmons, and a paw paw. just not so many apples and pears for the south.
I have had very good luck with Stark's quality and service, though. My favorite tree nursery is Raintree, but since it caters to the entire country you will have to make sure whatever you are ordering is for your area.
I think it would be fun to grow paw paws. I have a very happy persimmon tree at my place in Southern Mississippi. I love to watch the red fruits around Christmas time. I would like to try an Asian pear which is better suited to the South than the rest of the country.
Best of luck!

gloria125,
I would think you could find apples and pears for your area from the country extension service. I would think quinces would be a good choice. I am less sure about pomegranates, though I don't know that much about them. Your climate provides a good chill which is what many fruit trees need -- apricots, pears, cherries and many apples.
If your state dept. of agriculture would have done some trials on what grows in Kansas. That would be very useful info for you and would be hard to find in any book. You could call them or search the internet to see if they have posted anything. Many states have.

pajaritomt: Actually, adequate chill is "iffy" here. The agricultural university here at Auburn, recommends low chill apples such as are being grown in Israel. No apricots or cherries and most apples are out.
Pomegranates are grown on many old homesteads. Persimmons grow wild in the woods. Rabbiteye blueberries grow, but not the northern kind. Amelanchier which grew back home in Michigan, Ive never seen it (juneberries) here.

Satsumas are being promoted now. Peaches are the commercial fruit tree of Alabama, but the crop is constantly threatened by late frosts and drought.

I am in Zone 8b. Local nurseries are now promoting plants for zone 9 because of the weather changes.

So I have lots of study to be done on what is worth growing, both for fruit trees and for shade trees.

I am looking for old fashioned fruits. For example Medlars but I don't know if they are adapted to the climate we are about to have.

There are many great southern fruits. I am not sure whether medlars are what we used to call Japanese plums or not, but Japanese plums are eaten in Asia and are delicious. Blueberries do very well in Mississippi and probably will do well in Alabama. I think you can find apples and pears for the south, but probably not cherries and apricots. I suggested those for happygarden who lives in Kansas. I envy you the possibility of satsumas. If you can grow those, you can also grow kumquats which I love. I have seen pomegranates in New Orleans. ( as kids we used to steal them.) I think you could grow a banana tree that is hardy in your zone. They need a lot of water and nitrogen, but the leaves are great for wrapping fish in for the grill. Sounds like you are on the right track. Do check out Raintree nursery if you want unusual stuff. Their trees are also great quality and the selection is very broad. There are many great plums for the South and we used to get something called mayhaws which was used to make yummy jelly. That should be in the Fruit and Nut inventory, but I don't actually know what they are. And of course blackberries are a weed in the south, but you could purchase and grow thornless ones.

Thanks for the tip on Raintree Nursery. Ive been looking at Hidden Springs Nursery catalog. Its in Cookeville, TN. it lists Mayhaw as hardy in zones 6-9. medlars hardy to zone 5, but no southern limit. they have goumi fruit, which I imagine youve had. Its for zones 5-9. This is a type of eleagnus, which this nursery has several different kinds of. "Ugly agnes" but apparently these are the non-ugly type with large fruit.

I am not familiar with Hidden Springs Nursery. I will have to look them up. Raintree is online, but a lot of its stock is not available until spring -- probably can start ordering in January.

http://www.hiddenspringsnursery.com/plants.html

Thanks for the url. I will certainly keep it in mind

Here is the url for Raintree.
http://www.raintreenursery.com/

Between the two you should find lots of exotics.

Actually I hadn't seen goumi fruit but after looking at the two web sites, I would love to try them. I have no clue where I would get them without growing them myself -- and I am out of room for fruit trees here in New Mexico -- which is too bad because I find them fascinating. I have never had a medlar -- I don't think but they are famous in literature.

I have some wonderfully productive old pear trees at my place in Mississippi as well as a persimmon. Since I am not there all the time, it is very difficult to coordinate mail order trees with my visits there. Planting has to be in the Nov, Dec, Jan. time frame. Then there is the watering while I am gone. It rains a lot there, but not necessarily when you need it! Paw paws would probably do very well there.

Do post here as you select your trees, plant them and report on how well they do.


BTW, Raintree seems to suggest you could grow guavas. Now that sounds wonderful!

This message was edited Oct 15, 2007 5:45 PM

Im looking for shade as well as fruit/nut trees. Near here is a group of 3 old hickories growing in a yard full of magnolia grandiflora. What stately trees. And the nuts are so hard, even the squirrels give up on them. They don't seem to be even slightly invasive.

Pears do grow here, at least the keifer variety. The old folks use it for pear preserves, more than fresh eating. Pear blossoms in the spring are a major event.

Most fruit trees, make good shade trees if you buy standard or semi-dwarf ones. I adore Hickory trees and had 2 in my yard in Mississippi. One was uprooted by Katrina and the other had the top broken off at a point where the trunk was amazingly thick -- about 15 ft. up. These were both old hickory trees. I have/had quite a few there, not all near the house and found that most were seriously damaged by Katrina. Of course I see new ones coming up here and there, but they are slow growing. Nevertheless, a wonderful tree. We have a tin roofed open structure where we barbecue and before the hurricaine, I used to sit there and listen to the hickory nuts falling. It sounded like a war zone. We had a beam nailed between two of them for a swing. At night a great horned owl would sit there and watch for food scurrying below him. We sat in the living room and watched him many a night. He is still around -- we see him on the wing, but we surely do miss his old perch. I bet he does too.

Did you notice that there were any Katrina proof trees? Ivan hit the worst here, and I am still finding snapped 4 -6 in limbs wedged here and there. The hickories here are still standing, but they were in a protected spot.

I thought I might go for standard fruit trees if I can still find any. I have pecans and there was an old pear out near 3 of them. The last of that tree was blown away by the hurricane. I love the sound of pecans falling on a tin roof. And on the new tin roofs they are putting insulation so you can't hear the nuts. Progress!

I went through Ivan in Mississippi, but as you well know, I skipped most of Mississippi and hit you all in Alabama. In Katrina, of my trees, the only ones not broken in half or uprooted -- as a species-- were magnolia and cyprus. That may have been more luck than strength, however. I don't have as many of those as I do of pecan, pine and oak. All of those were seriously damaged. Not every tree, but many of each of those species. I lost 69 pecan trees out of about twice that many and countless numbers of tall old pines. The young pines(15 ft. tall) that were growing tightly together were only barely damaged. The pines of course, will shoot up again before long. I am not sure I will replant the pecans. First we have to get the remaining ones out of the orchard. We have bulldozed many into a big pile, but haven't had the opportunity to set them ablaze when we knew the weather was wet enough and we had enough time to babysit the file for days on end.
Katrina was really catastrophic for the trees. Two fell on the house which has now been repaired. My biggest concern is that the pecan orchard will turn into a jungle before we can get it cleaned up. You know the South! The pecan orchard was also a good meadow for making hay, which we can't do now because it is so full of down trees and huge branches.
A man from North Dakota comes every winter and puts a semi-truck load of bees there for the winter, then picks them up again in the spring leaving us some honey. Yum!
I love the lushness of the South, but I could certainly do without the hurricanes. Did you suffer a lot of damage in Ivan? Which trees performed best?
For shade, you can't beat a standard tree and they are not hard to find. The only problem is that you have to have a ladder to pick the fruit. Or, as in our case here in New Mexico, you have a heck of a time getting netting or tablecloths to cover them to keep the birds away. Still, they are lovely and usually won't do much damage if they fall on your house -- an aspect I have come to admire in the last few hurricanes. Semi-dwarf make nice trees too. At 15 ft. or so, you can still sit under them and the fruit is easier pick. They, too, have a nice shape and some semi-dwarfs are more productive than standards.

I have a two story house so Im looking to put up some big trees. I had some removed because they were too close to the house. That is an expensive proposition to remove mature trees.

I do have one of those Southern jungles after the heat this summer and also being sick part of the time. That is my challenge this winter is to do some clearing and get some real trees where they are supposed to be.

The main damage I had from the hurricanes were trash trees the city is growing next to me that were uprooted and became missiles flying into my yard. At one point during the hurricane I looked at my pecans (they are about 100 years old) and they were laying parallel to the ground in the winds. After the hurricane though they seemed fine. Not even any fallen branches. The magnolias also did not seem to be affected.

I had a few windows popped out and the cover to one of my greenhouses was lifted and blew across the field.

No real damage. Im wondering if there isn't some sort of windbreak configuration that would baffle the force of the hurricanes. Im sure there will be more.

I, too, have wondered about windbreaks for protection. You were smart to remove the tall trees too close to your house. I have removed many, but have more yet to remove.
My pecans were only about 30 years old, but the very old pecan orchard across the highway, once owned by my family, suffered at least as much damage. I am told that tornadoes probably came through the pecan orchard and other places. I am not sure there is much you can do about those. Luckily it didn't hit the house.
I am only about 40 miles north of the Gulf. The storm was till very strong when it hit my place -- but not as strong as on the coast and we had no flooding because we are on higher ground, thank goodness.
It is truly a problem for the Gulf coast area -- what kind of trees to plant that will withstand the hurricanes. I have to say that you are probably on the right track with the standard fruit trees. The taller trees definitely took the brunt of the winds. They are also short enough that they won't hurt your house much if they fall on it.

One Green World also has a nice selection of unusuals similar to Raintree and I have actually done better with them than Raintree. Their web page is a http://www.onegreenworld.com

Have you considered jujube and che? I don't know what the warmer limits to their range are, but they are nice trees (from what I have read) They offer excellent, unusal fruit for most people that can grow them.

I have only begun to investigate how to engineer the windbreaks. I wrote an article earlier that has a bunch of excellent references on spacing.

First you want trees that are not brittle and that is going to depend on your area. Next you want trees that are "open" i.e. they let the wind blow through but they slow it down. And then you want to place them in staggered rows so that the wind will eddy around each row of trees and then be slowed down again by the next row. So the spacing is important in slowing down the wind. that means you have to have enough space to allow as many rows as you can with in row spacing appropriate for modulating the wind. If the trees are too close together or too dense, the wind will hit them full force and you will have flying missiles in 100 mi an hour winds.

Finally, the windbreak needs to be planted perpendicular to the prevailing winds, or the direction most likely of the hurricane force winds.

Windbreaks have been best studied in the prairie states, where they are used to provide shelter for cattle on snow swept flatlands, and to prevent soil erosion.

Krowten: I haven't investigated che yet, because I am just starting. But, jujube is an historic tree around here. In a town near here, the story is jujbes were growing along the down town street and there was an organ grinder with a monkey. that monkey would sit on the organ grinder's shoulder and grab jujubes from the trees as he moved along under them. Then the monkey would judiciously throw the jujubes at certain children with a remarkable aim. These were 75 year old ladies telling me this story. Apparently, it was quite a sting to be hit by those jujubes. there is still one old tree at a historic site in Demopolis, its on its last legs, but the curator has started suckers so the old tree will be represented at the historic site.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/108/

This is the article I wrote on windbreaks. I wonder if you had enough room, if magnolia grandifloras might not make a good windbreak. they seem to hold up well in the winds and they are long lived. They are evergreen so they would be there during winter storms.

Gloria, You wouldn't be intersted in a trade for some of the jujube fruit, would you? I've had dried but never got to try any fresh. D-mail me if you are intersted.