fruit trees

I bought 2 apple trees today: Liberty and Honey Crisp dwarfs.

fruit tree planning

I'm working on deciding how many fruit trees I'll have room for and what varieties to get. I'd like to get a peach, a pie cherry and several apple trees.

Along with the peach and the cherry, I think I'll have room for 3-5 apple trees. I don't know whether to plant dwarfs, so I can spray, pick and prune them without a ladder, or semi-dwarfs, which I think are hardier, longer-lived and produce more fruit.

From my quick measuring of the space, it looks like I have room for either 5 dwarf apples or 2 semi-dwarfs and 1 dwarf.

For varieties, I'm thinking a good mix might be: Honeycrisp (high flavor eating and storage apple), Liberty (mild flavor apple for eating fresh) and Grimes Golden (a high flavor all purpose apple fresh eating, good storage and pies). A friend of my mom's has Liberty, Anoka, Macoun and Northern Spy trees and she likes the Liberty best. I grew Fuji a few years back and it was so-so, never seemed to ripen fully. I LOVE Honeycrisp for eating and definitely want to grow this variety. Grime's Golden is supposed to be one of the best pie and sauce varieties.

snowy fruit tree clearing

This is the area where I will plant some fruit trees in the spring. It was under a foot of snow last week when I took these pictures. After the rain we got the past couple days, only a few inches of snow left now.

I should have room here for about 5 dwarf or semi dwarf trees. I want to measure the area soon and mark out where the trees will go. I am thinking of getting 3 apples (maybe dwarf Liberty, Honeycrisp and Esopus Spitzenburg from Fedco), a peach and maybe a pie cherry tree. (I will eventually move my two espaliered pear trees from my community plot to the fence of my vegetable garden.)

I love reading the Fedco catalog section of fruit trees. So much information!