If you could only pick two varieties of each type of fruit to grow based on disease resistance / ease of care what would you grow?
Just to clarify, are you looking for the easiest to grow/least intervention? As an example, Liberty is a rock-solid disease resistant apple, but insects love it, so you end up spraying either way. There may be some other apples that are more hands-off than Liberty.
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I’m looking for the varieties that would provide the most amount of useable fruit without spraying anything.
I would start by thinking about fruit types first. Persimmons, pawpaw, pears (avoid fireblight susceptible varieties), gooseberries, currants, blackberries, raspberries can be grown spray-free here. Stone fruit would not be good (insects and fungal rot). I have had a hard time with grapes here too (trialing hardy kiwis as a replacement). Apples are somewhere in between… this is probably where you may benefit from looking for disease and insect resistant apples. The no-spray apples tend to be harder-texture apples with thick and perhaps oily skin. Do a search on this site for “no-spray apples.”
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@jared159 … add mulberries to the list.
Gerardi, Silk Hope, Oscar … to name a few.
No spray needed … low maintenance… lots of delicious fruit provided.
Woops. I see you are in zone 5… not sure if mulberries will work. I found one nursery recommending them for zone 5-8 and another for 6-9.
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Honeyberries, Blueberries, Strawberries…Figs… Trader Mulbs. I dont see any issue in trying a Contender or Reliance Peach… hard to spray against things you may not have an issue with. Plus a paring knife will net all kinds of usable fruit on alot of things.
Hard to beat Asian Pears for lots of usable fruit plus they bear sooner… cant really spray against fireblight anyways… just prune it out… if its even an issue where the grower is going to be growing things.
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